How to Stay Calm At All Times

Author: Tommy Leung | 02.06.2009 | Category: Life

Some people are constantly worried about something. It could be anything: large, small, unknown, it doesn’t matter.

Then there are people who are easily panicked. It only takes something small to go wrong and the entire world is falling down around them.

And then there are those who are sturdy like an oak tree. It doesn’t matter what is blowing up around them, they are still as calm as can be. I’m one of those people. I don’t know if this is something innate or if I developed it over time. I do know how I deal with high stress, sporadic situations.

The Art of Thinking Later

This is probably the most effective way to stay calm during any situation. You think about whatever bad news you just got later. Don’t think about it right now and certainly don’t dwell on it right now. Everything always looks worse at the time if you keep thinking about it.

Process the information in a few seconds and then put it on the back burner for later. You don’t need to think about it right now. The idea is to forget about it but, recognize the information you just received. The only way to act rationally and calmly is to be rational and calm.

The less you think about what you just heard, the less you’ll feel about it. The smaller a role emotions play, the more logical you will be. There is no time to feel right now. You need to act right now. You can feel later.

For example, you are driving in a car and for some reason the car in front of you stops abruptly, you are driving a little too close, and the ground is slippery. You slam the breaks because that is your first reaction. You car doesn’t stop but instead slides. You know it is inevitable that you are going to rear-end the car in front.

Most people are going to panic when they slam the breaks to try and avoid an accident. Once the car starts sliding, they panic even more because the breaks didn’t work. At that level of panic, there is no more thinking for most people. For anyone who has ever been in a car accident, you would know they are highly stressful situations.

My example has happened to me. The funny part of the story is that it was my friend driving in front of me and she stopped short on a yellow light that I thought she was going to pass. It had just rained so the ground was a little wet. I slammed my breaks when it was apparent that I didn’t have sufficient room to make a normal stop. My car slid instead of stop.

I applied the art of thinking later right there. The second I knew my car was not going stop in time, I processed the information and forgot about it. My next thought was “how do I avoid this accident?”. This led me to look at my side mirror. My mind was formulating a plan to steer away. I was clear to go into the left lane but, I didn’t. In the couple of seconds that I had to figure out the best course of action, I had decided that I didn’t have room to go left without still hitting the car in front of me. In those seconds, I had also decided that a head on bumper-to-bumper hit would have been least damaging.

In the end, there was still an accident but, no one got hurt and both cars are doing fine.

Find an Immediate Solution

The next thing to do after you’ve decided to think about it later is to use the information you just received and act on it. You don’t want to freeze up or become mentally incapacitated. The quicker you switch your brain to “how” the less you’ll think about what just happened and the less you’ll mix in emotions.

Don’t think about “what”, think about “how”. Once you can move your thinking to “how”, your frame of mind changes. You need a quick solution that you can act on right now to help mitigate the problem. It doesn’t have to be perfect. it just has to move the situation towards recovery. Doing nothing will increase the feeling of panic on your end and of those around you if no one else is going to step up.

The same night after I had gotten into that car accident, I drove the car home. I probably should have known better than to drive on the highway with my hood in the condition that it was in. I didn’t know better and I did go on the highway.

So while I was on the highway, my hood flipped up and covered my entire windshield. I couldn’t see anything. Luckily, this was at 1AM or so, and not many people were around. Nonetheless, the highway had shoulders and turns. I couldn’t see any of it.

First reaction was, “holy shit!”. I didn’t actually say it but, that’s how I felt. Very quickly, I processed the direness of my situation and forgot about it. Next step was to come up with an immediate solution to not die. The first thing I did was slow down. It was the most logical thing to do.

The next thing I did was I used the small space left by the hood in the center bottom of the windshield to see ahead of me. Now that I had some sense of what was in front of me, I found a place to pull over, get out of the car, and putl the hood back down.

I was luckily near an exit and slowly drove to it so that I could take the local streets. By no means was my heart not beating out of my chest and my body not shaking like a leaf in the wind. If the accident I had earlier in the night was high stress, this incident was off the charts.

Sleep On It

I eventually drove myself home and just went to bed. It was a little too much. I just decided to forget about it until the next morning. There was no point in thinking about it, there was nothing I could do.

In the same sense, while you should come up with an immediate solution, it should not be a commitment. Do not make commitments in the heat of the moment. No matter how calm you can be or how well you have mastered the art of thinking later, there is going to be some affect on your mental state.

Don’t make solid commitments until you’ve had time to think it over. You need to sort out all that happened after the fact. You will be more calm because you’ll have realized that you are still alive and the world is still turning. Whatever your problem is, it can be fixed.

Plan in Advance

No one can predict the future. It is never possible to know when unwanted things happen to us. However, sometimes we do know when they can happen. If we are aware of a scenario where something can go wrong and will cause great panic, we should play it through in our minds and find a plausible solution.

It isn’t real if it is just happening in your head. So you don’t need to worry–it isn’t real, you are just preparing. If you know that there is a chance that something can go wrong, come up with a solution in advance. Come up with a few. So if it does happen, you will not feel as shocked and you’ll have a solution. To you, it has already happened before.

Athletes put the mind to great use. They imagine themselves doing well in their sport and it is similar to practicing. There is never a substitute to doing the real thing but, the best alternative is to go through the steps in your mind. It will prepare you mentally. Staying calm is about the mind.

Put Things into Perspective

The quickest thing to do is to put things into perspective. The perspective I am talking about is to ask yourself if someone is going to die. If no one’s life is at risk, you don’t have a problem. Most things are easily reduced to a small nuisance compared to death.

The fact of the matter is, it isn’t that important if no one is doing to die. It might be inconvenient. Someone might be disappointed. You might not get what you want. Plans might fall through. But, as long as no one is dead, there is still tomorrow.

If you can master the art of thinking later, the rest is easy to do. Once you are no longer overcome by the immediate emotional reaction of bad news or bad events, your thinking will be many times clearer. It is all about thinking clearly during distressing times. It will take effort to get a point where even some of the most ridiculous “bad luck” can’t shake you.

Being able to keep your sanity is worth the effort. Life is too short to be constantly living in a state of fear, worry, or panic.

By Tommy Leung