This is part of the grateful series.

I’m currently amidst my school exams.

In an effort to reduce the stress I place on myself during these times, I want to further examine what it means to have exams, and perhaps, how lucky I am to be in this situation.

To do this exploration, I am going to leverage a framework I outlined in this post, near the end.

The core idea is to observe the tree of pre-requisites of your entity, in this case exams, and explore or extract opportunities to be grateful from each pre-requisite.

For instance, to have exams is to be actively pursuing a formal education.

To be pursuing a formal education could mean you have the financial aid required, the necessary resources, or reside in the context of a country or society that grants you certain education, among many other things.

Further, to have the financial aid required to pursue education, might imply you also have the financial aid to gain access to food, clothing and shelter.

Suddenly, regardless of how you look at it, there are too many preconditions to your stress that we take for granted, to continue to feel as such.

The sole stress of something like exams hinges on an array of necessary fortunes you already possess.

While the specific exploration and path my brain travelled may be unique, what’s more important is performing the exercise. I’m sure everyone will uncover different requirements that suddenly recalibrate your perspective.

After performing this mental exercise, I’ve observed it makes three notable differences:

1. I feel far less stressed while studying
2. I feel far more inclined to seize the opportunity to learn
3. It’s much easier to detach myself from the results baked into the exam, but instead, I’m driven to pursue depth and understanding in the material

I’d propose it’s, without exception, helpful to breakdown your stresses into a set of things you’re actually fortunate to have.