Calmness isn’t something I was born with— however, I have been working on becoming calmer….for a long long time. Ha. I have found that the most grounded people don’t waste energy on things that drain them. They stay focused, control what they can, and let the rest go. I’m working on this myself every day. Want more peace in your life? Start by cutting out these things: {Click to Tweet }. AND this is a worthy goal. One to aspire to over my lifetime. So here are a few ways I am working on being calmer:
— Stop Beating Yourself Up: Your inner voice can be your greatest weapon or your biggest enemy. Practice the philosophy of Kintsugi and find beauty in imperfection. See the article below for more.
— Stop Holding Grudges: Resentment is like carrying a backpack full of rocks—it only weighs you down. The faster you let go, the lighter you’ll feel. Forgive, not for them, but for YOU. I have done a lot of work on this….and it’s great. Here is a good book on letting go.
— Stop Trying to Control Everything: Most things in life are out of your hands. Fighting reality only creates stress—calm people focus on controlling their attitude, effort, and response. Let go and move forward.
Calmness isn’t a personality trait—it’s a practice. Stop feeding stress, start protecting your peace, and build a Fantastic Life on your terms.
The Fantastic Life Rule #11:
Don’t Waste Time
How much time are you wasting on judgment and stress? Stop wasting time holding onto the past. Once you begin to let go of stress, you will start to see more time and brain capacity for regaining focus on making more positive changes.
4 Things Calm People Quit
Want to become calmer? Don’t do these 4 things.
By: Karo Wanner
July 15, 2024
Image by Freepik
I clicked ‘refresh’ and all my edits from today are gone. I had worked on this the entire day.
This can’t be true — I almost cried and I felt sick to the stomach.
The voice in my head had a short diva moment like in the Snickers advertisements.
‘The universe is against me. It will take me hours to redo this. I’m no able to do this again, it was so hard to finish this. The project is doomed….’
Then I jumped in, focused on my breath, and calmed myself.
The voice immediately changed from diva to diplomat — assessed the situation, made a plan, delivered a motivational pep talk, and moved on.
I’ll contact customer service and see if they can help and if not I’ll redo it. Every time I redo something it turns out even better. I can do hard things and I have grid. Nothing can stop me.
Who is this person?
Being able to regulate yourself in situations like this is a true superpower.
Want to be able to stay calm when life gives you lemons? Then stop doing these 4 things and do this instead.
As Robert Fulghum says:
Peace is not something you wish for,
it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.
They quit being their own harshest critic
All of us carry shame, and we are terrified people will discover our darkest secrets and biggest weaknesses.
The fear of judgment makes us create all these negative stories about ourselves, which run like a broken record as our daily narrative.
Calm people practice the philosophy of Kintsugi whether they are aware of it or not.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. In the late 16th and 17th centuries, pottery was extremely expensive, and when it broke, it was glued back together — the cracks were then covered with gold paint.
The imperfection makes the pottery unique. Kintsugi encourages us to take our disappointments and failures and transform them into something new.
Kintsugi doesn’t hide the flaws of an object, it does the opposite, it embraces them.
When you accept your flaws and see them as what makes you unique, your inner dialogue shifts.
Once you have accepted your flaws no one can use them against you. — George R. R. Martin
How to apply:
Don’t hide your imperfections — they are what makes you beautiful. As Isaac Fowler says ‘Your imperfections are marks of authenticity and that is the beauty of you.’
Next time you start criticizing yourself, visualize a broken pot with golden cracks and remind yourself:
It’s okay to be imperfect. I’m human and I’m doing the best I can.
With this strong visual and positive affirmation, you will dismantle the negative stories you believe about yourself and replace them with acceptance.
Never forget, just by being on this planet you deserve to be loved and to be cared for.
They quit holding on to grudges
An angry life is a miserable life.
Calm people learn this skill to let go of anger and frustration quickly and return to a calm and peaceful mind. Nobody is perfect, we have to be fair to ourselves and others and acknowledge this. Yung Pueblo puts it beautifully ‘In a world full of imperfect people, patience and forgiveness become essential.’
Neuroplasticity can be a curse or a blessing. It depends on how you use your brain. The more you allow yourself to be angry the stronger those parts of the brain get. This moves you further away from feeling calm and peaceful.
Why would you do this to yourself?
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
— Mark Twain
The earlier in life you work on the skill to let go the calmer you’ll be. Here’s how you can practice.
How to apply:
Feelings of anger when people hurt our feelings belong to the human experience. It’s normal to feel angry. But how you deal with your anger is another story.
When you feel angry, don’t push the emotion away. Sit with it, sit with it, sit with it. Focus on your breath and don’t feed your anger with thoughts.
Additionally, you can label your feelings ‘I’m getting angry, sad…’
After about 90 seconds you’ll feel better. According to Harvard brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, it takes only 90 seconds for an emotion to pass if you simply notice it.
They quit obsession with control
Humans love certainty. It makes us feel safe and it’s one of our core needs.
Unfortunately, there is very little we can truly control
When we don’t feel safe from within, we overcompensate by trying to steer people and circumstances. To get everybody to do exactly as you wish is impossible.
This only leads to disappointment — the only thing we can truly influence is our inner world.
Trying to control anything on the outside is like swimming against the current — tiring and leads you nowhere.
Don’t try to control what’s outside. Be at peace with what’s inside. — Judith Orloff
Calm people accept that truth. They focus on cultivating inner peace while letting go of the need to control others.
How to apply:
Awareness is key. Are there any situations or people you feel the need to control?
Visualize this situation. Then take a deep breath in and at the same time make fists.
Exhale, open your hands, and imagine how you release your grip on the situation.
They quit celebrating busyness as a badge of honor
Calm people celebrate the amount of time and freedom they have in their lives instead of keeping themselves busy, busy, busy.
95% of people tie their worth to achievements. It’s not a surprise and also not entirely your fault. Society teaches us to value power and material things. We have to work hard to get more things and that will finally make us happy.
It feeds on the idea that happiness comes at a later stage, first, you have to sacrifice.
The opposite is true. If you can be happy now with whatever your situation is, the likelihood is high that you will be happy if your external circumstances improve.
As Eckhart Tolle says ‘The present moment is all we have.’ Keeping yourself busy to fill an inner void will make you miserable and reactive.
The more time you can spend resting, taking care of yourself and focusing on the things that truly matter to you, the calmer you’ll be.
Being a busy idiot only leads to burnout.
When your body and mind don’t have time to recover you won’t have the mental energy to be calm in challenging situations.
Great peace is found in little busy-ness.
— Geoffrey Chaucer
How to apply:
Here are my golden wellbeing rules:
- Only do as much within one week, as you can recover from.
- Your mental and physical well-being today depends on your activities during the last 72 hours. Make sure intensive periods follow rest within that time frame.
- Do one thing for your mind and one for your body every day.
- The busier your life gets the more strict you should be on your mental well-being and exercise routines
- Stop people pleasing and only commit to things you have time for. Don’t compromise your health and well-being for busyness.