Keep calm & carry on!
Shreya Kabir
Target set. I will run for 10 minutes on the treadmill today. The first minute seems torturing, thinking about the arduous remaining 9 minutes. By the end of 5 minutes, I get comfortable and start to enjoy my run. But! As soon as I am at 7 minutes, my mind starts alarming me about my growing tiredness, about how I should stop before completing the 10 minutes!
“Keep going, you are getting there”.
This is what I keep telling myself in the gym. Sweating relentlessly exhausted body and at the lowest level of will power, I’ve to remind myself to not give up before ticking off my gym targets for the day.
I think to myself, ‘how awful would it be if I give up just when I am about to triumph?’ All my efforts will drain to waste.
I realized, this is what happens when you are so close to your goal. The closer you are to your goal the more difficult it gets to maintain your calm and keep doing what you are supposed to do.
As they say, the beginning and ending are always the trickiest. When you are about to begin your journey towards your goal, that seems such a humungous task! You tend to procrastinate and fear even taking the first step. Well, then when this first hurdle is overcome, the following path seems not that twisted as you thought it to be. In the middle, life seems good! All hopeful and pumped up. You are satisfied with your progression so far and relieved about how close you are! And as you start approaching the finish-line, BOOM! Your mind starts exploding with a zillion unwanted thoughts about, how you’ve had enough and how you’ve an impulsive urge to give up, how you want to just get rid of the pressure!
My aspirant friends! You might be feeling all these urges, pressures and deviations as prelims is just round the corner! But, DON’T GIVE UP! Remind yourself, “Keep going, you are getting there”. 
You might’ve grown weary, you might’ve become bored and you might feel like succumbing into the pressure of performing, but this pushes you away from your goal, right? You might not feel like revising, not practising, but think how you will feel when you will regret not revising that one topic for which the options seem so hazy now in the examination hall!
You don’t want to waste your hard-worked efforts of about a year or so, just because you “feel” that you won’t be able to perform well! Or because you might feel that you aren’t prepared enough! Trust me, every other aspirant is going through the same dilemmas and thoughts, but you need to stick to your path to finish line and bolt the last nail hard! Give your goal the execution that you’d planned. Give your preparation meaning by completing the last lap. Go for it, ace it!
This will be just the first step towards your goal, with two more to go! So, you want to make sure that you don’t lose the chance to get a step closer to your goal, just because you give in to your impulses. KEEP CALM for a month more AND CARRY ON!
