How to stay calm at work and at home
Emotional stress and constant worry about daily tasks in work and life, social anxiety, are all part of the modern lifestyle. Many people simply don't feel peace, calm, or serenity during their day. How to stay calm at work and at home in modern life?
This is a series of skills that have been developed over the past few years. Perhaps not all of them are perfect, but many already practice them, and they are always useful.
These are skills, not just changing what surrounds us or certain patterns of behavior. Changing what's around you does have a big effect, but you can't control what happens to you most of the time, and you certainly can't control or influence other people's behavior.
How to stay calm at work and at home
The only thing you can control is your reaction—and that makes a big difference. You can react to the same incident with anxiety or anger, or with peace and quiet. It's just your choice.
So what will help you stay calm?
1. Calmness in the morning.
Many people rush in the morning, starting the day already stressed. It is better to wake up calmly and a little earlier (at 6 am, for example) and start the day with a little meditation and a few yoga poses. Afterwards, there is another element of the morning “procedures”: physical exercise. You don't have to do the same, but it's important to find some quiet in the morning and do some of these things.
2. Learning to control our reactions.
When something happens that causes you stress, how do you react to it? Some people act immediately - although if the stressful situation involves other people, the action can often be harmful. Others are angry. Still others begin to feel sorry for themselves, and limit themselves to the desire to change everything in the future. Pay attention to other people, how they react to stress, perhaps they behave better? Observing reactions is an important skill.
3. Don't take things personally.
Often our reactions are to things that we take personally. If someone does something we don't like, we often tend to interpret it as a personal insult. Our children don't clean their room? They challenge us! Our man didn't say I love you today? He/she doesn't have to care as much as he/she should! How to stay calm at work if someone is rude? How can they treat us this way?!
Some people even think that the entire universe is personally against them. But really, it's not your concern - it's the other person's issue, it's them who deal with it. They are doing everything they can. You can learn not to interpret events as a personal grievance, but instead to see them as some external events that have little to do with you, and divide them into those that can be responded to without thinking, or need not be responded at all.
4. Be grateful.
Of course, many people talk about the need to give thanks, but how often do we apply it in our everyday lives? Things aren't going well at work, or our boss is angry, or our coworkers are being rude to us, or our kids are misbehaving, or who doesn't love us as much as we'd like. These causes of anger/anxiety/unhappiness, can we be grateful for them? How to stay calm - Leave your complaints and find a way to be grateful. And then smile. This unbreakable habit can change your life.
5. Create a stress management habit.
Many times when we face stress, we have a negative reaction - anger, depression and to suppress these feelings, we eat junk food, drink alcohol, buy unnecessary things - everyone has their own way. Some people waste their time on entertainment sites and social networks, due to which laziness overwhelms them, etc.
Instead, we must respond appropriately to cope with the stress that will inevitably come. When you notice stress, observe how you deal with it, and then replace any incorrect response with one that is healthier for you. Healthy stress-relieving habits: drinking tea, exercising, yoga, meditation, neck and shoulder massage, walking outdoors, drinking a glass of water, talking to someone.
6. Single-tasking.
People work on the train, while walking, while driving. They tweet and post on Facebook and Instagram, they respond to email and read blogs and news, they watch videos, they watch TV while eating, they plan their day while they get things done. This is a great way to raise your anxiety level, which comes with everything you do, because you are always worried that you should be doing more, doing something else.
It takes practice, but try it anyway: just eat, just wash your bowl, just take a walk, just talk to someone. Just read one article or book without switching. How to stay calm - just write. Just work with the email, clean it up. You will learn that there is such a feeling in the world as “here and now”, and let go of everything else.
7. Reduce noise levels.
Our lives are filled with all kinds of noise - visual clutter, social media notifications, news, everything we have to read. And frankly, none of them are needed. Try to give up this and much more, and create some space, space is an oasis of silence in your life.
We told you how to stay calm at work and at home, calm down - everything is fine!
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Someone took credit for your achievements
You worked hard on a project or came up with a great idea, and your boss or colleague took credit for it.
Do not rush to create a scandal - first you need to find out everything about the situation. What was the motivation of the person who took credit for your achievements? The reasons may be different - someone appropriates someone else’s property for selfish or malevolent reasons. And some people do this because they feel unappreciated at work. In the latter case, it is better to talk with the person and find out how he can achieve the desired recognition. One way or another, you need to understand the reason for this behavior - it will allow you to understand what tone to choose to solve the problem.
How to protect your personal life from stress
Your family needs support too, so don't burden them with your work problems. Try to go together to places where you have not been before, spend more time with your children. Do something unusual, like buy a cookbook and cook dinner, or look through your wife's wardrobe and choose an outfit for her. Start doing exercises in the morning.
Spend more time with friends. These should not be noisy gatherings, but cozy home meetings. Go to a karaoke bar - it helps you recover after a hard day at work. In our culture, it is not very common to shout, and it is no coincidence that karaoke has become so popular in our country: at the moment of releasing energy through speech, singing (and we try to sing loudly), there is an outburst of negativity and a decrease in aggression.
