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Ariana went from a 498 to a 515 in three months while carrying a full course load, a job, and a family member she was caring for. What anxiety does to your reasoning, and three strategies to start this week.
From plateauing MCAT scores, and having to retake, to breaking down days before exam day, all 70+ MedLife Mastery Mentors suffered the frustrations and disappointments that come with MCAT prep. Yet we ALL ended up getting 90+ percentile MCAT scores and are on our way to (or already in) med-school! Now we want to help you do the same!
If you're struggling with the MCAT, need some extra motivation, want to know how top scorers before you studied and learn their best strategies, this show is for you. You have what it takes to beat this exam. We’re here to make sure of that!
One of the things about the MCAT is that it can really bring on a lot of feelings, feelings of anxiety, frustration, even some like forms of depression. And you can just be really frustrated with how it's going. We have been through that ourselves and understand the amount of pressure that you can feel when taking the MCAT, especially time pressure and like feeling like it's time sensitive, you have to get it done now. So we want to share some guidance on how to stay calm in these stress-provoking situations. What can you do to be in a headspace where you can be successful? We want to share what has helped us learn how to stay calm, cool and collected through MCAT prep so that you can have those same feelings and replace your anxious, nervous, worried feelings with the feelings that you should be here. You can do this and you can be successful. Stay with me as we walk through this because the information that we have gathered from talking to high scores is something really powerful and can help you better understand how to be in a confident place to take the MCAT so that you can be successful. So there's this conundrum when you are going through the MCAT and you are preparing for it. And a lot of times you feel those anxious, nervous, worried feelings that I talked about, but you may be thinking, OK, this is what's helping me study. This is what's helping me get up like I'm worried. I'm going to do bad on the test, but I need to study more. However, you can find yourself not doing better and instead of kind of sinking into a worse place because you're now anxious, worried and scared about the test. Instead, what can help you is kind of the opposite. You want to be in a place where you're enthusiastic about learning, where you're clear-minded, where you're able to see what the information is that need. You're able to take that information and you can apply it. You want to feel inspired to study, not feeling like you have to study because you're falling behind and you're not going to do what you need. But instead, you feel inspired to learn what you're going to need to be able to get to medical school to be the best doctor you can be. And it has been shown over and over that when you're in a positive place, you're going to be more clear-minded. But when we're thinking more clearly, we are more attentive. And when we're more attentive, we're able to start thinking creatively and we're able to solve problems. And you probably know from experience or you've heard that the impact is a test where you have to be able to solve problems. So ultimately, by coming from a place of being happy, you're able to walk yourself back to a place where your mind is free and you can start to solve problems that are going to be on the test. It's only in the last couple of years that people have studied positive emotions and the positive emotions are essential for learning. It turns out those are what drive curiosity and exploration, which is how we learn. When most people see top scores on the impact and their confidence during their studying, they think that those top scores are confident because they have something to be confident about because they know their material because they must be scoring really well in practice tests. But what most people don't stop to think about is that maybe their confidence comes first. And because they are confident, they're able to answer questions because they're not clouded by those negative emotions we talked about earlier, but instead are coming from a place of confidence and their their abilities to be able to be in a place that they can do better on the impact. Let's talk a little bit about what you can do to get to a place of clarity, confidence and optimism when it comes to the impact. We're only going to be talking about scientific fact research and we'll be linking the sources below so that you can check them out if you want to read more on this subject. The first key that you need to kind of be aware of is that emotions can be split into two categories. They can be positive or they can be negative. And seems kind of obvious, right? Now, this is something that can be argued, but generally speaking, the thought comes before the emotion. So, for instance, with the impact, you're thinking about your intake coming up and that's what triggers you to be worried and start to feel worried. The second thing that you want to recognize is that our thoughts can kind of reside in three places. They can be in the past, they can be in the present or they can be in the future. So when you're worried about something, you could be worried about something that already happened. You could be worried about something that's actively happening or you could be worried about something that happens in the future. Same thing with any positive emotion. So let's list out some negative emotions that you may have felt already or you might feel at some time during your impact. This can be things like sadness, stress, worry, regret, guilt, frustration. Now, let's look at when these thoughts arise and we can do that by understanding when do we feel them. So anger is something normally associated with the past. We're angry because of something that happened. Maybe you're angry because you didn't get a good impact before your first try and now you are super annoyed and frustrated and just angry because you're going to have to retake the impact. Worry is something that's normally associated with the future. What's going to happen next? So maybe you are retaking the impact or you haven't