Calm Your Mind in Stressful Times
Happy New Year's, y'all! And here we go into 2024...
I'm sure by now you've noticed how life throws chaos at us on a regular basis-whether it's our finances, our relationships, or work, or our health.
In response to that chaos, we just keep on pushing through, surviving mostly on adrenaline and red bull. However, we might overschedule ourselves; we drink another coffee; we respond to one more email.
We like to think that if we stay locked in all the time, we'll eventually be able to get things done.
Cultivating a more restful, relaxed state of mind doesn't mean we'll drown under all our responsibilities. Instead, research suggests it will bring us greater attention, energy, and creativity to tackle them.
Yay! And science also points to simple ways we can tap into that calm state of mind to be more resilient in our chaotic lives.
A Stressed Mind VS. A Calm Mind
Stress was never meant to be a 24/7 experience, y'all.
As Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky explains:
you're only supposed to feel stressed in the five minutes right before you die. When you are being chased in the savanna by a wild animal, your stress response is supposed to save your life- it mobilized your attention, muscles, and immune system to get you quickly out of danger.
That stress response is supposed to be short-lived because it wears down your body, your health, and your energy. It also impacts things like your emotional intelligence and your decision making. When you're tightly wound up, you're more likely to react to situations than to respond to them with reason.
Makes sense...
When we're stressed, we're less likely to notice if a colleague looks burned out or sad, and more likely to get irritated if they don't perform as we expect. However, when you're in a calmer and happier place, that's probably the day when you will have more empathy: You'll notice your colleague and take the time to reach out and ask if there's anything you can do to support them.
When you're calm, you also manage your energy better because you're not burning yourself up constantly, spending your days with your sympathetic nervous system in overdrive.
Calmness helps you focus on what you need to do, and thus, you'll get it done much more quickly.
How To Cultivate a Calm State of Mind
Most of us are really good at activating our adrenal system and getting wound up. The question is then, how do we wind down? Research suggests several practices that feel good and put us into a calmer, more relaxed state- a state from which we can cope better with whatever life throws at us.
-Breathing. A Personal Story
Jake was a U.S. Marine officer in charge of a Humvee on a convoy across Afghanistan, when his vehicle drove over an improvised explosive device. After the explosion, he looked down and saw that his legs were severely fractured below the knee. In that moment of shock, terror, and pain, he remembered a breathing exercise he had read about for extreme wartime situations.
It allowed him to do his duty, which was to check on everyone else in the vehicle. It gave him the presence of mind to give orders to call for help, and to then tourniquet his own legs and prop them up before he fell unconscious-which saved his life!
One of the most calming breathing exercises you can do is to breathe in (e.g., to a count of four), hold, and then breathe out for up to twice as long (e.g., to a count of six or eight). You can gently constrict your throat, making a sound like the ocean, which is used in deep relaxation breathing. As you're doing this, especially thanks to those long exhales, you're activating the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing your heart rate and blood pressure.
-Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is the ability to be mindful of your emotions, aware of the emotions that are going on inside whenever you fail at something. It doesn't mean you identify with them; you can just observe and notice them, without feeding the fire. Self-compassion also involves understanding that everyone makes mistakes and that it's part of being human. And it is the ability to speak to yourself the way you would speak to a friend who just failed, warmly and kindly.
-Connection
There's a loneliness epidemic in the United States and across the world. We know those feelings of loneliness are extremely destructive to our body and mind, leading to worse health and even early death. And the stress and lack of calm in today's world may contribute to this loneliness because of the way that it tends to make us self-focused.
Our greatest human need, after food and shelter, is to connect with other people in a positive way. From the moment we're born until our last day, we have a deep and profound longing to belong to one another. When we face adversity, research suggests that our relationships and community have an important role to play in our resilience.
-Compassion for Others
What was going on with these people?
When the researchers dug a little deeper, they found that they were all engaged in helping friends and family in their life-from assisting with transportation or shopping to housework and childcare. Service , y'all, is one of the most profound ways to nourish the community around you, but also to nourish, inspire, and energize yourself.
Cultivating calm isn't about avoiding every kind of stressful emotion. In fact, when we make time to breathe, connect, and care, some of the negative feelings we've been running from might catch up with us. But that's the time for self-compassion; it's okay to feel bad.
Resilience doesn't mean that we'll be happy all the time, but it does mean we have the energy, mindset, and the support from others to help us weather the storm.
References:
Smith, J.A. (2015, Aug. 13). What is the relationship between stress and empathy? Greater Good Magazine.
Hawkley, LC., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2010). Loneliness matters: A theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms.
Suttie, J. (2017, Nov. 13). Four ways social support makes you more resilient. Greater Good Magazine.
Poulin, M.J., Brown, S.L., Dillard, A. J., & Smith, D.M., (2013). Giving to others and the association between stress and mortality.
With so many experiencing mental health issues today, this information need to be shared and we need to talk about it more. Good job 👍🏽
ReplyDelete20 years ago, it was taboo talking about MHI (mental health issues) as we do today. Folks were shunned by their families, friends, and collogues for having a problem to begin with, and stigmatized for how they coped with it. Lack of insurance or resources was one of many barriers. It's time we start having these conversations and shamelessly sharing them, especially within our communities that see MHI as a "lack of resilience and willpower".
Delete