You were brilliant. You used to accomplish more than what was expected from you.
You have always beaten everyone’s expectation and established yourself as a hero.
Now, everyone’s keeping an eye on you.
Everyone expects that you’d do something different. You will make things work.
They count on you for many things.
You have got mixed feelings. You know that you’ll be able to make a difference but there are some challenges that you don’t know how to deal with.
Time is short and expectations are huge. You have recently experienced a small chunk of failures like never before… you’ve started feeling stressed.
If you’re not accustomed to dealing with high-stress situations, you’ll feel down, exhausted and demotivated.
Here are some tips for you to keep your cool when stress goes up:
1. Count backward from twenty to one.
It is the easiest stress-relieving exercise. Here it goes:
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- Be relaxed and sit down with your legs apart. Your hands should be on your stomach.
- Start with number 20. Inhale. Pause for a second. Exhale.
- Go to number 19. Again inhale. Pause for a second. Now exhale slowly.
- Go to number 18…got the idea?
When you count backward, you focus your energy from what was causing you stress to your breathe. And that’s helpful.
2. Feel grateful about your achievements till date
Pause, take a deep breath and think about your last three achievements.
Be grateful to Life that you have accomplished those things. It is not much important what those accomplishments are. You’re shifting your focus from being negative to being positive.
This small exercise can have a positive impact on your mood and you’ll start feeling better.
3. Take it easy
Nothing is perfect in this world. Whatever happens, happens for good.
Your inner calmness is more valuable than anything else. Don’t take yourself very seriously, no one takes! Live the moment as if it is the last moment of your life. It’s okay to be less than perfect. It’s okay to be a common human being who has got plenty of limitations. Each one of us has got so don’t worry and cheer up.
4. Focus on one thing at a time
No matter how much you like to multi-task, most of us are not good at that.
It would be wise to focus on ONE thing at a time. If you’ve got a big task to accomplish, divide the task into smaller sub-tasks and accomplish one sub-task at a time.
Once you start accomplishing small tasks, you’ll start feeling better.
5. Seek for the opportunity when you face a challenge
Sure, there are problems that you don’t know how to deal with. It’s okay. Learn to look at and evaluate the problem from varied perspectives.
Is there any opportunity to make a difference hidden in the problem statement itself? I’ve almost always found one. When you consider something an opportunity, you’ll start feeling better. It’s natural because you shifted your focus from the negative side of the thing to the positive side of the challenge.
Remember, this exercise doesn’t change the problem itself but your perception and that sometimes work like a magic.
6. Accept it
What if you try all of above but nothing works? Accept it. Tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it.” Sure, this may sound like giving up; but it is not. In fact, when you accept it, you acknowledge a problem as a problem. This activity would release your emotional energy associated with the problem’s impact. When you accept that there’s nothing you can do about the problem, you won’t feel stressed.
Remember, there are only two types of situations. One, you can change. Other, you cannot. In either case, there’s no need to feel stressed because if you can change it, you’re in control and if you cannot, feeling stressed won’t help you out.
Learning how to remain cool in situations full of stress will not only make things easier for you, it can make your life healthier and happier.
