Today we will be shedding some light on how to stay calm in stressful situations. Life just happens in its own astonishing way irrespective of how any event shot by it might hit hard on our nerves. Sometimes, it shatters us with a traumatic loss of a loved one, and sometimes, it makes us terrified with an irrepressible financial crisis. Every once in a while, we might find ourselves encountered with work-life challenges, severe ailments, and emotional traumas throughout our lives. The matter of fact is that we all come across shackling circumstances that are not only against our will but are also beyond our strengths to cope with. Hence, we feel threatened and vulnerable by those circumstances and situations, and this vulnerability towards the state of affairs of our lives takes us to a state of stress.
What is stress? Avoiding stress can help us stay calm in stressful situations.
Stress is basically a psychological or emotional state in which a person feels demanded and threatened by his situation. Thus, this condition of feeling pressured by your own circumstances affects not only mental but also physical health equally in the long run. To avoid any repercussions of the stress one must need to learn to manage his stress in order to live a balanced life even in the most difficult situations of life.
1- Talk to a Friend
To make yourself calm in stressful situations, you should try to talk to a friend with whom you can confide and who loves you. Spitting out whatever is cooking inside your head always proves to be the best therapy to get composure again. When you share everything with someone who not only listens to you carefully but also understands what is troubling you, you naturally start to feel lighter and calmer than before. Most of the time, only sharing what is troubling you, makes it less disturbing and you realize that the issue was not that big or problematic the way you were considering it to be. Getting advice or even just a different perspective on your problems might give you a solution right away or can make your mind composed enough to think of any on your own.
2- Guide your thoughts
When you feel stressed about any of your problems going on in your life, it is usually because your thoughts are revolving around that problem only or you are thinking about your circumstances in only a negative way. Stopping your brain right away, and then choosing a positive thought over a negative one is all that will take you from a stressful to a tranquil state of mind. To switch your continuous negative thoughts, you need to observe them first. Observing your thoughts will let you recognize your thought pattern. And while doing so, the moment you realize that you are stuck in a loop of negative thoughts only which is making your situation even worst, you will surely start to switch from negative to positive ones
Guiding your thoughts and developing a habit of positive thinking will also lead you towards a more solution-oriented mindset and will help you to stay calm in a stressful situation.
3- Practice Patience to stay calm in stressful situations
When faced with any calamity, the most important thing you can do is keep yourself patient and do not panic at all. Usually, the situations are not that worst but our reactions to the situations make them tougher for us. In this fast-paced world, we humans have become so accustomed to gratifying our needs instantly that even a little bit of delay makes us stressed. Usually, we want to complete a bulk of tasks in a short interval of time and sometimes we want to get to our destinations instantaneously which panic us. In such situations, we need to understand that the clock of life is ticking at its own pace, and it will not decelerate or accelerate by our will of getting things done.
Hence, keeping ourselves patient will make us suffer less in both the long and short term. Patience is the human quality which we were born with but we stopped practicing it. Nevertheless, it’s not too late and we can revive in order to stay calm in stressful situations.
4- Visualizing something Mesmerizing
While in a stressful situation and vulnerable in uncontrollable situations that ruin your peace of mind, the technique you can use is to visualize something mesmerizing and soothing. All you need is to close your eyes and start imagining the scenarios you would love to visit in real life and get refreshed and overwhelmed by. It could be you, sitting down near the waterfall and enjoying the sound of water running down through the steep path into the stream, or a seashore where you are observing the pattern of the waves moving towards and away from you.
You can also imagine a lush green terrain surrounded by tall trees and you walking in terrain, getting fascinated by the rays of the sun. Such imaginations and visualizations will indulge your mind into a soothing activity and you will keep on imagining unconsciously and might lose track of time for a while. And when you will open up your eyes again, your mind will feel refreshed, relaxed, and stress-free for much longer. You can do this activity as many times as you want it will help you stay calm in a stressful situation.
5- Change your perspective about your situation
Many times in life, the stress is for sure becomes a real thing as life seems to be totally freaky and horrendous for us. But we need to understand that there is always a silver line to every cloud. This implies that how worst the situation may seem, there is always a brighter side to it, we just need to stay calm and see it through. As Wayne dyer says;
“The way we look at the things change the things we look at”
Hence, by focusing on the good of your current challenges and sufferings, your nerves will get loosen up and you will start to feel better all of a sudden. All it takes is to sit and analyze your situation and see if your worry is a rationale to you or is it bringing any good to your present condition. When you will start seeing from altogether a different perspective, a loss suddenly will appear to be less painful; workload will become a way of growth and tolerance, health issues will turn into a reason of paying gratitude to the health you enjoyed before the sickness your all life.
