What distinguishes the successful from the unsuccessful, besides how much they can persevere, is how they respond to situations. The successful ones see a serious situation and know that they mustn’t react but act. But others may not react in the same manner and may begin to panic instead.
Subjecting yourself to stress and anxiety can make your health suffer from long term damage and in turn decrease your ability to perform at optimal levels.
Most successful athletes, entrepreneurs and artists have one thing in common which is one of the many but perhaps the most important skill without which they wouldn’t have reached the pinnacle of success. This thing that we are referring to is the ability to remain calm and functional under pressure.
Following are tips that should help you to remain calm in stressful situations:
Slow Down
Encountering a situation and reacting immediately can be counter productive. It is a better idea to keep some patience and gather as much information as you can about the situation before reacting to it.
Understand the long term impact of the peril at hand and evaluate if it will still matter a year from now. If you believe that it will still be important you must try to withdraw yourself from the situation and try to analyse the situation from the standpoint of a company representative. This approach will improve your ability to take decisions by making you less emotional in nature.
Staying Positive
It is natural for your mind to wander in a thousand directions when you are faced with a negative situation and it is even possible that your thoughts may turn negative for a while.
The more distracted your mind is, the more difficult it will prove for you to remain calm. A thought you must particularly block from entering your mind is imagining the worst case scenario. Instead it will be better to adjust the focus of your mind on something positive and let go of the negative thoughts.
Abandon ‘What If?’
The most inappropriate question that you can ask yourself or others in a stressful situation is ‘what if?’ Questioning along these lines can force you to process situations which haven’t occurred and may not even occur. These questions can induce panic and build up fear in your mind, artificially inflating the problem into something bigger than what it really is.
Take Care
You must make it a priority to take care of your health. This should equip you with a better physical and mental ability to deal with crisis. Taking care of your health includes eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly and getting plenty of sleep everyday.
You can reduce the level of stress hormones in your body by exercising and in this way make your body function at its optimal level. By working on your health you are also indirectly working on the level of your self control, emotional intelligence and also memory.
As we already know these are important characteristics that help people to respond to emergencies in a positive way. If your team is going through a difficult time you can consider going on a corporate day out.
Limit Consumption of Caffeine
In the middle of a tense situation, you may be tempted to run to the coffee machine several times a day and consume multiple cups of coffee in a short span of time.
Caffeine may give you a quick burst of awareness and energy as it triggers a release of adrenaline. But it mostly ends with irritability and fatigue. Instead of increasing your caffeine consumption you should look to increase your water intake and hydrate yourself at regular intervals.
Develop a Coping Strategy
When facing a crisis you may be tempted to put in extra hours of effort at office or even work at weekends. By doing this you may unknowingly inflict long term damage to your health if you are continuously in a state of stress. This may also affect your ability to make informed and rational decisions.
To cope with situations in a healthy way you should create a ritual that you thoroughly enjoy. Different people may include different things in their ritual such as some may opt for meditation while some may go for exercise or a morning run. Having such a ritual should give you the power to deal with stressful situations without feeling stressed.
