If you fail you still have:

Your job
Your health
Your family
Your mind

The only pressure you may be feeling is the pressure you have put on yourself. Nobody at the testing centre will care what your score was, they will forget about you the moment you walk out.

I would recommend not telling work colleages or too many people you are taking the exam so you don’t have to debreif them all. One friend of mine at Cisco passed the entire CISSP and never told anyone at work (apart from me).

We all fail exams or other things in life so get over it. Re-book the exam, learn any lessons you need to and take it again.

If you build it into some terrible monster then you will only make yourself a bag of nerves.

Paul Browning

Everyone gets mental blocks from time to time. Here is what I suggest:

1. If you are feeling overwhelmed then feel free to take a break. A day off can work wonders and you should be taking regular breaks.

2. Don’t try to force information in. It never works! Let stuff sink in at the pace that is right for you. If it takes twice as long so what?

3. Make it fun. Read a bit and then see how much of it you can recite. Make memory jogger cards. Set yourself a competition to get certain marks and reward yourself when you get them.

4. Ask for help! If you get stuck then come on the forum and shout. If you are frustrated then tell us and if you finally get it let us all know as well.

Don’t suffer in silence.

5. Attack your brain in many ways. Writing stuff out, reading it out, listening to recordings. Do hand on labs and take exams. Stop half way through an ACL exam and do an ACL lab.

6. Teach it. The only way you will truly know stuff is when you have to teach it to somebody else.

Paul Browning