6- Get out of victim mentality
We sometimes feel stressed when we think; why only me being the target of all the problems in the world. In stressful situations, we tend to think that all the failures and problems are coming to our life only. But the reality is that grass is always greener on the other side. We mistakenly assume that our life is problematic and others are living happier lives than us. This mindset consumes a lot of our energies and drives us towards the victim mentality. However, we need to consider the fact that everyone faces different types of circumstances and issues. Therefore, instead of becoming the victim of your circumstances, accept your problems with more strength and inspiration. Tell yourself that you are stronger than your circumstances.
This way you will learn how to stay calm in stressful situations and tranquil and your stress level low immediately. Your inner strength will let you fight and overcome whatever you are facing in your life. This switch in mindset will also help you to stand out firmly in the future endeavors of your life.
7- Keep yourself busy in something Productive
Another way to stay calm in stressful situations is by keeping yourself busy. You need to stay busy with something that occupies your brain and thoughts completely. It could be starting a blog, composing a music symphony, starting a YouTube channel, learning or doing baking and cooking as the kitchen has proven to be a quite cathartic and calming thing for both men and women, only if you have interest in it. Some people might like painting and sketching in their leisure time which will keep them busy and occupied, resulting in less stressful thoughts. By finding something productive to do not only help you manage your stress in the short run can but can also turn out to be a way of finding a “passion comes profession” for you in the longer run.
8- Try different breathing exercises:
When facing stress in life, you can also try a number of breathing exercises that will make you feel less stressed. You just need to search out the breathing exercises which suit you best as per your own mind-body comfort. There is a number of breathing techniques available online on the internet and you can practice as much as you want. These breathing exercises will let you release your stress instantaneously and easily. This way you will be able to stay calm in stressful situations. Also, these exercises are not very time-consuming and have proven to be a definite solution for overcoming stress. Performing these exercises two to three times a day for a minute or two releases your stress not only for the quick-fix but also provides you relief in the long term too.
9- Physical activity
The ultimate and proven way of releasing stress and attaining happiness is to keep you physically active. For at least half an hour you should walk briskly, dance, do cardio, or do any type of exercise you want. Exercise releases such chemicals in your body which causes happiness and your mood switches from sad to pleasant. It is not that you need to do your work out at a specific time of day or night; you can start dancing and walking or performing cardio whenever you feel stressed out. Except for the situations like after taking a meal or any medical condition that does not allow you to do so.
Over the years, research and studies have proven exercise as an amazing tool for stress release. Keeping yourself physically active does not only releases your stress at that time but also gives relief in your habit of taking stress in the future as well.
10- Stay Strong, No matter what
To overcome stress in our lives and stay calm no matter what the circumstances are bringing to us, we must understand that the only control we are given in our lives is our responses and reactions. Situations will keep on happening regardless we want them to happen or not, but how we respond to those situations is totally in our control and we can take over our inside world completely. The outside world is full of peripheral stuff which is mostly beyond our power and if we start to give authority to every incident and event happening in our lives to control us, then we will end up becoming the slave of our external conditions and settings. However, if we learn to manage and organize our inside world regardless of the happenings around us, these all events and stuff will become an opportunity to learn a lot about life.
Adversity is our best teacher
Nonetheless, we should also not forget the fact that all the misfortunes do have a blessing hidden inside them, and all we need to learn is to be optimistic in the worst of situations. When life throws us difficult times, we should focus on becoming wise rather than wounded while getting out of thorny trails decided by our destiny. Once we train our minds to learn lessons from every obscure and tough situation, we will acquire perfection in handling every single ball life is throwing at us. All we need is to understand that life is designed in turmoil and adversity, one problem gets resolved then the other one might start sooner or later. Nevertheless, it is our choice that what we choose to become from that diversity.
A potato and egg both get boiled in hot water but the potato gets so spongy and squishy that it can get mashed even with our hands; while on the other hand, the egg becomes hard and changes all its dynamics given the same temperature conditions in the water.
Therefore, it is not in our hands that what life gives us but it is totally in our hands that what we become of it. So always try your level best to choose Strong and Wise for you instead of vulnerable and foolish. If you are the person who worries too much in life then you might benefit from reading my post on how to worry less as learning to control excessive worrying helps us stay calm in stressful situations.
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