Beat Driving Test Nerves

Nerves and anxiety can powerfully affect your performance, including your memory, your physical ability and even your wellbeing – which are all important to have during a driving test. This is why it is important to know how to combat them to ensure that the nerves don’t take over and you are performing to your greatest ability on the day of your driving test.

Over millions of years anxiety has evolved to act as a protection mechanism that serves to warn us when we may be about to experience danger and to prepare us for what is ahead. However, when taking a driving test nobody is going to get hurt and really, what is the worst that can happen? Besides adapting this frame of mind, here are eight tips to help you beat the nerves on the day of your driving test.

8 Tips For Driving Test Nerves

1. Reduce pressure

One reason learners can make mistakes in their driving test which they haven’t made for a while, is often due to pressure. It might be a good idea to keep it quiet and only tell a few people so the pressure is reduced. After all, you are taking the test for your licence, not anybody else’s, so you are in control.

2. Be 100% alert

Make sure you get plenty of sleep, although you might find it hard to get to sleep the night before, why not try a few early nights the week before your test – it really does make a difference.

Try to have something to eat before your test, you may feel nervous and eating a bowl of porridge is the last thing you want to do, but it will help your alertness during your test, as remember food is fuel.

3. Back to nature

To reduce your anxiety and the symptoms that come with it, try Rescue Remedy – a herbal solution that you can buy over the counter. We suggest to try it out at least one week before your test so that you can test it beforehand – you need to be careful not to be too relaxed before your driving test!

4. Trick yourself

Trick your mind into thinking that it is not a test and you do not have to pass – think to yourself what is the worst that can happen if you don’t pass? You can try again! Try to be almost arrogant, put yourself into an actor’s mind-set and think that you are good enough to pass, this will help you to achieve what you are imagining you can.

5. Be Familiar

Make sure you are taking the test in a car which you have practiced in frequently and that you feel comfortable in driving – the familiarity will ease your nerves. InsureLearnerDriver can help you build this as you can practice in somebody else’s car as much as you like, so when the day of the test comes you know the car inside out.

6. Don’t be afraid to say

It is likely that ‘where the instructor is off to on their holiday’ is the last thing on your mind and the distraction may panic you so don’t be afraid to politely tell them that you need to focus.

7. Take a deep breath

Remember to take deep breaths to calm you down when the nerves and panic build up; a pause for a breath will help you to compose yourself and regain your skills and memory.

8. Don’t arrive too early

Get there in time but not too early, as you may have to sit around and the nerves may start to overload by the time you get called in. Take your Smartphone in with you to distract you in case you are waiting around.