taken the impact yet, but you're worried about how you're going to do on your score something in the future. How am I going to do coming up when I take this test? Anxiety is something that also kind of goes with worry. It's in the future and things like sadness, guilt and regret. They all have to go with the past. Things that have already happened and now I'm at this point and I'm reflecting back and those are emotions that can come with that. So the key insight you're starting to recognize here is that negative emotions tend to be focused on the future or in the past. So all of the things I just said that you don't have to do being upset or worrying or anxious about what's going to happen or frustrated, angry, sad, guilty about things that have already happened. Let's now talk about some positive emotions. So things like joy, happiness, feeling excited, feeling enthusiasm, delight, relief, even. These are all feelings you get when you are in the moment. You're not worried about the future. You're not thinking about the past. You are actively in the present moment. And think about this, how this is true in your own life. When you are out with your friends laughing, you're not thinking about an assignment you turned in late. When you're with the people you love and spending time bonding with those who you're close to, you're probably not thinking about your upcoming exam. And when you're just doing something that you really enjoy in life, like being engrossed in a good movie, you're probably not thinking about which questions you did or did not get wrong. When you're doing any of these things, you are in the moment. And so the key insight here is that positive emotions tend to be in the present moment and there can be a darker side to this. If you think about things like addiction, a lot of times those are because it helps people stay in the present moment so that they're not thinking about what happened in the past or what happened in the future. These are things that can really help people feel like they're escaping. And once they're through or once it's done and they kind of still grow up, they're back to reality and looking for their next escape. And these can be things like we may think about normally with addiction, like alcohol or drugs, but it can also be things like eating, scrolling through your Instagram feed, something that gives you a little hit every time you do it. To be clear, we're not saying that you should be escaping from your emotions through things like this. We're saying the opposite. You don't want to escape from your emotions because your emotions are always there. That's how people get addicted. Instead, what we want you to do is learn how to manage your emotions in a healthy way so that you can learn more efficiently and you can be more successful on the MCAT because you are in the correct headspace to take this test. What if I told you that you are able to cultivate kind of that positive mindset at will? And you can be in a place where when you're studying, you are doing so wholeheartedly. You are in a positive place. You are thinking that you really like this material. You're enthusiastic to learn more. Your curiosity is invited. And wonder if I told you that same principle can apply to being able to take a break when you're studying and not be thinking about what you need to do. It has to be done once coming up. Instead, you can focus on the fact that you're taking a break. And what happens if you can do all of that while also raising your MCAT score and doing better? If you ask us, that sounds like a great life and something that we should all strive to do to be in a better positive headspace while also doing better on our exams. So the big question now is, how do you achieve this present state of awareness while you're studying for the MCAT? Well, this is what we want to show you. And you may be wondering, where are we going with this? Are you going to take us into some sort of new age stuff? Like, what's going on? And as future doctors, you'd be right to wonder where this information is coming from. So we would like to introduce you to Dr. Julie Caudalie, who wrote this paper for the AAMC. The article, which is linked below for full reference, is called Being in the Present Moment, Developing a Capacity for Mindfulness and Medicine. And if you want to, you can repeat abstract. We are going to go through just a portion of it here so that you can get a little bit more information about what's talked about in that paper. Medical practice is the set by interruption, contest for the attention of the physician and urgent demands that diminish the attentiveness required for the humanistic care of patients. This essay discusses skills for being in the present moment that can help doctors to overcome distractiveness. Applying these skills in everyday practice rewards the physician with renewed energy, a fresh perspective and increased strength while preventing the stress and harm caused by a distracted or inattentive practice. So hopefully after hearing that, you're starting to understand a little more of the big picture. This idea of being in the present moment, of being able to have positive emotions when you're going through things, this isn't just about the MCAT, this is about excelling in your medical practice. It's about training yourself now to be the kind of person, ultimately the kind of doctor who can get through medical school, who can do well and who can exude confidence and clarity in their medical practice. Think about it. The MCAT was created as a filtering process, a way to determine who can be a future doctor. It was meant to be a brutal process to help filter out who can handle a brutal process for the even more brutal process of medical school and ultimately being a practicing physician. The AMC wants to see if you are somebody who can become a medical student and then a doctor who is able to handle pressure, anxiety, nervousness, being afraid and is able to overcome that and still be able to think clearly to answer questions confidently and to be able to solve problems. They wanna know that you can achieve your objective while being calm, cool and collected and most importantly, maybe clear headed. And students who are able to do this are the ones who dominate on the MCAT and we want to make sure that you are one of those students. So now we're gonna