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How to Become a More
Confident Student
If you are a university student who is studying and facing
exams, you already know that you will benefit from learning
better studying techniques and better note-taking methods. What
you may not know is that an important part of being a good
learner is to feel very confident about your learning ability.
Why is it important to have good confidence in our ability to
learn?
When you don't have a good confidence in your learning ability,
you will approach learning situations and exams in a state of
nervousness and anxiety. A lack of confidence in your learning
ability will actually interfere with you ability to study
effectively, and it will interfere with your ability to remember
what you have learned.
Being completely confident and happy about your learning ability
will lessen your anxiety. Confidence in yourself will improve
your learning performance and improve your memory of what you
have studied.
How can you tell whether or not you lack confidence in yourself
as a learner?
If you lack confidence about your learning ability, you probably
already know it because you become very tense and nervous about
facing exams.
When you are in a learning situation, pay attention to the sorts
of thoughts that frequently go through your mind. What messages
are you telling yourself? Spend several days becoming aware of
the way you talk to yourself internally. Write down the thoughts
that pass through your mind so that you can review them.
Are your statements about yourself mostly positive or mostly
negative? Do your thoughts reflect confidence in your own
abilities? Or are you constantly yelling at yourself for your
mistakes and shortcomings? Are you calling yourself stupid,
lazy, or unsuccessful?
If your statements to yourself about your learning ability are
mostly negative, you may think that yelling at yourself will
make you try harder and improve your performance. Actually, this
negative self talk will increase your anxiety and will interfere
with your ability to learn effectively.
Take some time to watch very young children learn. During the
first few years of life, humans learn a huge amount of
information at a much quicker rate than they will ever learn
again. When very young children learn, they do so in an attitude
of joy and exploration. They don't criticize themselves for
being bad learners.
Even as adults, we do our best learning in an atmosphere of fun
and exploration. We learn better when we think learning is fun.
We don’t learn as well when we tell ourselves that we are
stupid.
If your negative opinion of yourself is holding you back, how do
you go about changing it? Two very effective techniques that can
help you change your self-image are affirmations and
visualization.
Instead of focusing on your current negative self-assessments,
focus instead on the kind of person you would like to be. What
personal qualities do you want to have?
Write down a description of how you would like to be and how you
would like to perceive yourself. Write out some simple phrases
that express your desired qualities as something that you have
right now.
Spend time creating images of yourself learning easily, and let
the feelings of confidence fill you up. Revisit these positive
images frequently. See yourself succeeding in your exams, and
feel the sensations you would feel as you get a very good mark.
Using visualizations and affirmations correctly can go a long
way to improve your confidence in your ability to learn, and
when you are more confident about your learning ability, you
will actually learn better.
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