Finding Peace Amidst The Life’s Pressures

We live in a day when we are constantly under pressure to do more, be more and experience more. This new obsession with more is also creating more and more anxiety for a whole lot of people. Whether we’ve been formally diagnosed or we just know that stress and worry come naturally to us, we’ve got to learn how to negotiate the pressure cooker of life without getting cooked ourselves. So how do we reduce the anxiety that we feel in life without avoiding everything in life? How do we Find peace amidst the pressures of life? Here are five principles that make up the peace and help us more effectively manage the pressure.

Position Yourself In The Driver’s Seat

- You can’t fix something you don’t control consciously or subconsciously.

- When we feel like we’re a bystander instead of a driver, our worry and anxiety will go up.

- People are responsible for recognizing, understanding, and managing their emotions.

- Acceptance of responsibility can lead to making corrections, focusing on concerns or what can be influenced.

- See yourself as a “Free Agent” who can handle worries by aggregating new skills and awareness.

- Don’t assume that just because you don’t understand it, no one else does.

Elevate Your Emotional Awareness

- People who are more sensitive or feel more anxiety than others should understand the incredible benefits to this sensitivity.

- Skills to elevate emotional awareness include learning to feel, label, and release emotions.

- Stay in the present where you can work instead of the past or future.

- Distinguish between body, mind, and spirit.

- Understand why humans worry or feel anxious and how to recognize the body's response to worry.

Accelerate “Solutions” Not “Stories”

- Recognize when you’re feeling worried.

- Instead of debating the legitimacy of worries, focus on “How to” questions.

- Activate peaceful progress by asking “How to” rather than “How come me” questions.

- Change the response to worry and avoid getting trapped in discussing the worry itself.

Create a Collection of Healthy Alternatives

- Ask and answer the "How are you going to handle it now?" question.

- Get in your high brain by asking self-reflective questions.

- Practice deep breathing exercises.

- Intentionally assess your circle of influence, not your circle of concern.

- Practice getting present in the moment.

- Pray/Meditate/Connect to a higher power.

- Recite affirmations or mantras.

- Think and have a discussion with your “worry” role model.

- Reframe the issue.

- Intentionally gather conflicting data and make a case against yourself.

- Brainstorm 10 healthier reasons for feeling what you’re feeling.

- Manage your thinking by scheduling, planning, journaling, data dumping, or sharing your thinking.

Engage Your Essence And Write Your Calmness Code

- Connect deeply to your best, most purposeful self.

- Create a Calmness Code, a list of everything you can do to improve your response to stress, worry, and anxiety.

- Use it as a dashboard to monitor and measure what is working in your emotional management.

- Watch and measure continuously to prevent unhealthy patterns.

- Ensure you give yourself the best chance to handle the stresses of life.

Turn on the 4 lights:

1. Self Awareness
2. Empathy toward self.
3. Vision of ideal self
4. Conscience question.