Defeat Your Fear of Math with These New Secret Techniques Hiding in Plain Sight

“Math” you hear a group of students muttered in sheer exasperation. As if it is a bitter medicine, “that is not my favorite subject”, you heard one student after another. Others complain about the general difficulties around this subject, and you truly feel their fears and pains of this subject called math.

So how can these students turn their fear into strength, learn, understand, and overcome these anxieties and achieve their academic goals in life? The answer lies in dissecting what is behind this fear and exploring simple secret hiding in plain sight to defeating it. Let me show you simple steps you can take to overcome this concern.

What is Fear?

According to a Dictionary explanation “fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. In this instance, that “something” is math. It causes unpleasant emotion for several students when they see numbers and alphabets together with some addition and subtraction signs. Perhaps because of not understanding the purpose and they are expected to produce a definitive outcome, without understanding the best process, they become afraid. As a result, the fear continues to build up year after year, and eventually become a serious issue. This is an unpleasant experience for many of the students that experiences these academic pains year after year.

But come to think about it for a second. For the mere fact that you do not understand the concepts, principles and processes required to solving a problem does not mean you should give up and not find a way out. Remember, other subjects like English language, history, physics, literature, chemistry, arts, and commerce are not natural subjects that you are born to understand. You pay attention to what it is all about, you spend time to think about how you can relate with each, then you give it your best effort.

Your classmates, friends, articles you picked up in the news or a discussion with your peers may have sparked your interest to want to learn more about any of these subjects and suddenly you realized, it add value now as you foresee the gains, and now your attitude and attention has now changed from having no clue to becoming more interested, doing all you can, not only to understand, but to achieve excellent grades on your tests and exams each time this subject is being discussed. In fact, if I asked you right now; what is your favorite subject? Your answer will fit the pattern I just described.

You might be wondering; how did I know this to be true? Well, I can tell you, I am also a student like you, always learning. I have a number of subjects I enjoyed in school, and others that I don’t like, and ones that I was afraid to study; if I ask you to guess, you will be correct. Yes, it is math!

But now, I love math more than any other subjects because it is easy to understand, and it helped me to save time to concentrate on other subjects that requires more attention. Subjects like physics, chemistry, and biology. The time I realize this simple fact, I just shared with you, that was when everything about the subject takes on a new meaning. But let me describe how I was able to arrive at this conclusion.

How I Overcome the Fear of Doctor’s Appointments

There are so many things in life that drive fear into our heart when it is mentioned, and despite the anxieties and fears that goes into these things, we still have to do them at some point. Doctor’s office visits as a young person strike fear into me more than anything. I remembered growing up, I will always pray that my mom forgets my doctor’s appointment. But unfortunately for me, that prayer was never answered. We would always go for this appointment, sometimes, my fear would not be realized because there was no need for vaccination, injection, or bitter medicine to swallow. At other times, I have to take injections, even though I was afraid of the pain, as I grow older, I realized, I have to become accustomed to it. Now as an adult, I keep all my doctor’s appointment without being reminded. Vaccine and injections are sometimes part of the visit, and it keeps me health. Today, I look forward to these healthy appointments that I was once afraid to fulfill.

Another fear I have to deal with was driving. Imagine myself, sitting behind a big machine with four tires and I can get on the road with other road users and arrive at my destination and back home safely. I never thought I will be able to drive, ever! I prefer to leave the driving to my parents and older family members. I was afraid, I will crush other cars, I was afraid other drivers will push me off the road. When I read about accident report in the news, I convinced myself these are just additional reasons why I should not come near any car stirring wheel. I love the fun of learning how to drive but just not getting behind the driver’s seat.

How I Overcome the Fear of Driving

At this point, you might share my fears as being truly genuine. Fear of accident, fear of harming other road users and many other unknown non-existent fabricated reasons. Yes, these are my fears. Until, I realize, there are certain places I need to get to urgently and only by driving myself will reduce the burden. Or there were times I am low on cash to transport myself, and I have access to my parents’ car. Gradually, I had to wean myself of this fear holding me back from getting behind the wheel.

One sunny afternoon, I was barraging the auto mechanic engineer fixing my father’s car with questions about driving, I guessed he was tired of answering all my theoretical and rhetorical questions about driving, then he said; “you seemed to know a lot about driving with all these questions”; “let’s go for test driving” he recommended. My tongue nearly entered my throat. He started by showing me all the necessary parts to touch when driving with basic safety instructions. He came out of the driver seat and gave me the key to start the car engine and move the car a little forward and press the car brake. That was the greatest fear, even though I was feigning a smile as if I have it all under control.

