10. How to study without stress?

Now for a less funny subject. Stress.

There are many forms of stress: academic stress, fear of failure, perfectionism, presentation stress, thesis stress, but also anxiety, depression, overstrain, tiredness, burnout complaints, thoughts about suicide ....

Too much stress hinders learning.
How? The brain turns when there is too much stress from a brain system from control to less control. The stress also hijacks part of your working memory capacity, which is super inconvenient, and the construction of strong short-term memory networks is hampered.

The result? With too much stress you study more slowly, you are more prone to error and in some cases you get insufficient results. And it really feels uncomfortable.

Too much stress means you have less overview, you are less able to plan well, you are less creative, there is less perseverance. Loss of pre-frontal regulation in fancy terms.

All these forms of stress have this in common: they are all network configurations of Thought-Feeling-Behavior. How do you study without stress? By creating other network configurations. And by making exercise stronger. So other Thoughts, different feelings, and other behavior.

You can transform negative thoughts into positive thoughts. You can also park negative thougts. Challenge them. Accept them. Convert into a positive image.

And in terms of feeling? You can learn to focus more on successes, that's how they train soldiers.

And with other behavior you can think of asking for help, moving more (even if it is only 10 minutes walking a day!), perhaps even more sports, very important !, more social activities, downloading and using a good app….

Anyway. Your brain is plastic, and super dynamic. Connecting and adapting, connecting and adapting ... If you create new networks, with new thoughts, feelings or behavior, and really practice them, those new networks will become stronger.

Fire and wire!

With serious forms of stress, don’t try to help yourself. Get help!

There are also a lot of online courses that can help you: […]