3 Secrets for a Living a Calm Life
Picture a calm and smiling you, floating through your day, not a care in the world …
There’s your ever-thoughtful partner. Here come your perfect kids – checking to see if you need a hand. And there are your work colleagues, those smooth operators who deftly lift weight from your shoulders.
Down you sit to check your email. Your social media. The news. Mmmm … delightful. All is well in the world!
Sound nice? Sure. But it’s hardly real life, is it?
In real life, you relentlessly juggle more than you can handle. The humans you share life with are not flawless beings (and, let’s be honest, neither are you). And the world … well, it’s a mess.
That reality isn’t about to change.
So, if you don’t want to lose it completely, it’s you that’ll have to change.
The secrets you’re about to read will show you how. So you can stay calm as real life hurls eggs at you.
Neglect these secrets at your peril
I bet you’ve tried many of the usual tips for feeling calmer, like:
- Getting better sleep
- Improving your diet
- Practising mindfulness or Yoga
- Reducing the nerve-sizzling virtual background whirr
- Simplifying your life
- Dealing with things (rather than burying your head in the sand)
All important.
But if any of the secrets below is missing, you’ll just keep nibbling at the edges of lasting calm.
Secret One – Change your mind – through your body …
Whether you feel stressed or calm is all about you. Not your circumstances.
Ouch … I get it if that sounds a bit harsh. And, yes, of course, it’s easier to make like Buddha when things are going your way. But you know all too well that life’s not always easy.
So, unless you’re happy being tossed here and there by everything that happens to you, you need to anchor yourself in calmness on the inside.
But how? I’ll get there in a moment …
First, understand that humans wear invisible glasses. We each have our own unique lenses (created by the life experiences that mould our beliefs and thoughts).
Yours might be star-shaped, mauve, thick. Mine heart-shaped, red, undulating.
Our jazzy glasses distort our view of reality. And determine our particular conditioned responses to life. Overwhelmed. Angry. Sad. Stressed. Frightened. Violent. Despairing.
That doesn’t make for a calm and peaceful life.
For that, you have to take back control. So you can choose your response to whatever life throws at you. And that means unravelling the mental patterns shaping your lenses.
“Yeah, right – I’ve been trying to do that for years, but I never get far.”
Perhaps you’ve been doing it wrong.
You can’t change your mind with just your mind.
Why? Because your mind is the problem! AND because your life experiences are written into your tissues. So, strangely, the way to change your mind is through your body.
No, that doesn’t mean that any old movement will do. And, nope, not even any old Yoga.
But the right kind of embodied movement will remould your lenses so you can see what’s in front of you for what it is and respond in calmer ways …
Secret Two – Stop living in top gear only
Take a look out the window.
What season is it – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter? Now name three qualities of that season.
That was easy, right? Because we’re familiar with nature’s seasons. With how they look and feel. And with the crucial role each plays in the cycle of life.
But we’ve forgotten that we’re nature too.
And that every bodily process, every movement, every creative project, every activity has a beginning, a peak, a winding down and an end.
It’s nature’s way.
But we don’t live that way. We’ve been conditioned to push on through – full throttle, onwards and upwards. Always in Summer.
And we wonder why we’re fried!
Just think how quickly the natural world would go awry if it stayed in Summer all year around.
So let me guess. You’ve been neglecting your Inner Spring, Autumn and Winter? If so, you’re fighting against yourself most of the time.
Try this. In the next Moon cycle (New Moon = Day 1), could you adapt the way you come at life according to the lunar ‘season’? (See image or read about tracking natural cycles).
When you stop wrestling with forces bigger than you, your stress levels will plunge. And you’ll harness qualities you never knew you had.
Secret Three – Get clear how you want to feel
Perhaps you’ve already envisioned how you want your calm and peaceful life to look.
But it hasn’t helped. Maybe it’s made things worse. That’ll happen if we future-gaze from a state of not-enoughness – because we attract more of the same.
So let’s try another way.
Start with your vision. But plant its seed in positive soil. So pamper yourself a little first. And don’t do this when you’re feeling rubbish.
You’ll also want to infuse that seed with what really matters to you. So take time to reflect.
Done? Now for the magic bit.
How does your envisioned future make you feel? Hopefully calm and peaceful. But what are the actual sensations in your body?
Don’t rush this. Listen inwards. Then take a snapshot of that embodied feeling.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR YOUR DREAM FUTURE TO FEEL THIS WAY.
You can choose to feel like this now. In any situation.
Give it a go. Whatever’s going on, just bring your vision to your mind and soak its feeling through your body.
With this tool in your toolbox, you can flick the switch from stressed to calm at will.
But that’s not all. The more you hold onto this feeling, the more you’ll lay the pathway towards your peaceful life. Because we create our reality from the inside out.
Ready to live that calm life?
Ironically, there was an unseemly punch-up between other calming nuggets that wanted to make this list. And I get why they’re so furious because they’re important too.
But these three are the foundation. Ignore them and you’ll get nowhere.
So embrace them. And you’ll supercharge your way to living a calm life.
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