After many years, up until now I am still recalling this experience, I never remember that fear again. In fact, after several long distance driving across multiple State line in Africa and the US, I would refer to myself as a professional driver that should be in NASCAR competition. I know now it sound now; very funny that I can brag about my driving prowess. But looking back, driving was a fear I must overcome. It is now a second nature, because just like you all, I must drive every day to work, grocery shopping, place of worship, visit friends and yes, doctor’s appointments.

You might be wondering, what has a doctors’ office visit and driving a car got to do with learning, studying, and understanding math? Yes, it is to extract lessons from these experiences that you can apply to learning math as you gradually exert yourself to overcoming your fears of this subject. Here are the practical steps you can adapt from these personal experiences.

5 Practical Steps to Overcoming Your Fear of Math

Let me share at least five steps that I took to overcoming my fear in each of these situations that is much applicable to secrets hiding in plain sight.

1. Explore the long term benefit you will gain.Doctor’s office visits could be painful, bitter medicine, painful injection, ugly solutions to put on your beautiful skin and colorless bitter liquid to drink. Yes, you will be healthier in the long run, if you keep all your appointments at the Doctor’s office and swallow all these bitter medicines. The same goes for driving; you will be able to get to your destination at the right time. When you have loads to carry, knowing how to drive can save you half of the stress and you can be helpful to others as well.Understanding mathematics will help you achieve good grades on your test and exams. This will motivate you to give other subjects your best attention. More so, when you study other subjects where math is the language that paved the way for better understanding; your ability to relate and quickly absorbs the concepts would be very easy, because you have a foundational understanding of the concept that is being used to explain these topics. A good example: a better math knowledge and understanding will help you perform well in physics, statistics, biology, history, and accounting, just to name a few subjects.Math skills can also come handy in real life. It equips you with the skills to solve problems, by devising a step-by-step approach to solving a problem. By the time you can navigate a better solution for the first problem, this prepares you for the next and on and on you get better. Just because you have mastered the conceptual principles of this subject.
2. Get Involved – Don’t Run Away.Your physician explains each procedure to you in language that is easy to understand. When she writes you a prescription, she explains the dosage and the precautions. Let me ask you, what will happen if you do not pay attention to your physician instructions during your visit? Yes, you can harm yourself, you can take wrong dosage, use wrong ointment, and not achieve your goal of better health.The same principle applies when you are driving, there are many parts in a car, you don’t have to know everything. But there are few parts that are critical to your safety and other road users, you will do well to heed all these safety measure. Yes, there are a number of discomforts, seatbelt is a good example. But you know it saves life every time. Paying attention to all these necessary details prepares you to be ready to use any of these car features within split second when you find yourself behind the wheel.The same principle applies in math. Learn more about why you need to understand certain topic or concept in math. When a teacher is explaining these concepts, please pay attention to them. Will you understand everything the first time? The answer is no. But your attentiveness will prepare you to understand when your teacher is reinforcing the concepts and principles through several examples and worked exercises.

   Imagine, if you zone out or turn your attention to doing something else when this critical information is being shared by your math teacher; you will suddenly miss two important layers of information in a row, and this might weaken your understanding of this concept when it is being developed at a later time.

   Promise yourself to pay more than the useful attention each and every time in class, this is not for math only, but it applies to all other subjects. The moment you grasp the concept and master how to apply them, you have cut your fear into pieces.

3. Convince Yourself that You Too Can Do This.Personal persuasion is a strong motivation that often leads to unimaginable success, because in the process, you reduce your fear to something so small that you can obliterate it within seconds. When you decide to go for the dental cleaning, you muster all the courage to go through all the inconveniences and a week later when you smile or laugh in public among your peers; they commend your clean denture, you are happy at the compliment, but you never tell them how humiliating it was to suffer through the process at the dentist office.Courage to persevere and determination to endure help every driver to drive safely on the road, you pay close attention to all the traffic signs on the road, you weigh the consequences of not following safety rules, you tell yourself about the best in that situation just to achieve your desired objectives – arrive at your destination safely.With math, the journey is still exactly the same. Tell yourself “I must understand this topic and the next topic and the next one after. When in doubt, please ask questions about what confuses you, do not be afraid of what your peers might say. Ask questions. You will be amazed that they will come back to you after all the teasing and jeering so you can help them to understand this same concept under discussion.

   Sometimes, things might look difficult and cloudy and there seems to be no way out. Calm down, remind yourself, there are many people that have studied this exact topic and have succeeded in life and move on, so if they were successful, so you too will. That is mantra of personal persuasion. See the light at the end of the tunnel. This is one trick I adopted, that prevents me from giving up easily, in simple English, it is called perseverance!

