When you face challenging situations or people, how do you handle them?
If you find yourself boiling with anger, anxiety, disappointment, or other unpleasant emotions, it’s important to learn how to manage them. Feeling too much of anything can cause you to do and say things you regret later.
Without learning how to cope with your emotions, you’ll quickly find yourself in a downward spiral. Strengthening your emotional intelligence means you understand yourself as well as others so you can build successful relationships that are healthy, long-lasting, and fulfilling.
If you want to learn how to stay calm during stressful or difficult times, here are 3 tips to help you get started.
Practice Mindful Breathing
Breathing is a powerful way to manage and regulate your emotions. Unfortunately, most people aren’t aware that the way they breathe on a day-to-day basis is harmful for their health.
You can use your breath to control how you feel and therefore take better control of the situation. It’s easier to manage anger or stress when you know how to calm yourself down using mindful breathing techniques.
To practice mindful breathing, try to:
Concentrating on your breath helps you diminish your anxiety and cool off in a rather heated situation. Every time you breathe properly, you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers your blood pressure and heart rate.
Acknowledge How You Feel
A lot of the time, self-improvement begins with self-awareness. Being aware of your feelings is the first step to managing them so you can cope with uncomfortable situations and people.
When you feel stressed or unpleasant, acknowledge it head-on. Try not to think of your emotions as “good” or “bad” because they just are. They exist because you’re human and meant to experience a wide range of emotions. The problem isn’t that feelings exist but how you deal with them.
Denying how you feel only discourages self-awareness, so make sure you accept it. If you’re stressed, think about why that might be. Are you unable to stop worrying about that assignment creeping up? Have you set goals that feel impossible to reach? Did someone say something that hurt your feelings?
Identify the source of your discomfort so you can take the next step to deal with it. Whether that’s having a conversation with another person or writing in a journal, you can use open acknowledgment to move past the problem.
Listen to Music
Music has the power to influence our moods. It can greatly impact how you feel during challenging times and even help you get through them. Research from the University of Nevada shows that music can alter your brain functioning, reduce stress, and produce relaxation.
The next time you feel stressed or anxious, try putting on a soothing YouTube playlist made for calming nerves. There are tons of options available from people just like you looking for music to help them calm down.
Additionally, if you have a critical task you need to complete, then music can be just the thing to help you power through. Tunes with no lyrics and a consistent rhythm are usually the best types of music to be productive to.
Over to You
If you struggle with managing your stress, then these techniques should help you reframe your mindset and shift your focus. Learning how to cope with the wide range of emotions you feel is both crucial and necessary to live a fulfilling life with those you love. It’s also important to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable so you don’t crumble when inconvenient or challenging times hit. How will you keep your cool during stressful times?