Monday 1 March 2010

Tips to Pass Your Driving Test With Confidence

No matter how good a driver you are, it's only human to feel a little bit of anxiety when sitting next to the examiner instead of your usual driving instructor. The more it matters to you, the more anxious you can become, due to the pressure you inadvertently put upon yourself.
The symptoms of anxiety are all too familiar to many a person; heart beating rapidly, feeling a little bit too hot, palms beginning to sweat, and so on. Not the most conducive state in which to be when taking your driving test. And for those who have failed a test before pressure and tension tends to build, and you can find yourself inadvertently running horror movies in your mind - you see yourself stalling the car, not making that emergency stop, turning the wrong way, crashing...all these scenarios popping into your mind and adding to your anticipation of disaster.
How can you STOP this cycle and relax your mind and visualize a different outcome, an outcome where you drive beautifully and pass your driving test with flying colors? The answer is easy - HYPNOSIS.
Hypnosis is a state of relaxation and so in just learning to use this natural art you will know how to relax quickly and easily, whenever you want to, or whenever you feel that you need to. You will learn to relax your breathing and remain cool, calm and confident. The calm and relaxing state of hypnosis will allow you to take a step back, to firstly dissociate from all that pent-up emotion and secondly to direct your mind to see what you want to see. It allows you to train your mind to expect to be calm, to expect to drive perfectly, to expect to pass your test.
And this is massively important, because your thoughts create your reality. What you expect to see does indeed tend to happen. Your thoughts and associated emotions act like powerful magnets, drawing what you are focusing upon into your reality. Just imagine what would happen if you did not learn to control your thoughts and direct your subsequent actions.
When in hypnosis your creative mind comes to the fore and it becomes easy to visualize yourself taking your test. In effect you can mentally rehearse your test. This mental rehearsal is extremely powerful. In fact it is just as important as all of that physical driving practice which you put in before taking your test. You may have all the ability in the world, but unless your mind is correctly focused, you will not achieve the best results.
In sport it has been shown time and again that mental rehearsal is more important to succeed under pressure than actual physical practice. The equation is reflective of most things in life. To have the confidence to succeed is THE most important ingredient. You must have your thoughts, feelings and imagination aligned with your physical ability, and this can be achieved quickly and easily with the assistance of hypnosis downloads.
Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis downloads for hypnosis confidence.
With a degree in psychology and qualifications in hypnotherapy, NLP and sports psychology, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading practitioners of self-improvement. You can get a free hypnosis download from http://www.RoseannaLeaton.com and peruse her extensive library of hypnosis downloads for hypnosis confidence in every area of your life.
Roseanna Leaton - EzineArticles Expert Author




Monday 8 February 2010

Some stories of test failures from a driving instructor's experiences

I have had some pupils make the simplest mistakes which ended up having them fail their tests.
One pupil I had clipped the kurb coming out of the test centre right at the start of his test, and continued the test, but had technically failed before he even got out onto the road.

Another similar one was where the pupil was doing the parallel park manouver, reversed in at a too sharp angle and bumped the kurb, which was a fail.

Hesitation at a junction, moving out too slow and examiner had to interveine using the dual controls as there was traffic coming.

Quite recently I had a pupil that got a dangerous. He was pulling out of the test centre car park and didn't observe the road properly, and unfortunately there was a car coming and it had to swerve to avoid him. He didn't want to continue his test, knowing that he had failed. And all because he didn't observe the road properly before pulling out of a junction! A very silly and costly mistake which could have been avoided.

Moving off and not checking blind spot will give a minor, but forgetting to do this 3 or more times will result in a serious and you will be failed. Observation is Paramount in driving, not just for test purposes.

Thursday 28 January 2010

Some information you should know before you begin your driving test

Your driving test will start with an eyesight check and some vehicle safety questions. You will then start your practical driving test which will include some specific manoeuvres.

The driving part of your test will last about 40 minutes. Throughout the test your examiner will be looking for an overall safe standard of driving, including when you are carrying out the set exercises. You can make up to 15 driving faults and still pass the test (16 or more results in failure). However, if you commit one serious or dangerous fault you will fail the test. You should however be aware that some test examiners can be very strict, and could fail you for a very simple mistake that you could kick yourself for afterwards.

Some examples of these are things like;

- Driving a couple of mph over the speed limit for a short amount of time.
- Driving to much below the speed limit (believe it or not)
- Trying to pull out of a T-junction whilst in 3rd and stalling.
- Not checking your rear and side mirrors enough (every 6 - 10 seconds)
- Not observing properly during manouvers
- Ensuring that you brake enough for corners. This is obvious in most cases but some corners are sharper than they seem, and can suddenly become sharper angles.
- Not completely stopping your car during a manouver (especially reversing) if you see pedestrians or other hazards, such as another car, motorbike or cyclist, anywhere around your car.

All of these things can be avoided, providing you stay calm, concentrate, and remember what you were taught by your instructor! Nerves play a big part in your overall performance on your test, you can take herbal remedies to help this, such as 'Rescue Remedy' and 'Calms' which you can purchase over the counter at a chemist.

If you have any similar experiences that you would like to share then please feel free to share via posting comments. I will be posting more information on a regular basis so check back regularly!

=)