I initially titled this post ‘6 Tips to Overcome Maths Anxiety’, but soon discovered I had far too much to say about each point. To avoid presenting you with an insurmountable wall of content, I have decided instead to dedicate a post to each tip, creating a six-part series, of which this is the first. While my primary aim in these posts is to provide you with useful ideas to help your child with their academic and personal development, I suggest you also look for ways in which the information may be relevant to your life. I suspect there will be many as the internal workings of adolescents and adults are not always as different as we might like to think. Without further ado, here is the first tip:
Tip 1: Swap Your Limiting Belief for an Empowering One.
It is well-understood that the stories we tell ourselves have an uncanny habit of coming true. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where an event comes to pass solely due to our expectation that it will do so. Self-fulfilling prophecies can be dangerous because the fallacy can be hard to spot. Once we see these prophecies come true, we begin to trust in our ability to predict the future, encouraging us to make yet more, potentially limiting, predictions.
This phenomenon’s significance in education and the acquisition of new skills can hardly be understated. To understand why, picture a student, Jack, who’s had early success in his maths. There could be many reasons for this, but let’s suppose he had extra help from a willing and capable older sibling. Still a young lad, Jack sees his stellar grades, receives high praise from his teacher, peers, and parents, and slowly begins to form the idea that he’s good at maths. That is to say; it becomes part of his identity. While maths may not be his favourite subject, he forms positive associations based on experience, and is now subconsciously looking for evidence to reinforce the idea that he is a capable student. Jack starts to experience an underlying feeling that things will go well for him, leading to less resistance to studying in the future. As you might guess, things will indeed continue to go well for him.
Now consider another student, Sophie, who doesn’t get off to the same flying start with maths. Maybe she has a talented friend with whom she compares herself and always comes up short, knocking her confidence. Sophie starts to form the idea that she’s weak at maths and subconsciously begins searching for further evidence to support her hypothesis, which she will inevitably find. Little by little, Sophie’s difficulty with maths becomes part of her identity, leading to further struggling and potentially even feelings of anxiety when confronted with maths in the future.
While understanding these beliefs is essential, more important is what we choose to do with this information. That is, how can we swap our limiting beliefs for empowering ones? This is what I will share with you now; a powerful A-F coaching method designed to challenge our beliefs, rewrite the narrative we tell ourselves, and set us on a healthier, more fulfilling life trajectory. You can do this exercise alone, but in my experience, it is more powerful to have a trusted friend or family member ask you the questions. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Step 1: Write out the Activating Situation.
Firstly, describe what triggers this belief. When does this belief show up in your life? For example, suppose you believe that you are bad at maths. In that case, it will likely arise when you are required to add two large numbers (or god forbid, divide them), work out the change from a £20 note, or, if you’re still at school, in maths class when the teacher turns to you for an answer to their question. If we can identify these activating situations, we can start to bring awareness to our thoughts when it matters most, when they are most likely to sabotage us.
Step 2: Understand your Belief.
Secondly, start to explore this belief and try to get to the bottom of it. Taking the above example of being bad at maths, arguing with this belief directly may not be the best approach. This is because, perhaps, by your potentially lofty standards of being ‘good’ at something, you are, in fact, not yet good at maths. However, what if your belief were about capability? For example, perhaps you believe that no matter how hard you work at maths, you’ll never be good at it. Now that is a belief that is certainly up for dispute. Suppose I were to offer you £1,000,000 were you to pass your next maths test; would you pass it then? I suspect so. You may not find it easy, but in all probability, you would seek the necessary guidance and undertake the requisite preparation to do so. What if, instead of your belief being based on capability, it’s based instead on value? You may recognise, for example, that you could be good at maths were you to put in the necessary work, but you simply don’t feel it’s worth it to do so. This belief also may be worth challenging. 😉
So dig a little deeper. Find out exactly what the belief underpinning this is. Once you feel you have it, ask yourself: Where has this belief come from? If you can recognise its origin, you will begin to appreciate that this belief is not, in fact, part of your identity. Instead, there exists a reason you hold it, a reason that may surprise you both in its simplicity and its irrationality.