4. Teach Others What You Learn.Remember I did not say ‘teach others what you know’. This is because ‘what you know’ may have been internalized at the time you were being thought, and this may not be the generally acceptable approach or concept to the rule. But by the time you share what you learn, your classmates will leverage and confirm that it was similar to what they heard and were taught as well and now, because you share what you learn, you have now validated your understanding of the topic.The more you share what you learn, you will gradually break out of your fear. Pause for a second and imagine the feelings and the journey. You have travelled from trepidation and confusion to a place where you can now point your peers in the right direction and the more you consolidate, then suddenly you can then ask about math – what fear?In the process of sharing what you learn with others, they will also share what they learn with you, you both cross learn, help one another on a two-way street. As you do this, and practice more math exercises, you will realize there is nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

   Be generous with your time, as you share what you learn with others it will not only help you be a better person socially speaking, but it will also improve your grade and you will be happy for doing the right thing.

5. Set time aside to Practice Math ExercisesNights before Doctors visit, I would prepare my mind for any surprises; “fold your sleeve”, imagine how I would feel after each injection or vaccination. That is how I practiced before each visit that might involve any of these “tough” experiences. The same applies to my driving, I remind myself that it is fun to drive safely, because everyone get to share the road, go out and come back home safely. Today, this happens on autopilot because of my constant practice.The same can be said of math. The moment you understand a concept, you will suddenly realize that, that same concept applies in the next topic, and you can even adapt the logic as you go. How did I know all these? Through constant practice, I was able to discover the trend and that has helped me even to the advanced stage of my math study. I was able to complete pre-algebra, algebra, calculus, coordinate geometry, trigonometry, calculus, integration, and statistics with good grades each time. Remember, I was afraid of math before now.These are some of the advantages of constant practice of topics covered in class and a good idea to talk to your math teacher about the next topic, so that you can glean the new topic overview and be ready to engage when the topic is introduced. I used these same approaches when I was teaching elementary, high school and prospective college and college students. I noticed that this transparency encourages students’ participation and as they gradually comprehend the concepts, they are eager to participate; this eventually boost their confidence and interest in the topic and eventually the subject. Subsequently, from observations, assignments, class tests and exam scores are always remarkable.

   With individual and collective practice of math exercises, students tend to perform better in math most of the time. You do not have to do this forever, but consistent practice of 30-45 minutes over a long period of time has proved beneficial for many of my students. As a result, you would notice that I recommend it each time in class.

Final Takeaway

Rather than give in to fear of math, you have seen practical and simple steps you can follow to achieving math success. These are sometimes challenging when you are overwhelmed and contemplating where to start. You can visit Practical Math Academy website to start using the roadmap to math success. It was designed to help all students struggling and afraid of math develop a solid foundation in math. Based on personal experiments and personal observations of more than two decades, I realized that when students have a good grasp of number operations and algebra from intermediate to the advanced stage, they tend to excel in their understanding of math most of the time.

Instead of worrying about the fear and the anxieties that goes with it, start by taking one step at a time to appreciate why you need to understand math. Explore the long term benefit you will achieve as you apply yourself to the knowledge of math. Right now, with the growth of data science, a good understanding of math and statistics can open many doors of opportunities for you. Also, get involved in your academics, do not be a bye stander, participate in these knowledge decisions and you will be better off in the end.

Avoid negative attitude about math that has plagued many students into a painful submission. Convince and then challenge yourself, that you have all it takes to understand, learn, master, and succeed studying mathematics. You should match your words and belief with real action – set time aside to study and share what you know with others.

If you have done all of these, you will be amazed that there is nothing to fear when it comes to math. Most of my students, often feign ignorance when I brought it to their attention their first day in class, and I am assuring them that by the time they complete this semester, they would achieve A+ and A- in Math. They look at me as if I just finished drinking KoolAid; they often tell me all the tales of woes and pain they have gone through, how they never believe what I am telling them. A number of these students would even tell me that they just need a D grade in math to move on, and by the end of second week in class, I noticed their change of attitudes and they are engaging in my math class. Now when they actually see how they have performed throughout the semester. They often come to class and ask me; “Who fear math?”, with a grinning response as they show me their grades; “Not me!” they often conclude.

Right now, all these math courses have been packaged in such a way you can study them online at a time that you set aside to learn. I am going to provide the link so you too can succeed in your study of math. Encourage your friends to study these math courses with you, you will be amazed at your accomplishments.

Don’t wait a day longer to join league of successful students building a solid foundation as they defeat their fear of math, using secrets that hides in plain sight. Enroll today and start learning.