go through three simple steps that you can start implementing now to get into this positive place that you're gonna need not only on the MCAT but to be a doctor going forward. So our first strategy is to savor non-INCAP prep time and we're going to listen a little bit to what Steven Shuler of the University of Pennsylvania has to say about that. Being present minded takes away some of the self-evaluation and getting lost in your mind and in the mind is where we make the evaluations that beat us up. So what Steven Shuler did, he's a psychologist, is he did a study where he had his subjects take a moment to savor something and be in the present moment with something that they would normally just zoom through in their everyday life. It could be something like walking to the bus with no thoughts running through your head with no music playing without kind of thinking about what's next but instead just being quiet. It could be eating breakfast and not thinking about everything you have to do today but instead focusing on the flavor of the food, of the texture of the food, of the taste of the food. And what they found was once the participants started doing this, they started to experience more positive emotions, emotions like joy and happiness and a feeling of calm versus negative emotions like the anxiety, the sadness, the worry that we talked about earlier. Psychologists are actually really big fans of encouraging their stress patients to take time to savor things. Something that you can do is throughout your day when you're doing little things, things like eating, things like taking a shower, take the time to just savor that, to focus on that, to focus on eating your breakfast without any thoughts of what's up next, to focus on just being in the shower and letting the warm water kind of help clear your thoughts. And a big thing you can do to help you be in the present and something that you should do right now at this very minute is take time to pay attention to your breathing and just taking something as simple as a time to think about your breathing, to feel your breathing and it can help you have a sense of calm that will start to build momentum throughout your day and will lead to an entire day where you're in a better place. You're gonna find yourself getting a lot more done. You're going to find your ability to learn is going to improve and this comes from something that's honestly a pleasant and easy hack that will help you dominate the impact. And in the beginning, you may not notice any changes but if you stick with it for a week or two and are very consistent, I really think that you're gonna find that you are just overall in a better head space. And another strategy that a lot of top scorers including myself like to advocate for is meditating and this can be something as simple as five to 10 minutes a day. And you may have noticed being at a user head space actually multiple times because that's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to get into the correct head space and somebody else felt the same way and actually created an app called head space which is a great meditation app that you can use. And if you have a student email, I'm pretty sure you can get a student discount so that's something to definitely check out. So if you can commit to meditating 10 or 20 minutes a day it's something that's really going to change your outlook on life. And you also want to take it a step further. If you're somebody who exercises consistently don't stop that just because you're studying for the impact. In fact, you need to keep doing that even if you're not somebody who exercises consistently. Doing something as simple as taking a 30 minute walk outside can put you in the proper mindset to be able to do well on the test. One of the things about any sort of exercise is it really forces you to be in the present moment. Your next strategy is you need to get into the flow and what does that mean? Well, if you've ever been in a situation where you're so grossed in something you're so focused on it you're so kind of involved that you don't realize that time is passing and like things are moving on that's being in a state of flow. And this can happen in a variety of places. It can be when you are working on a puzzle. Maybe you're working on a piece of art that you enjoy. You can be playing a game a lot of times this happens to athletes and you can even be working on an assignment that you just really enjoy. This state of being kind of completely absorbed by your task it's what psychologists call flow and it has been shown through multiple studies that your productivity and your ability to study goes up exponentially. When you're in a state of flow nothing really is able to distract you even when your phone rings you're going to ignore it because you're so engrossed in whatever you're doing. This is something a lot of top scorers do and a lot of top scorers aren't even aware they're doing it. One of the easiest ways to get into a state of flow is to truly enjoy what you're learning and if you're truly passionate about medicine about being able to be a healthcare provider and about learning all of the information that comes with that then every time you sit down to study you're going to be in a place of enjoyment and again positivity with the end cap. You can also train yourself to be more present and more aware when you're reading and if you haven't already you should subscribe to our strategy email because we are gonna give you a lot more information about how to do this there. So I highly suggest you sign up for those and I'm going to link that below. Another powerful way to get into a state of flow is to have clearly defined goals. You need to know what's coming next so you are kind of second guessing. You already have it set up. This is what my next step is. This is the step after that. These are going to be your short term and your baby step goals. So what are baby step goals then now that we've said that? Well these psychologists who first described and defined flow said this. It could be playing the next bar in a scroll of music or finding the next foothold if you're a rap climber or turning the page if you're reading a good novel. At the same time you're kind of anticipating or simply like how do you eat an elephant? Well you eat an elephant one bite at a time or how do you climb