Don't give up on your hobbies: when we give up on something, life becomes boring. It is important to constantly tell yourself that you are happy, to list what you have now - it turns out that this is not so little. It is important not to lose dreams, desires and enjoy life. And there is always something to be happy about!
Gayk Lazaryan General Director of LLC, Moscow
Quitting smoking will help maintain efficiency and a clear mind under stress. It is a misconception that smoking helps relieve stress. On the contrary, a person, becoming a hostage to an addiction, harms his body and reduces immunity. I haven’t smoked since January and I feel much better and I’m much less nervous. Recently one of the top managers joined me, I hope that other smokers will soon follow our example.
It is also important now, when crossing the threshold at home, to be able to abstract from all the bad emotions that have accumulated during the day at work. Not everyone succeeds in this right away, but you need to learn to control yourself. Live not by problems, but by plans for the future. Dream, but not about the impossible, but about what you can do tomorrow, in a week, in a year. Don't try to survive, but live life to the fullest, find joy in everyday things. You will see that with a positive attitude your life will change for the better.
Positive thinking
Powerful tools against stress are gratitude, kindness and dedication. When we consciously look at our lives and understand what we can be grateful for, over time it becomes easier to cope with problems. Scientists have even calculated that this requires 6 weeks of keeping a gratitude diary every night.
Pay attention to those around you, try yourself as a volunteer in a charity organization. Helping others builds self-confidence, allows you to look at your own life with gratitude, and gives you a sense of need.
Being calm does not mean being indifferent. This means being able to control yourself. How often do people find themselves in situations where they simply need to remain calm: stress, conflict situations, discrepancies in expectations and reality, failures. Emotions begin to fill the person. To prevent emotions from consuming your mind, you need to remain calm.
Missed deadlines
They are inevitable. Someone on your team missed a deadline and it delayed the release of the entire project. It's infuriating when people don't fulfill their responsibilities, but we need to figure out why this happened.
Perhaps the person lacks self-organization. Or, what is most likely, something is preventing him from completing the work on time - for example, a lack of skills. In this case, you need to help him. It may be that a person is simply not suitable for his role and it is better to assign him to another position on the team.
Calming diet
Watch your diet. Our gut is responsible for producing the happy hormone serotonin, so digestion and stress management are closely linked. Your diet should include plenty of fiber in the form of vegetables and whole grains, plenty of fluids, quality vegetable oils, nuts and seeds, and protein from a variety of sources. If you only drink coffee during the day, especially instant coffee, it will be incredibly difficult to maintain a calm state. Limit caffeine intake to 2 cups per day, preferably in the morning. Never drink coffee or strong tea on an empty stomach - only after eating. Water with lemon, ginger, berries or pieces of fruit will help support digestion and normal hydration levels in the body as a whole. This is important for good brain function and the ability to focus on business.
Who is suitable for downshifting?
In the minds of most people, downshifting is the prerogative of rich and wealthy careerists who have already earned all the money in the world and deserve a little rest. But, in essence, this is not so.
To move to a village, or to a paradise island with an endless summer, you don’t have to work for 20 years in an office and bring yourself to the extreme point of rejection of the surrounding reality.
In fact, it is enough to weigh all the pros and cons of living in a metropolis and outside it and make the right decision.
Downshifting is suitable for those who do not need constant physical contact with like-minded people, who want to retire from crowds of people and simply find themselves in close interaction with nature and its vastness.
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Changing your place of residence will be useful for those who are truly ready to make a change, who are already fed up with endless traffic flows, flashing advertising banners and the cacophony of big city sounds.
If the above two paragraphs describe your current preferences well, perhaps you are a potential downshifter and are ready to pack your bags. However, simply moving to another location is not enough. It is very important to be able to adapt to it. To do this, I can advise you on a few basic things.
Relaxation techniques
Use relaxation techniques, meditation and breathing exercises. Try breathing in 4 counts: inhale and count “1-2-3-4”, hold your breath for 4 counts, exhale in the same way and hold your breath again. Repeat for a minute.
You can use yogic breathing. To do this, breathe alternately through different nostrils.
Meditate 5-10 minutes a day. To do this, you don’t need to have yoga skills, just sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, focus on your breathing and listen to the sensations in your body. Imagine a place or situation in which you can allow yourself to be completely relaxed. Hold this picture before your eyes until you feel calm and peaceful.
Why is this necessary?
Why learn to be calm at all? Not all stress is bad. Controlled, short-term stress, on the contrary, benefits our body and brain function. It allows us to grow above ourselves, develop and develop the necessary skills. The problem is chronic stress. Chronic stress harms our brain, especially the parts responsible for memory, attention, behavior, emotions, decision-making and planning. When levels of the stress hormone cortisol do not drop for a long time, we live in survival mode. The amygdala in our brain does not switch off, and we are constantly in a state of “fight or flight.” When we are calm, cortisol levels are under control and we can adequately look at what is happening and make the right decisions.
Hormonal imbalance not only leads to us working worse and being nervous, but also causes various diseases. First of all, these are diseases of the cardiovascular system, digestive problems, insomnia, weight gain, anxiety and ultimately depression.
