Hello y'alllll!
It's Friday!! I hope everyone's looking forward to the weekend! :P
Would like to pick up on something that
@kochikaame said last night. About practicing gratefulness, for sleeping better. It resonated with me so much because something like that has worked with me previously.When I was at my worst, I had a terrible case of insomnia, and this, as I now understand, was not because of the exam as such but because of all of the noise surrounding it. The thing that worried me the most was not whether I would clear the examination, butwhat it would be likeifI did not clear the examination. What would people think of me, given I hadn't even cleared prelims despite multiple attempts? Would I still be employable elsewhere? Wouldn't people who used to be my peers be ahead of me in their careers? How could I disappoint my family? How could I face up to myself in the mirror, after having given up?
All of these fears had a compounded effect on me. The mornings were terrible, where the fear and deep seated insecurities were so paralyzing that I could get nothing done at all. My fear ofwhat it would mean ifI failedin the exam that hadn't even happened yetwas so great that I allowed it to cause me to fail at life every single day. Life was on autopilot. The absence of control or agency over anything and everything. If the mornings were bad, the evenings were worse. Absolute and utter helplessness.
It got to a point where even the sceptic in me decided to give Heartfulness Meditation a go. And boy, over time, it worked like a charm. The underlying point of any form of meditation is to help you realise the existence of a deep rooted emotion, and put it aside. Detachment does not mean letting go of your emotions, but to recognize their existence and detach yourself from it so that those emotions are not allowed to dominate you. While I cannot claim to have been perfectly successful at this, staying consistent with it improved my life enormously. From a position where I couldn't get 3 hours of proper sleep or 3 hours of study, where I was controlled by a sense of impending doom, I went to waking up at 4 in the morning every single day and putting in at least 8-10 hours a day working on what I wanted to do. Instead of spending my daywishingthat the worst would not happen, I startedworkingon making the best possible outcome happen. Whether any of it will bear fruit, only time will tell of course. But the improvements to my life are here to stay.
My simple point is this. Your fear or sense of anxiety or worry does not necessarily arise from the question of whether you will clear the examination or not. It mostly arises from your ideas of the consequences of not clearing it in this attempt. Those are the worries that keep you up at night. I'm just here to tell you that that is all plain noise. You're suffering miseries that have not even come to be. If anything should keep you up, let it be the hope that you have. Let it stem from the faith you have in yourself. Sunday is only about you and those 100/200 questions. Everything else surrounding it- your performances in mocks, the idea that UPSC is a diabolical machine which attempts to trick you into wrong answers or that it is unpredictable, 12 tips/tricks/hacks/shortcuts to clear prelims) is not real. UPSC is not out to get you. In fact, it does not give a shit about you or your preparation. Apply your head, act like a rational person, focus on the things you think you need to, and above all, keep calm. :)
I hope you have a great day.
