How Successful People Stay Calm

While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that
successful people employ when faced with stress, what
follows are ten of the best. Some of these strategies
may seem obvious, but the real challenge lies in
recognizing when you need to use them and having the
wherewithal to actually do so in spite of your stress.
They Appreciate What They Have
Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t
merely the “right” thing to do. It also improves your
mood, because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by
23%. Research conducted at the University of California,
Davis found that people who worked daily to cultivate an
attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy,
and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of
cortisol played a major role in this.
They Avoid Asking “What If?”
“What if?” statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and
worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and
the more time you spend worrying about the
possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on
taking action that will calm you down and keep your
stress under control. Calm people know that asking
“what if? will only take them to a place they don’t want—
or need—to go.
They Stay Positive
Positive thoughts help make stress intermittent by
focusing your brain’s attention onto something that is
completely stress-free. You have to give your wandering
brain a little help by consciously selecting something
positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to
refocus your attention. When things are going well, and
your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things
are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative
thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments,
think about your day and identify one positive thing that
happened, no matter how small. If you can't think of
something from the current day, reflect on the previous
day or even the previous week. Or perhaps you’re
looking forward to an exciting event that you can focus
your attention on. The point here is that you must have
something positive that you're ready to shift your
attention to when your thoughts turn negative.
They Disconnect
Given the importance of keeping stress intermittent, it’s
easy to see how taking regular time off the grid can help
keep your stress under control. When you make yourself
available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a
constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline
and even—gulp!—turning off your phone gives your body
a break from a constant source of stress. Studies have
shown that something as simple as an email break can
lower stress levels.
Technology enables constant communication and the
expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is
extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside
of work when an email that will change your train of
thought and get you thinking (read: stressing) about
work can drop onto your phone at any moment. If
detaching yourself from work-related communication on
weekday evenings is too big a challenge, then how about
the weekend? Choose blocks of time where you cut the
cord and go offline. You’ll be amazed at how refreshing
these breaks are and how they reduce stress by putting
a mental recharge into your weekly schedule. If you’re
worried about the negative repercussions of taking this
step, first try doing it at times when you’re unlikely to be
contacted—maybe Sunday morning. As you grow more
comfortable with it, and as your coworkers begin to
accept the time you spend offline, gradually expand the
amount of time you spend away from technology.
They Limit Their Caffeine Intake
Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline.
Adrenaline is the source of the “fight-or-flight” response,
a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and
fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The
fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in
favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is
chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to
a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body
into this hyperaroused state of stress, your emotions
overrun your behavior. The stress that caffeine creates
is far from intermittent, as its long half-life ensures that
it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body.
They Sleep
I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t
say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing
your emotional intelligence and managing your stress
levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges,
shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or
discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you
wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control,
attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t
get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Sleep
deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own,
even without a stressor present. Stressful projects often
make you feel as if you have no time to sleep, but taking
the time to get a decent night’s sleep is often the one
thing keeping you from getting things under control.
Related: The 6 Secrets of Self-Control (LinkedIn)
They Squash Negative Self-Talk
A big step in managing stress involves stopping negative
self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on
negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most
of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not
facts. When you find yourself believing the negative and
pessimistic things your inner voice says, it's time to stop
and write them down. Literally stop what you're doing
and write down what you're thinking. Once you've taken
a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your
thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in
evaluating their veracity.
You can bet that your statements aren’t true any time
you use words like “never,” “worst,” “ever,” etc. If your
statements still look like facts once they’re on paper,
take them to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he
or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come
out. When it feels like something always or never
happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency
inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event.
Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by
separating them from the facts will help you escape the
cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new
outlook.
They Reframe Their Perspective
Stress and worry are fueled by our own skewed
perception of events. It’s easy to think that unrealistic
deadlines, unforgiving bosses, and out-of-control traffic
are the reasons we’re so stressed all the time. You can’t
control your circumstances, but you can control how you
respond to them. So before you spend too much time
dwelling on something, take a minute to put the situation
in perspective. If you aren’t sure when you need to do
this, try looking for clues that your anxiety may not be
proportional to the stressor. If you’re thinking in broad,
sweeping statements such as “Everything is going
wrong” or “Nothing will work out,” then you need to
reframe the situation. A great way to correct this
unproductive thought pattern is to list the specific things
that actually are going wrong or not working out. Most
likely you will come up with just some things—not
everything—and the scope of these stressors will look
much more limited than it initially appeared.
They Breathe
The easiest way to make stress intermittent lies in
something that you have to do everyday anyway:
breathing. The practice of being in the moment with your
breathing will begin to train your brain to focus solely on
the task at hand and get the stress monkey off your
back. When you’re feeling stressed, take a couple of
minutes to focus on your breathing. Close the door, put
away all other distractions, and just sit in a chair and
breathe. The goal is to spend the entire time focused
only on your breathing, which will prevent your mind
from wandering. Think about how it feels to breathe in
and out. This sounds simple, but it’s hard to do for more
than a minute or two. It’s all right if you get sidetracked
by another thought; this is sure to happen at the
beginning, and you just need to bring your focus back to
your breathing. If staying focused on your breathing
proves to be a real struggle, try counting each breath in
and out until you get to 20, and then start again from 1.
Don’t worry if you lose count; you can always just start
over.
This task may seem too easy or even a little silly, but
you’ll be surprised by how calm you feel afterward and
how much easier it is to let go of distracting thoughts
that otherwise seem to have lodged permanently inside
your brain.
They Use Their Support System
It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling
everything by yourself. To be calm and productive, you
need to recognize your weaknesses and ask for help
when you need it. This means tapping into your support
system when a situation is challenging enough for you to
feel overwhelmed. Everyone has someone at work and/
or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them,
and ready to help them get the best from a difficult
situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make
an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you
need it. Something as simple as talking about your
worries will provide an outlet for your anxiety and stress
and supply you with a new perspective on the situation.
Most of the time, other people can see a solution that
you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested
in the situation. Asking for help will mitigate your stress
and strengthen your relationships with those you rely
upon.)