Tag 5 - Exam anxiety, Living the past, projecting into the future, fearing what is here.

I had an exam a few weeks ago and what I experienced that day and the few days before is that I still had a strong exam anxiety. This is really an issue of mine, because I ruined many tests and assignments just because of that anxiety in my past. So when there is still enough time before the upcoming exam, I feel quite confident and I don't experience any anxiety or fear. But the day of the exam, respectively about two days before I start to become doubtful and I start to question the whole thing in my thoughts. I fear failing, thus I project the experience of failing into the future and compare it to my past experiences where I failed just because of me frustrating myself with this anxiety. I know that it might be 'normal' to become nervous and maybe a little anxious before an exam, but what I experience is more intense, I become angry and aggressive against my environment and myself. I am ready to give the whole thing up and blame all those people around the examination, the examiners and the whole education system. And then, when I realise how 'childish' that behaviour is, I refuse to stop myself and my thoughts in order to face reality as what is here and deal with it and instead start judging myself and give myself labels like 'I am just stupid', 'I am not good enough', 'I will never make it', 'I am fucked up'. And this makes me even more angry and frustrated. But not enough, I then realize that I might be using all this blaming and those self judgements in order to legitimate any irresponsible and self-destructive behaviour when I then let myself go, like eating too much or some years ago it was smoking and drinking more. And within that realization I again refuse to face the point in self honesty and take it as a confirmation for my fucked-upness. So this becomes a self perpetuating pattern of self abuse and self destruction. All starts with the future projection of my past experiences which I didn't work with in order to have clarification about the root causes for my exam anxiety and the self abuse going along with it. I just keep up the pattern because it seems to be more easy for me. But in fact it is just self sabotage and a continuous attempt to justify lazyness and unwillingness to face my Self-Responsibility.

Just because I am doing all that writing and self forgiveness I was able to get to the point of that self honesty to face my fear. The days before the exam I was thinking about going to a doctor and get an excuse for it in order to repeat it in about 6 months. But I couldn't stand myself doing that. I obviously saw how I was lying to myself. The situation would be exactly the same in 6 months from now. This I could clearly see and know because I saw the pattern that created the situation of fear, namely the projections I made into the future of the upcoming exam, and I knew that if I don't face that point, push myself through it in self-honesty, aware of what I am doing and forgive myself each time these fears and projections come up, I will end up in the same mood, with the same fears in every similar situation.

So I started breathing through all the situations I had these failure experiences and I looked at the reactions, how I dealt with these situations, how I tried to escape my self responsibility and how I made up all kinds of thought constructs as justifications. I was blaming my parents, my childhood friends, my social status, my lack of money, my problems with alcohol, the society, the schools, I started judging the people around those examinations, the examinors and the whole system as if I was the one small victim and all have conspired together against me. Of course I could never gain any perspecive or practical application from those thought patterns that would have given me some sense or a motivation to work on myself. This seems to be the whole point around this principle of blaming others. It is separation in the mind that justifies all your conditionings and behaviours while you blame the behaviour of all others for your mischief.

And then, when you continue with this thought pattern you feel even confirmed with every following failure and this gives you a sort of self esteem as a failure personality.

I went through many of these points already on my way of self directed process, but this exam anxiety was still there.

So I faced this point, took the opportunity to push myself through all the resistances and applied self forgiveness on every occasion of anger, frustration and anxiety.

The day of the examination there was a huge rising of anxiety in the morning, I was in total mental chaos and everyrthing I did went wrong. I spilled my coffee, forgot my documents and had to head back home, I crumpled them, got angry about it and when I was on the road in my car, I realized what was happening with me when I watched my own hands shivering at the wheel. I took a stop at the next parking and applied self forgiveness, brought myself down and back into the moment by breathing deep and easy. I was absolutely clear about the programm that was working in that moment and when I did my self corrective pledge to myself I saw everything as myself very clear and I headed towards the place of my examination.

I was absolutely calm and free of anxiety. When I arrived I was too late for about 5 minutes and I entered a boardroom with about 50 people sitting there listening to an instructor. He saw me and ordered me to come to him in order to recieve my documents and to register. I apologized for me being late and still was not nervous or anxious at all, which isn't very common for me in such a situation. I wrote the exam and it was a clear success. I was so unexperienced with such a result that I didn't even know how to enjoy it. But what I really enjoyed was my success when I was dealing with my own programming, that I stopped and faced it unconditionally, without judging myself, without blaming anyone and I was able to stand facing all these deceptions, the self honest concessions, without withdrawal. This was the real test, this was the real success in all this. Noone needs to give you a certification for it, but you yourself know that you freed yourself from a boundary that enslaved you your whole life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trap myself in a thought pattern of fear of failure and the anxiety of failing over and over again, just because it felt like an old habit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become angry and to hide my fears from myself by blaming others for my anxiety.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore that fact that my anxiety derives from my future projection of past experiences and is therefore self created and not real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from this fear when I thought it was forced upon me from the outside, by other people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself being too stupid to pass an exam.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think I was separate from the system and a victim to its requirements of examinations and certifications.

I forgive myself that I have accepted the limitation that I forced upon myself because of my thoughts and fears.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to waste my potential that I could have used and applied in ways that are best for all. Instead I have focussed on myself as a personality and entertained myself with self pitty, not seeing that this will only lead to more self abuse.

I see and realize that the system I feared is a projection of our inner programmings and acceptances and that we are all equally responsible for what it has become. I have to face all consequences of what I have allowed and accepted to exist and my exam anxiety is actually the fear that prevents me from facing myself as the system. In order to change the system I have to change my starting point as the system and bring myself in alignment with self honesty and self correction. The purification process is necessairy in order to purify the system and to realign it with life. I realize that I have been programmed to be an afraid personality and to blame others for any uncomfortable experiences instead of facing the root causes in myself, in self honesty and self responsibility. Of course, tha system as it is is highly abusive and unacceptable. But it will never change if we continue hiding behind self righteous self legitimations, pointing our fingers at others while we are in fact hiding from ourselves, trying to ignore our 'part' in all this, our responsibility as a living being.

Real change has to start with myself, this is obvious common sense, in all fields. Since we are all humans and we are all Life, it is obvious that we all must have been programmed to fall for the same mind traps, because we all are experiencing fears in one way or another. When you stop yourself and stand in realisation of yourself as Life, equal to others, you can clearly see that none of your fears are real, they are all created by ourselves in order to enslave ourselves. Who wants to allow and accept such an abuse and continue to speak of oneself as a free thinking intelligent human being?

STOP