5) Take regular breaks. Learning takes a lot of energy, and your mind can only absorb so much in any given time frame. Twenty minutes of studying followed by ten minutes of relaxation (not TV watching, nor talking on phone - sitting and doing nothing helps mind absorb new material) is about best learning cycle for most people.

6) Keep up your physical health. Get regular exercise and eliminate as much processed foods from your diet as you can. When your body is operating cleanly, your mind benefits. Also, make sure to get enough sleep. You can't learn anything if you are groggy from a lack of sleep.

7) And most important of all is to believe in yourself. Every one of us has brain-power to accomplish miracles if we simply direct our focus right way. There is a whole field of self-image psychology that tells us that we will perform as well as image we have of ourselves. If we believe that we are incompetent, then we will perform at a low level. If we believe that we are a genius and can learn anything, then we will not be afraid to put in effort required to learn a new subject.

If someone says that we are inferior, or that we are wrong in some fundamental way, we tend to take that as a judgment of ourselves. Most of time, however, it is more of a judgment of person who is telling us these things.

If you were to translate every negative word against you into a statement against person speaking, then you will eliminate a great deal of emotional discomfort and stress that comes from that.

With everything that is said to you, you have a choice whether there is any merit to statement or not. If there is merit, and there is an opportunity to improve yourself in a way that you wish to improve, then by all means use information to make a positive change. And if there is no merit to what is said, then release it as words of a misguided individual.

So, stress from discomfort can be mostly eliminated by simply not resisting uncomfortable situation, but rather accepting it for what it is. If you watch animals such as cats or dogs, you'll see that they really don't care what kind of surface they lie upon, they can sleep practically anywhere. That's because they do not resist surface.

As Bruce Lee once said, "Be like water, my friend. Water molds itself to any environment in which it finds itself." This is one of primary secrets to eliminating stress.

The other major cause of stress is thinking that you're not capable of handling a required situation. If this is indeed case, then you are in trouble. But rarely is this true case. Rather, it is much more likely that you can indeed handle situation and you just don't realize it.

There are two components to this scenario that can eliminate much of your stress. Either you are misjudging situation and you are indeed capable of handling it, or you are not really required to handle situation as you think you must.

Since we cannot change our capabilities in present time, but only by working on those capabilities over time, whether we can or cannot handle situation in front of us is immaterial. All we can do is give it our best and hope that it will work out.

And if we do give it our best, then we will succeed much more often than if we only give it a portion of our abilities.

Giving each situation that presents itself our best will usually result in our abilities getting stronger and our capabilities growing larger in scope.