Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today's edition of 'Conscious living with Purnima'. In today's post I share with you some ways you can stay calm despite the presence of stress & overwhelm in your life.
Hope you find it useful.
Most of us adults have an underlying stress that we carry with us. The uncertainty of the future, stress of accomplishing day to day tasks and the striving to secure a brighter future can have us living our lives in a preoccupied & rushed manner. This preoccupation can exacerbate our inability to find joy or relax while we are overwhelmed with tasks.
It's important that we cultivate the capacity to stay peaceful and present because stress and overwhelm can be our constant companions for a long time. And if we wait for them to go, we might miss several precious years of our life.
So, in today's post I have some techniques you can use to calm your nerves and breathe. These are methods I use myself and find useful:
1. Acknowledge your stress:
When I am stressed with something, I like to repeat to myself, "I am feeling stressed". Just identifying and labeling my emotion feels powerful and makes me feel more in control.
Give it a try. The next time you encounter a stressful emotion, label it.
2. Step out of reactivity with a positive self-talk:
We are reactive when on autopilot. But once we have found the sacred pause (this is key), it is possible to step out of the reactive mode. We can remind ourselves that we don't have to live our lives in an overly reactive way - whether we missed a show, the maid didn't turn up, or we have a zillion things to attend to, we still have the choice to step out of the autopilot response of losing our cool.
And instead choose to become curious about how things will pan out while doing the best we can.
3. Stop the running:
I find overly stressed people all the time on a run. I have seen this in my clients with high stress jobs. They will miss the initial diaphragmatic breathing and intention setting part of the class and run before cooldown.
This non-stop running with no conscious effort to slow down and breathe can be physiologically detrimental in the long run.
When I was reflecting on my own day, I realised as soon as I woke up, soon after brushing, I would head straight to the kitchen to get stuff done. Last week onwards I changed my routine just a little bit. Instead of heading straight into the kitchen, I sit quietly for 5 minutes. And I realised this new routine enhances my capacity to remain mindful for the next few hours. Just like an intermittent workout, we can look at intermittent periods of quiet. While many of us may struggle to pull out a 20-minute chunk to sit & meditate, we can easily pull out 5, at different times during the day. In the end, it all adds up & builds our capacity for awareness and presence.
As a new week starts tomorrow, reflect on your own style of handling daily stress. Are you able to calm yourself amidst overwhelm? Able to see the simple joys around you even though you may have an important deliverable to attend to? Just begin paying attention.
Leaving you with a book recommendation:
Silence - The power of quiet in a world full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh.
I finished reading this last week. Always been a fan of Thich Nhat Hanh. I love the simplicity and profundity of his messages. If you haven't yet explored his teachings, then I highly recommend you do.
As always the best to look forward on a Sunday morning. Loved the messages, and the book recommendation too.