7 Ways to Calm Yourself when Life is Getting Tough

They may not all be 100% suitable for you, but I hope you can get at least one thing from this article and apply it in your life.

Here are seven ways to calm yourself when life is getting tough:

Go for a walk

Walking can help you calm down in numerous ways, it can help reduce anxiety and even burn some calories! Now, this may sound silly because you walk every day and life still gets tough. However, how often you go for a walk can really make a big difference in how it benefits you.

In the summertime, I love to go for power walks and because I love it so much; I sometimes tend to walk for hours! The most I’ve walked (excluding hikes) in a single session was 21KM and I did this in a little under 2 hours. I genuinely felt so amazing afterwards! (And tired)

Here are a few benefits that I noticed within the first few weeks of consistently going for walks:

• Constantly moving and tapping into my unused energy helped me fight off symptoms of anxiety.
• I was able to get my breathing under control and I could feel that I’m beginning to breathe more efficiently.
• With my breathing under control, I noticed that I had a higher level of focus and it allowed me to block out all distractions

With all this, came the opportunity for me to reflect on goals, plan my future days ahead and ultimately meditate as I would eventually enter a flow, that I can’t really explain. It felt amazing, nonetheless.

Be Generous

Generosity is one of the many traits that lead to a happy life. However, making it a habit is much easier said than done, especially in todays society. If only we truly understood what being generous does to our mental health; we would be like that more often.

Have you ever heard of the saying ‘Being generous makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside’? Well, maybe not that exact saying but you know what I mean! Whenever I commit an act of generosity, I get the feeling that I did the right thing and that just brightens up my mood every single time.

Being generous doesn’t have to be giving money to the poor, in fact, it could be as simple as smiling at someone. A smile is contagious and the fact that you smiled at someone, it could make their whole day much better. At the end of the day, we are not the only ones going through a tough time.

Identify what triggers you

Being able to identify what triggers you is an important skill to have as it’s the first step in preventing that which gets you agitated, depressed or anxious. While we are not machines or programs, you can consider it like a debugging technique and once we identify the bug, we can prevent it from affecting us in the future.

Once you have identified what triggers you, it is of the utmost importance that you apply self-compassion. Maybe you just jumped to a conclusion? Think about what your close friends would tell you in this situation? Talk to someone about it, there’s no shame in sharing how we feel with those that we care about and those who care about us.

Be Organized

To understand how organization impacts our mental health, we first need to understand how disorganization impacts it. Being disorganized often contributes to our stress and depression. When you’re not able to finish a certain project, or if you are constantly in a messy environment; you usually don’t feel too good about yourself.

You need to identify what is causing you to be disorganized, perhaps it’s because you’ve never really been organized before, or maybe it’s because you don’t have much time to get everything in order. Identify the cause and address it.

Here are the following benefits of being organized:

• Makes you more productive
• Reduces depression and anxiety
• Increases your confidence in completing a task/project
• Allows you to free up time and do the things that interest you

And more…

Prioritize Your Day

determine the order for dealing with (a series of items or tasks) according to their relative importance

Life is all about priorities. Your tasks all have a certain level of importance, some more than others, and prioritizing is essentially putting those tasks in the order of importance. This also applies to our energy level, both mentally and physically, where we can conserve and utilize our energy in the most efficient way possible.

Furthermore, prioritization is proven to be a factor in driving away stress, anxiety, or being physically tired. It gives us a sense of order, where we feel more confident knowing that we have control over our day.

Sleep

This is one of the most obvious things, but I feel like we need a reminder every now and then on the value of sleep. Not only does sleep help you relax and rest at the end of your day, but its secondary effects also include relief of stress and anxiety. Sleep is an instinct of our body which heals us and allows us to start the new day fresh and energetic while feeling confident in our abilities.

Additionally, sleep helps our heart stay healthy, it essentially reduces the risk of heart disease by releasing hormones in our body while we sleep. It is also proven to help aid in weight loss, it regulates our immune system and so much more. You see, we need sleep to stay alive, so make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

Improve your self-talk

Photo by Min An: Pexels

We may not always be able to control everything that happens to us in life, but we do have the power to control the way we think and react to those events. Self-talk is essentially what we tell ourselves inside our head, it’s that little voice that’s always talking.

I’m sure you’ve seen in cartoons or some TV shows, the little angel and devil on the shoulders of a character. They pop up when the character is trying to decide on how to react to a certain situation etc. We all know that the character shouldn’t listen to the little devil and that the angel is giving the right advice. Well, it’s not that simple for the character you see, and it’s easy for us to know because we’re looking at it through hindsight.

Assume you are that character, and that you know the tiny devil is very persuasive and convinces you to take his advice instead. What do you do you in these situations? You must train yourself to listen to the little angel, by talking positively to yourself and by avoiding the use of negative words when you are listening to that little voice in your head.

Don’t exaggerate a situation more than it is, avoid telling yourself ‘‘this is a mess’’ but rather ‘’This is a problem and I need to address it’’. Be kind to yourself, be realistic and most importantly; always look for a solution rather than just giving up right away.

Conclusion

Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. We all have the power to overcome any situation if we just believe in ourselves. It’s important to understand that change doesn’t always happen overnight. Good things take time, they are good because we put time into them. We need to stay consistent.

I hope that whatever tough time you’re going through, you overcome it and live your life the way you want to live. If you’re not there yet, it’s okay — let’s take it one step at a time!