On Stress and Handling Rough Situations…

A frequent comment I get about my work ethic is how well I keep calm in bad situations.  I’ll admit that this is a very true fact.  It could be the zombie apocalypse and you’d want me on your team because I’d be the one telling you to just shut up so that we could blow up some ugly faces and get sh*t done.

In the real world, without zombies and a supple supply of Twinkies, I manage to stay calm during the most stressful times. Whether it’s event planning, rush hour at a café, or a woman’s artery randomly exploding and gushing blood all over merchandise at Sears (true story), I remain calm, and organized.  So what is my mind process during these times? “Just do what you can to get it done.” 

Stress is a murderer, it will make any person stumble and make mistakes, keeping a clear mind and understanding that you just need to get to your objective is key.  Take a deep breath, and keep going.  I find that taking short minute breaks here and there to just close my eyes, stretch, and taking a deep breath is very important.  Keeping objects near by that make you smile is also a good idea, as when you’re feeling stress you can look or hold the object and remind yourself that there is a reason you’re doing this.

If you fail, you crash and burn… but as a wise character once said: “Why do we fall sir? So we might learn to pick ourselves up.”  Even though this was said in a movie setting, it still covers real life.  Even if you have the best intentions in the world, sometimes we still make mistakes. By always being self-aware we can learn to never repeat the same mistakes and failures.  Obviously, it’s good to learn from others failures too…

Now, for bad situations there’s a bit of a different trick.  Yes, I know stress and bad situations go hand in hand, but there’s no reason to let it.  When you’re boss is yelling at the team for making a mistake, just listen.  Don’t defend yourself, or anyone else. Just. Listen.  The deed is done, and now you must understand what went wrong so that you can fix it and make sure it doesn’t repeat itself.  It doesn’t even matter if you didn’t have anything to do with the mistake, and everything you did was correct. You are on a team, and therefore you were part of the mistake.  By just shutting up and letting your boss, manager, whomever, rant, you are doing them a favor.  They are under a lot of stress too –half the time they are just having a rough day and you were the straw that broke the camels back.  

Another key thing about all these situations is that you can’t take it personally.  Everyone makes mistakes, has a bad day, or ends up in bad situations.  Someone’s almost always has been in the same spot as you.  Just take a deep breath and keep going.

Anyways, what good is getting mad, stressed, and snappy at everyone anyways?  That’s no way to make friends.

Night time is another point of the day that can get stressful, all we want to do is lay down and go to sleep – but our minds go on and on, keeping us up until the early hours.  So how to we solve this problem?  I for one have even had this issue, even though I can keep calm in most situations, my mind can still wander at night.  

Don’t stay in bed and try to sleep.  The silence will destroy you.  Turn on the radio, the TV or something to distract your mind.  Go read a book even! Soon your mind will be occupied and you will feel calm enough to sleep.  A glass of white wine can also do the trick; one glass at night is actually healthy for you.  It will calm you and leave your body at ease.  One thing to keep in mind though is to not over drink… keep it to just enough to get you a calming ‘buzzed’ feeling.  Just make sure when you are trying to sleep to stay away from the computer, social media and news will just keep your brain pulsating more with information and drama.  

Also, electronic screens (this includes the tv) can mess up your body’s ability to correctly produce Melatonin (In non-scientific terms: The stuff that makes you able to sleep).  I tend to turn off the backlight on my LED tv to dim down the brightness, and turn down the screen on my laptop to the lowest setting.  You don’t need such brightness at night.  If you would like more information about that, take a look at this article by Life Hacker: http://lifehacker.com/5158832/flux-changes-your-screen-brightness-by-time-of-day

So, how to conclude this?  The key thing to take out of this is to understand that there will be obstacles and failures in life, so you just have to walk a different path sometimes to get to your goal.  Take a deep breath, and remind yourself why you are trying to be successful.  I mean, honestly, do you really want to let those zombies eat you? You’re too awesome for that.