When I was growing up, I had a barely conscious feeling that I was always playing catch up with my studies. You could put it down to me studying subjects I was not good at. That may be so, but I was so tense that an outsider might say I was dooming myself to fail through anxiety.
A very clear instance of that was when I fainted in an exam, and then convinced that I had no time to complete the paper, I was relaxed and passed the exam.
So something about anxiety should have been obvious to me but it was not.
And then when I was 29 and studying for exams, I had a different sensation. It came on me quite suddenly. In a moment I felt that I was the captain of the ship – captain of the starship Enterprise – and I stepped backwards out of the frame and surveyed the work from a different perspective and then proceeded at my pace.
This change wasn’t that I believed that I could control everything. It was understanding that unless I took command then I would continue to be what I have been in all my studies until then -.a person hanging on by their fingertips fearing that they would fail.
That change of attitude started a physical change in the way I sat when I studied. It changed my physical distance from the table, from the written material I was looking at. No more hunched shoulders. I could feel how I was seated on the chair confidently like the captain of the ship. I was in charge – and all the internal feelings changed.
I think the layout of the library in which I was studying had something to do with it because it had, as my mother used to say, Tender Trap stairs. They were a reference to the film of that name.
In my case, the library had just three or so broad steps up that started about halfway up the room – two or three steps upwards and I was in the upper part so I was kind of on the bridge of this starship Enterprise. I think that helped to trip me into the beginning of understanding of how to approach things.
Anyone can do this and become the conductor of your efforts rather than a bundle of nerves playing catchup.