It’s important to stay calm in any situation because that is when most of our mental tools are available for use. When in stress mode, our brain cuts access to the reasoning and problem-solving part limiting our ability to respond in a constructive way. So, let’s see quickly how to stay calm in any situation effortlessly showing up with greater resilience and confidence every time.
How to stay calm in any situation
1. When dealing with people
Even though connecting or at least interacting with another person is critical for us to be healthy mentally, it is also one of the things that creates a big chunk of our problems. How and what and why someone says anything can make us feel happy or unhappy in our relationships.
And it’s natural to feel angry when the other person is blowing up or saying things that are irritating you. But giving back what they are dishing out is rarely ever helpful.
When people experience emotional exhaustion, it can make them feel emotionally drained, overwhelmed, and fatigued…. Emotional exhaustion causes both physical and emotional effects that, in turn, can affect a person’s behavior.
What to do instead:
1. Validate them
Before putting forth your point, say “May be, you are right, but” then say what you have to say. It shows that you heard them, think they might have a valid point, and so what you have to say comes across as another possibility rather than saying “I am right you are wrong”. Sometimes, all the arguing person wants is for us to acknowledge the possibility that they are right.
2. Voice and pace
keeping the focus on what we can control, keep your voice and pace of speech intentionally as normal as possible. The more normal you sound, the more in control you will feel.
3. “I” over ‘you”
Using more “I” sentences than “you” sentences help manage situations better. Like, instead of saying “why are you being so disrespectful”, saying “I am not feeling comfortable with this” sounds far less aggressive. It helps turn the heat down while getting the message across.
2. How to stay calm in difficult situations
Demanding tough situations can make us feel frustrated or overwhelmed. See, what stresses us out about tough situations in the first place is focusing on the problem, like “How am I ever going to handle that?” and then all the “what if this happens, what if that happens?” come rushing into our mind. They can cause cognitive overload leaving very less energy or even mental space to focus on finding a solution or figuring out what to do next.
What to do instead:
1. Physiological sigh
The first thing to do is calm down physically… get out of that anxious, stressed state. So, do physiological sigh.
“Working with Jack Feldman’s Lab, our lab (Huberman Lab), and others, the Physiological sigh is the fastest hard-wired way for us to eliminate the stressful response in our body quickly in real time.”
– Andrew Huberman, renowned neuroscientist
When feeling stressed, do a double inhale with a double exhale – inhale, inhale, then exhale the double. The long exhales rids our body and blood stream of CO2 more effectively when we do a double inhale because that inflates also those little sacks of the lungs.
2. Change brain modes
Follow every “what if this happens” with a “If this happens then I will do that”. Even if we can’t come up with a convincing solution every time, the simple act of thinking intentionally to sort through the options and connect the dots will shift us out of the primal brain mode (which is where we are when feeling stressed) and shift more into the prefrontal cortex mode – the reasoning, creative thinking and solution finding part of our brain.
3. Close the worry loop
Also, coming up with even a tentative action plan can tune down those “what if” thoughts makes us feel more confident. And confidence is what helps us approach any situation with a calm mind. Psychologically, the action plan seems like a solution and closes the worry loop in our brain.
3. How to stay calm in any situation (even when there's fear of failure)
Worrying that things might not go as planned, or turn out as we want them to makes us overthink everything. It creates a pressure on performance. And trying to minimize the chances of failure, we overanalyze the situation trying to make everything as perfect as can be.
But explicit monitoring is actually counterproductive because it creates stress which lowers our cognitive performance. And so, knowing how to stay calm in any situation is a coping skill that exponentially improves our chances of succeeding.
What to do instead:
Watch the video up top to know what takes the pressure off of performance quickly.
Meet you right over there.
