How "Being Stressed" Can Help You Learn

Stress is defined in different ways.  For this purpose we're referring to "test stress" or the kind of stress you feel when learning, and specifically about the alert state, when adrenalin, noradrenalin, and other biochemicals flood the system and get it ready to fight, flee, freeze, or appease.
For students, it's simpler: stress out during the test and fail.

Remember it for a long time.

There is a simple solution based on the very biochemistry we're talking about.
The alert state has a number of effects on the body, but for our purposes here we're going to talk about one:

1) When you are excited, your ability to remember what happens at that moment goes way up.
When you are excited, your ability to retrieve past events goes way down.

2) When you are calm, your ability to retrieve past events goes way up.
When you are calm, your ability to remember what happens at that moment goes way down.

We teach practical methods for achieving a state of calm during testing and removing that state of stress that students develop over years of fearing tests.  We also teach methods for keeping the body in a state of alert during learning to improve the ability to retain what is being taught.

With a little effort, you can find many of these things online for your own use, and we encourage that.

A more organized program is available for sharing with your company or organization; a trainer or speaker is available on request.