10 Tips To Help You Stay Calm in Any Situation

Hey love,
I think we can all need some calm and balance in our lives. Anxiety is at an all-time high in our society and it’s not surprising. There are countless things that contribute to feeling stressed out: being constantly available and on our smartphones, the Corona pandemic, fear of the future, the list goes on..

However, it’s important to realize that these anxious thoughts are not serving you in any way. Instead, they drain your energy and can even make you physically sick.

In case you don’t know if what you’re feeling is anxiety, here are some symptoms:

Feeling nervous, restless or tense
Having an increased heart rate
Breathing rapidly
Feeling weak or tired
Having trouble sleeping
Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems

Your body is here to protect you

I remember that whenever I experienced anxiety, it was actually a warning sign of my body to slow down. I would then often get sick and was “forced” to stay in bed. It was also a sign that what I was doing in that moment wasn’t in alignment with my essence and my purpose.

The truth is that your body loves you and always wants to help you. Therefore, when you are stressing yourself and obsessing about things in your life, you fall sick. If we never take the time to slow down and care for ourselves, our bodies do it for us.

In order not to let it come that far, I’ll share with you 10 tips to help you stay calm in any situation.

10 Tips To Help You Stay Calm In Any Situation

1. Visualize Yourself Calm

Visualization is such a powerful tool! Instead of getting too immersed in your current state of mind, try to detach from that self-image and visualize yourself as the wisest and happiest version of you – as somebody who chooses love over fear and stays calm because you trust yourself and see the bigger picture. This tool always helps me and I hope it will do good things for you too.

You can also ask yourself: “How would the highest, most empowered version of me act in that moment?” It can also help you clear your mind and come to solutions more easily.

2. Listen to Music

Listening to music is one of these things that can definitely raise our vibration and bring us more joy and peace. Personally, I love to listen to peaceful music or sounds of nature in the morning. I currently get up at 5 am every day to still have some time for myself before I start working. Since it’s almost October, it’s very dark outside and listening to music and lighting candles can make such a difference. We have somehow become so detached from nature that we often don’t know anymore how healing the sounds of nature can be.

I will link some of my favorite peaceful music here for you:

3. Meditate and do Breathwork

I LOVE meditation simply for the fact that it has the power (if you fully commit to it) to really calm you and change the way you perceive the world. It’s best done in the mornings but even during the day, it can do so much for your mental health. I currently have two 15-minute breaks at work – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

So, instead of looking at my phone, I do some yoga nidra or meditation to connect with myself again. I know that phones and social media are super addictive but I really recommend taking breaks from your screen. Being constantly on social media can even worsen your anxiety and to be honest, if I wouldn’t love sharing my content to help other people, I would probably choose to stay away from instagram.

Here are some beautiful meditations:

Solarplexus Healing Meditation (the solarplexus chakra stands for your willpower and confidence)
Manifestation Meditation
10 min Positive Energy Meditation

4. Enjoy the Journey

We have been in a way conditioned to focus exclusively on the end result rather than enjoying the journey. However, the journey is actually the important part. Like most people, I used to also think that everything is about the end result. But what good is it to reach that goal if you’re completely miserable throughout the journey? If you hate your Mondays to Fridays and are only living for the weekend?

We often have a hard time to stay calm and experience much more anxiety when we constantly judge ourselves and are our own harshest critics.

Instead of putting so much pressure on yourself, choose to accept yourself where you are and enjoy the journey.

Hint: If you absolutely don’t like what you’re doing right now and it almost feels impossible to enjoy the journey, consider changing it.

You can also practice the following affirmations:

I am allowing myself to enjoy the journey
I take the pressure off myself and just enjoy the ride
I choose to be happy. Being happy is my priority

5. Take a Bird’s Eye View on your Life

To be honest, we are often taking ourselves and our problems too seriously. When looking back, all of the things I stressed myself about in the past weren’t so bad and urgent after all. Nevertheless, it is easy to get in this loop of downward- spiralling thoughts, thinking that our situation is hopeless.

What I realized is that taking a bird’s eye-view on your life from time to time definitely helps to put things into perspective and get out of your own little bubble.

