How To Find Your Sense of Calm

So when was the last time you felt stressed out?Was it last month?

Was it last week? Yesterday?  Today?  Right now, or all of the above.

You’re stressed out and overwhelmed about different things.  Whether it’s work and business, family relationships, your health and wellness.  Whatever it is.

Wouldn’t it be nice to feel a sense of control and calm.

So today I’m going to talk about how to find your sense of calm.

Now, daily life can be pretty stressful and chaotic at times, but your attitude and how you see things can make all of the difference in the world.

Goldie Hawn said…

“Your ability to remain calm and focused in stressful situations is central to making positive decisions.”

Now, if you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it may be that you’re not focused and organized because your mind is trying to focus on too many things at once.  And this brings on a state of stress.

Now, you can have positive energy towards many aspects of your life, but they can still carry stress with him. Because, very often it seems like everything is coming at you at once. And it’s in that state that you feel like you have a lack of control and sometimes it feels like the world is happening to you instead of for you.

Your ability to find and maintain a sense of calm allows you to attain a level of control and strength over your day and over your life.

Marcus Orelli said…

“The nearer man comes to a calm mind, The closer he is to strength”

and the Dai Lama says,…

“A calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so it is very important for your good health”.

So if being calm is so important, then why is it seem so hard to attain? I often get asked,  “how do I find a sense of calm when I’m in a stressful situation?”. 

Now the key is HOW they ask that question.

It should be phrased,  “How do I learn to be more calm so that I don’t have stress and overwhelm in any situation. 

Remember stress doesn’t come from a situation or circumstance. Stress comes from your thoughts about that situation or circumstance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, …

“Nothing can bring you peace, but yourself.”

So the first way to find your sense of calm is to recognize and be aware of the stressed state that you’re in and the need to work on it.  To practice on being calm so that you just are more calm in any situation or any circumstance.

Next is to do things that calm yourself first off.  Is there anything that you like to do that creates a sense of calm for yourself? If so, do more of that.

For me, my mind is most calm when I’m out in nature hiking, or if I’m in the yard doing landscaping. Now I know that sounds weird, but I love to get in the yard and get dirty and get my hands in the dirt. That sounds weird. But for those of you are gardeners or landscapers, you know what I mean.

For other people it’s reading a book.  For some it’s walking or running or biking.

For other people it’s yoga or Thai Chi or Qi Gong, and it is said that they are meditation and movement.

Now that brings up meditation. Meditation is a great way to bring calm for yourself. But what I hear most often is people say, “oh, I’m horrible at meditation.  I do it for five seconds and before you know it, I’m thinking about my grocery list and having to pick up my son or my daughter from school or what I need to do for my husband or what I need to do for my wife or what I have to do at work tomorrow. And so I give up on meditation because I’m no good at it.”

But what people don’t realize is that is the work of meditation.

Now, first of all, the simplest meditation could be just three simple breaths. I want you to do it right now with me, take a breath, breathe deep in And breathe out, Breathe in And breathe out.

I want you to focus on your breathing,… solely focus on your breathing,

There’s an anonymous quote that says…

“I breathe in calmness and I breathe out stress.”

Listen to that. I breathe in calmness and I breathe out stress.

Now the great thing about breathing as a meditation is you can do it anywhere. You’ll be sitting on the couch or sitting at work in a desk chair, having a stressful time and say, okay, I’m going to take three, deep breaths. And I’m only going to focus on my breathing.

Breathe in the calmness, breathe out the stress, brethe in the calmness, breathe out the stress.

You could do it in the parked car. I don’t suggest it while you’re driving, especially not closing your eyes, but for this purposes, let’s do it in the parked car. If you’re having a stressful day and you’re out in the parking lot at the outside of the grocery store, take a deep breath in, take a deep breath out. 

Breathe in, calmness, breathe out stress.

Now I just went back to meditation for the last week and I had missed it for about three weeks. Now there’s no real excuse for missing. It’s like any of us when we miss our exercise program for a month or we miss walking for three weeks.

And wen I went back to the meditation I do, it was more challenging for me to go through a 15 minute meditation because I hadn’t done it in a little while.  It just like exercise.  You have to build back into it again.

Now, if you’re having difficulty meditating on your own, what I suggest is a guided meditation. Now there’s all different types of apps they have out. I use the app “Calm” and  there’s another app called “Headspace”. There’s all different kinds of apps that you can use.

The great thing about a guided meditation is there’s somebody with who’s speaking in a relaxed voice and you usually can use different voices and find the voice that agrees and connects with you the most.

And they guide you through the breathing. They guide you through the meditation. The great thing about the guided meditations is you can find ones that are anywhere from seven minutes to 12 minutes and even longer if you want. 

It’s a great way to start out meditating, but do yourself a favor… If you feel that you’re not good at meditation, that’s exactly why you need it. And if you find yourself trailing off with thoughts and thought bubbles are going up with the grocery list, who do I have to pick up? What do I have to do today? Recognize that you’re coming away and pull yourself back to the meditation. That my friend is the work of meditation.

And I guarantee if you start to meditate, you will see the difference.

And the whole point is about practicing to bring yourself to a better sense of calm. And if you start to practice being calm, that calmness will overflow into every situation or any situation that you come across.

As victim Frankel said, …

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space and there is a freedom to choose.”

We have the ability to choose how we respond to any situation or circumstance that we comes upon during our day.

Now, if we are not calm, what can happen is we can react in what’s called a negative mindset loop and we can be quick to react in a negative way, or we can have stress and overwhelm because we’re not focused and we’re not calm. So we feel like everything is happening to us and it can be overwhelming at times.

But if you practice becoming more calm, then the tendency will be with any situation or circumstance that you will react with calm and react with a positive proactive mindset.

Now, I just spoke about a few things today to help improve your sense of calm, whether it’s doing the things that you love to do that create a sense of calm for you like hiking in nature or gardening or walking or running or biking with Tai Chi, yoga, Qi Gong.  All of the things that we talked about:… meditation, listening to music, whatever it is that helps you find that sense of calm.

So practice finding your sense of calm, make it a part of your habits, a part of your routine. And you will find yourself responding to all the circumstances in your life from a sense of calm and reacting in a better way from a positive mindset.

I hope this information helped you out.

I want you to have a great day and remember as always…

Be Positive, Be Motivated, Be Focused and Be Well,

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