Five Steps to Calm Stress and Emotional Frenzy

This is not the blog post I was planning on writing today. I had an entirely different topic outlined. That was before I received a message this morning from one of my list subscribers. She had received my email with the link to my newest “Calm Healthy Life Tip” audio, and it wouldn’t open.

Sure enough, when I went to test it, it wouldn’t open for me either. I received an error message telling me to contact my site administrator. Here we go again!

This was the same issue I have been dealing with on and off for about a month now. I thought it was resolved. My stress meter escalated instantly, and my frustration was enormous.

With a full day of work activities planned, I had no time, or tolerance, for my logical brain to be hijacked by my emotional brain. How easy would it be to shrug it all off, because I was finding it too hard to concentrate on anything else but the immediate problem at hand? That would only add to my stress as today’s “to-do” list (including writing a blog post) would not get done.

I had to find a way to calm down, respond logically and get on with my day.

Have you ever been there? So stressed that you couldn’t concentrate, and all you wanted to do was lash out and place the blame on someone or something?

We all have experiences where unforeseen circumstances derail our best-laid plans. The busier and more fulfilling our lives, the greater the chance of issues arising weekly, if not daily, that will stress us out and cause emotional frenzy.

If we don’t learn how to stay calm, it can severely impact our health and happiness. Chronic stress has been shown to be at the root of so many problems: high blood pressure, increased risk of diabetes, obesity, insomnia, and depression just to name a few.

I have created a five-step process to handle emotional frenzy when it rears its ugly head. Perhaps you can use these steps to help you calm down and focus the next time life deals you an unexpected, and not so pleasant, card.

1. 1. 1. Take a few deep cleansing breaths. This will calm the “fight or flight” response your body immediately goes into whenever a perceived threat occurs. Those deep inhalations and exhalations slow down your heart rate and breathing, and flood your brain with the oxygen it needs to think clearly.

• Evaluate what is within your control at the moment and follow through. What resources do you have available to resolve the issue as quickly as possible? For me, it meant contacting my website administrator and alerting him to the problem. Thankfully, between the use of texting and emails, we were conversing within a few minutes.

• Talk back to the catastrophic voice in your head. When problems occur, we go right to the worst-case scenario. Often those horrors are assumptions, not fact. Remind yourself that those probably will not occur. I worried that all my followers would unsubscribe from my list, annoyed by links that don’t open. My hard work spent building my platform would take a major backslide. I reminded myself that ten years of establishing a relationship with my followers would not be destroyed by one minor hiccup. Yes, I might lose a few, but most are loyal and way more understanding than I was giving them credit for.

• Do something that you know will calm you down. If you are still feeling agitated even after attending to all that is within your control, distraction is a great tool. What tends to relax you when you are feeling the most upset? I headed to the gym, turned on my music, and took out my frustrations on the treadmill. The problem was not resolved, but I felt a heck of a lot better.

• Let it go and absorb yourself in something else. If you’ve done all you could to handle the problem, and you can’t resolve it until a later time, get on with your business. My web administrator arranged for the tech team to explore the issue, and set up a conference call for later this afternoon. With nothing else I could do at this time, I sat down to write my blog.

Hopefully, you will find this five-step process helpful the next time life throws you a stress producing curveball. If you have any tips that help you manage stress, please share them in the comments box below.