Once you see that you are still so much better off than many people in the world, you will be more grateful for your life and the things that you get to do.

This is another tip I have for you: Write down at least 3 things every day that you’re grateful for. It’s a great way to lift your mood and relieve your anxiety.

You might also like this article: 60 Ways To Improve Your Mental Balance

6. Ask yourself: “Will it still matter in 5 years?”

While things seem really bad in the moment, they often won’t matter anymore 5 years down the road.

This is also a way to decide whether you should give something a.

There might be an incident where someone is in a bad mood and lashes out on you. You might get angry in the moment but 5 years from now, it won’t matter anymore.

Or it could also be that you have trouble finding a job that you enjoy but more often than not, 5 years later you got what you wanted and looking back, you realize that you put too much unnecessary pressure on yourself.

7. Stop Demanding Perfection of Yourself

I have something to confess. I used to be a HUGE perfectionist and I’m still working every day on overcoming this tendency.

Do you know what my unconscious motive behind perfectionism was? I tried to be perfect in any way so that I would not have to experience any form of rejection or hurt. However, I soon realized that it’s very unhealthy for me and will never make me accept myself for who I truly am.

I still struggle with perfectionism at times but I have been slowly learning to become bolder and do the things that make ME happy (no matter if it will result in rejection or painful experiences). After all, that’s the only way to grow.

It’s also no surprise that we demand perfection of ourselves. It has been programmed into us to always be perfect and there is a certain ideal in society to be:

Perfectly beautiful
Perfectly smart
Perfectly successful and
Perfectly happy

In my case, I was also always praised by my parents for my achievements at school, not for who I am as a person.

It takes a lot of work to overcome something that has been ingrained in you so deeply, but it is possible.

Remember: You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be YOURSELF. The world needs you, not some pseudo-perfect version of you that is inauthentic.

8. Actively Practice Patience

With everything being available at our fingertips, we often have a hard time being patient. We also tend to get a bit anxious if things take longer and don’t happen for us as fast as we would like them to happen.

However, it’s something that you can practice day by making yourself wait.

Here are some examples:

Not giving in to instant gratification and getting your work done before you watch Netflix or do other leisure activities
Deliberately taking the longest queue in the supermarket
Patiently waiting for people’s replies and not getting frustrated if they haven’t replied within a day

9. Move your Body

One of the best ways to relieve anxiety is to move your body. The word “emotion” means “energy in motion”. We often keep emotions (especially negative ones) trapped in our bodies and by exercising and moving our bodies, we give our emotions the space to come out and flow freely.

When you are stressed out at work, the worst thing you can do to your body and mind is to not move at all and just stay indoors all day.

Give yourself some time to breathe and make moving your body a non-negotiable in your day. I mostly do it in the morning by doing yoga/ a workout + running or going for a walk in nature.

Try it out and see which form of exercise works best for you.

10. Focus on your Vision

Having a vision for your life is so important. When we don’t know what we want and just live on autopilot, it’s much more likely to experience depression and anxiety because we don’t have a goal that goes beyond ourselves.

And when I’m talking about having a vision and a purpose, it has to be something meaningful; the thing that lifts you up and makes you become a better version of yourself.

For me, it is writing this blog and helping as many people as possible live a happy life in alignment to their soul’s purpose. It is what gets me up at 5 am in the morning.

When you have a purpose that doesn’t only fulfill you but also helps other people, it will help you stay on track and work on yourself.

So whenever you feel anxious and have a hard time staying calm, remember your “why” and focus on that.

tips to help you stay calm in any situation

Final Note

Finally, I want you to know that you are beautiful, you are loved and you are making the world a better place just by being you.

I know that it’s easy to adapt this hustle mentality where we feel like we’re never good enough and always have to be perfect, but it’s possible to detach yourself from that and find your calmness.

Here is another thought that just popped into my head: Isn’t it funny how all of us are striving for happiness, yet we put so much pressure on ourselves (in terms of status, career, success and looks) that we are preventing ourselves from experiencing it?

Once you wake up to this illusion of finding happiness outside of yourself, everything changes.

I’m sending you much love,
Jennifer