a stair at 35 to stairs if the elevator is not working? You take the steps one step at a time and before you know it you're at the top and you can do that same thing with the impact on both a micro and a macro level. On a macro level you can train yourself to take the impact one day at a time. Of course you have to do some background work to get to that point things and projecting yourself in the future and things like having a schedule so that you understand what your goals are but then once you have that established you can go one day at a time through your impact graph. On a micro level this can mean having a goal every time you're sitting down to study for the impact. Before even opening your book that you're going through you need to have a big picture goal of what you want to accomplish. For instance you want to be thinking along the lines of I want to read X chapters in my physics book which means that with breaks included I have an hour and a half and to get through this many chapters in an hour and a half excluding break time I need to read this many pages in this many minutes or if you want to think in a more scenario based if that kind of helps you you want to be thinking okay I need to read one chapter which is say 40 pages and I need to do that in two hours or 120 minutes with a 20 minute break that leaves me about 2.5 minutes per page and what you'll start to notice is instead of having this broad unachievable goal every time you get through one page in 2.5 minutes or less you're going to start to feel a sense of accomplishment. So now with your goal broken down like that it doesn't seem so daunting and you can get creative with how you break down your goals for both content prep and other aspects of studying. That example was just an example that now is probably awesome but what you want to be thinking about is how can I take my big picture goal and break it down into smaller pieces so that I'm feeling that sense of accomplishment throughout my study period and what you'll notice is that it almost becomes a game of how many of these little goals can I achieve and for some people I'm one of these people going to such a micro level with your goals may be also stressful in its own way. So you can kind of change it again to make it better suit you. You can do something like I'm going to read for 15 minutes and then take a 10 minute break and read for another 15 minutes. Again you want to get creative with how you're making these goals so that they're a way that's fun to you and suits how you learn at your attention span. Most of the time you'll probably end up surpassing the goals that you set and all of a sudden your productivity is going to skyrocket. And think of it like this, sometimes when I need to clean my apartment something I will do is have fun and put five things away and five things doesn't seem like that much so it's hard to come up with an excuse why you don't have time to do five things. Well next thing you know once you put five things away you see that there's really a couple more left so you put another and another and you may have done seven or eight things and all of a sudden I'm in the zone, I'm in flow and my apartment ends up being clean. So use these simple acts to help you get into that state of flow when you're studying and also whatever you need to clean or any of the other things in life that we often don't want to do but if we can just be present and be in the moment it would be a lot easier to get them done. And our last strategy is going to be we need to increase our clarity to decrease our stress. What does this mean? Well, most stress comes from not being clear on what you're doing and that can mean having self doubt not knowing if you're studying the right way or you're looking at the right material should you be doing these practice problems like this is this the optimal way that I should be approaching the end cap? It's almost like you're trying to build furniture from IKEA but without the instructions you can do it, you can build it but in the process you're going to come up with a lot of stress and frustration and just getting annoyed as you're trying to get through it and it just takes a lot longer. So yes, you can build that piece of furniture but why would you put yourself through all of that if you can have an instruction manual? When there is an instruction manual for the end cap and people who have been through it who can help you learn how to build your piece of furniture or be successful on the end cap. His simple guidance can help you build confidence and have clarity of mind so that you can start to build your piece of furniture or do well on the end cap better than 90% of people who are studying to take this test. The best part is that we have created that for you talking to top scores who have achieved what you want to achieve who want to pass on what they've learned so that you can take that and implement it to be able to do well on the end cap and it's linked below so that you are able to access it and get more info and learn more about everything we just talked about. We also have that mentor for you that person who has been there and understands what it's like to be in your shoes and who has had to overcome that and learn what it takes to get to a place where you can be a top score. So if you want somebody who can help you understand how I'm over-analysing passage and why am I missing questions? How do I get myself in the positive mindset that I need to be to do well on the end cap? We also have that for you. You can work with our tutors one-on-one and they are going to help walk you through all aspects of the end cap so that you can learn to do what they did and achieve a high score. Remember, you should never try to reinvent the wheel. There are people who have come before you taking the end cap and who have done well on it, who have conquered it and who have ultimately mastered it and we want to help you learn how to do that. So learn from the people who have figured this out who have mastered the end cap. Get their proven strategies and implement those and all of a sudden you're going to see that your clarity goes up, your stress goes down and ultimately you're in a better mindset because you've been able to conquer end cap stress. And the biggest thing that I want you to remember is that you can do this and you've got this.