Why You Choke On Tests

How is your poise under test pressure? Does your mind hold up? Do you choke? Your testing performance is only as good as your mental game. Where are your prime test choking arenas? Essays? Short answers? Multiple Choice questions? Timed tests? Does the pressure of the situation get to you? Can you handle the stress? This article explains choking and gives you and understanding of mental toughness, with three key strategies for learning it.

When I coach students of all ages and levels, mental toughness training is a central theme cutting across everything we do. The essence of being mentally tough in testing situations is being able to maintain your focus to perform the way you know you can.

What Happens When You Choke On A Test?

Choking is a particularly deadly form of being nervous. It's a full-blown case of nerves that stops you from concentrating, being alert, accessing your answers from memory and from thinking clearly. How many of these choking symptoms do you experience when you become nervous?

1. You distract yourself by worrying about your performance.
2. You emotionally over-react to your mistakes.
3. You think your way through your performance, instead of being natural.
4. You worry and try to control things you can't control.
5. Your muscles tighten up and your breathing becomes shallower and faster.
6. You think you're in trouble when you're not.
7. You freeze up or rush, or leave details out.
8. You try too hard to succeed.

Choking Begins For One Or Both Of These Reasons

1. You make a personal assessment that this test is extremely important, and that failing would have seriously negative consequences.
2. You have a negative reaction to an error you make, and that negativity amplifies to cause a downward spiraling disruption of your performance.

Mental Toughness Lets You Perform Under Pressure

A mental toughness training program gives you anti-choking skills. Mentally tough students maintain their peak performance skills under pressure.

Mentally tough students handle testing adversity, uncertainty, the set-backs with poise and determination. You can decide to be mentally tough. If you do, you'll have these mental characteristics:

1. Your test performances will be consistent.
2. You'll handle pressures well.
3. You won't blow up the importance of the test in your own mind.
4. You'll know how to access and stay in the zone during a performance.
5. You'll have faith that things will work out.
6. You'll reduce worry to a minimum, and actually channel the nervous energy into positive uses.
7. You'll handle weariness and discomfort well.
8. You'll tolerate frustrations and inconveniences well.
9. You won't be emotionally reactive to errors.
10. You'll maintain focus on your performance.
11. You'll be flexible and adaptive.
12. You'll thrive on stress and challenge.

Three Mental Toughness Strategies To Prevent Choking

Choking can be minimized by learning peak performance mind tools, and through proper mental practice strategies.

1. Make your test practice situations as similar to the real thing as possible to simulate pressure. Include every realistic detail you can think of.
2. Make your test practices more pressure-filled and demanding than the real thing will actually be, and the real deal will seem tame.
3. Develop the mindset of "I love pressure" and then jump into it and enjoy the challenge of winning in that situation.No one can make you choke without your permission. The power to control and stop choking is within you. You can't find that mental power anywhere else. Take charge of your tests and build the mental toughness that top students have.
   
   

Knowing about educational psychology and being test savvy is certainly an important part of being a good student, but top students who get consistently high grades also have a knowledge base and applied skills in stress control and peak performance. You need to know how to manage your mind, calm your emotions and relax your body so you can get into the “test zone”, that powerful, deeply focused mind-body state that gives you excellent recall, mental alertness and clarity. You need to learn these skills and become mentally tough so you can handle the extreme pressures of academia. Other mental skills training you need are visualization, confidence-building, mental readiness training and motivation skills.

To learn this set of mental toughness, zone, and stress control skills, sign up for our special Test Anxiety Stress Reduction Program. You can also take this no-cost assessment of your test-taking skills.

Test Anxiety Assessment