Step 3: Recognise the Consequences.
The consequences of your belief are what determine whether it is limiting or not. These consequences can be emotional or practical. If you believe that you’re bad at maths, you may consequently feel inferior and of lower self-worth than your more mathematically gifted companions. This is an emotional consequence. Alternatively, your belief could result in your reduced effort in the subject, leading you to miss the entry requirements for your school or university of choice, a practical consequence. It is essential to understand what these consequences are so that you can appreciate the importance of challenging your belief and swapping it for a healthier and more empowering one.
A final question to ask yourself is: ’In what way may this belief actually be protecting you?’ That is to say, ‘Is there a hidden pay-off?’ A belief that you’re bad at maths, for example, could make you feel less inclined to work at it, resulting in you spending less time studying and more time engaged in activities at which you feel more capable. In order to correct this behaviour pattern, you first need to be aware of it, and hence why it is so important to dig into.
Step 4: Dispute your Belief.
Here is where you can start to shake the foundations of your belief – to loosen its hold on you. Ask yourself challenging questions about it. For example, where does your belief come from? If you believe that you’re bad at maths, this likely came from an authority figure such as a teacher who preemptively diagnosed you as a struggling student and subsequently neglected to afford you the attention and patience that you required to develop the skill.
Furthermore, ask yourself when this belief has been proven even slightly wrong? Have you ever impressed yourself or another with a quick mathematical calculation? Or correctly found the solution to a maths question that your peers were unable to? When, if ever, has this belief been entirely wrong? Perhaps you scored highly on a maths test once when you’d had the topic explained clearly to you, and you committed sufficient time and energy to prepare for the test. And finally, how might you have discounted any evidence contrary to your belief?
After putting your belief under the microscope, you will likely find that it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny nearly as well as you expected it to. This realisation should be welcome and exciting since it indicates that you’re ready to allow for a more helpful alternative.
Step 5: Exchange your Belief.
Now we have the exciting part, the stage where you can rewrite the story you tell yourself, swapping your limiting belief for a more empowering one.
The crucial thing here is that your new belief is positive and believable. If your old belief is ‘I’m bad at maths,’ then there’s no use in your new belief being ‘I’m the best mathematician to have ever walked the planet.’ This is because, on a day-to-day basis, you simply won’t be able to find the evidence to support it. The idea will fail to take root, and you will soon find yourself regressing to your old thinking patterns.
A good alternative, however, might be ‘maths is not my strongest subject, but I can improve and become confident over time.’ This is both empowering and believable, and provided that you’re looking for it, you will inevitably find evidence to support it. Consider, finally, what the implications of replacing your old belief for the new might be, so you can appreciate the impact it could have on your life.
Step 6: Plan for the Future.
Now is your opportunity to try out your belief; to adopt new behaviours that you feel reflect it. Taking our example from before, you might decide to increase the amount of time you spend studying maths from one to two hours per week, or get a study buddy who’s also looking to improve.
You might also find it helpful to write down any negative thoughts you experience as they arise. Doing so helps to take away their power and makes spotting such thoughts easier in the future.
What these experiments do is help you to solidify your new belief, ensuring that you are the one in the driver’s seat and that you’re moving slowly but steadily along the most desirable trajectory for you.
I hope you find this exercise helpful, whether it be for yourself, a friend, or a family member. While living a busy life, it can be hard to find the time to reflect on things as seemingly trivial as our beliefs, particularly when we’re not accustomed to the idea that we can replace them with new, new and better ones. But these beliefs accompany us everywhere we go, manifesting themselves in all areas of our lives, affecting both how we perceive the world and how we are perceived in it. So take a second to consider a belief that may be holding you back in life, preventing you from reaching your true potential, and ask yourself: ‘What if I can shake it?’
Sam Richardson
Founder
My Maths Coach