How to relax/reboot your brain 5 days before the exam. Extreme fatigue

Dear iliavko,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, I recommended this blog:
Zen Boot Camp for the GMAT
I stressed how important that blog was, and the related blogs, and yet it appears you didn't heed its suggestions.

I will give you the radical advice: interact with your computer as little as possible--perhaps write some sign-off message on FB, telling friends you will be out of communication until after your GMAT. Interact with your phone, with TV, with anything electronic as little as possible.

Between now and the GMAT, I want you to practice continually the habit of slow deep breathing. Make each breath a luxurious slow and deep breath that fills the entire belly and the entire chest. Regardless of your activities maintain this breath (except if you are doing exercise, when of course you will breathe harder!)

I don't know where you live, but if you have the possibility of going out into Nature, with absolutely nothing electronic, that would be wonderful. During day time, lie on your back looking at clouds for a while. At night, lie on you back and look at stars. Do the deep breathing through all of this.

If you can create a space of relative sensory deprivation--low light, low sounds, etc, --for example, soaking in a hot bath with candlelight--that combined with continuous deep breath can be very centering.

In all of this, your goal should not be to do, to think, to plan, etc. Your goal is simply to be. If you can establish genuine contact with your being, then you will reconnect with yourself in a deep way. That's what you need to produce mastery.

If there is any place near you that sells essential oils, then lavender is a very calming scent: folks who work with essential oils may be able to recommend other. You can also get calming bath salts.

Don't you see? You were asking for supplements--in other words, you want a pill that will reduce your stress but allow you to keep the life you have. The life you have, the life that so many people in the modern world has, IS the cause of your stress. You don't have early onset dementia: you are an all-too-typical victim of the pathology of modern life. Having your face glued to an electronic screen of any kind is stressful for your body and distracting for your mind. Being in Nature calms the body and enhances the capacity for focus. You can't get that from a pill. You have to make the hard choices of how you spend your leisure time.

The recommendations I am making have deep grounding not only in neurobiology but also in the world's ancient wisdom traditions.

The question really is: how much does this matter to you? Do you really care about this enough to break your attachment to your habitual forms of distraction? Do you have the willpower necessary to create the calm necessary for your focus and talent to emerge?

Excellence involves being willing to reinvent yourself to bring forth what is best in you. Mediocrities tries to compromise, tries to get the good results while making as few substantial changes as possible: that's a guaranteed ticket to more mediocre results. How much does this matter to you?

Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike McGarry