Three Simple Ways to Stay Calm

These simple Mindfulness tips may help you navigate every day-challenges, tame worry and tune into your surroundings with greater awareness and allow you to tap into a deep well of resilience — for yourself and for those around you. 

1. Give yourself some breathing room.

You can use this meditation to develop your ability to ground yourself whenever difficult events or emotions arise. This practice allows us to return to present-moment awareness, and to fully find ourselves at any moment, regardless of what we happen to be occupied with at the time. When we give ourselves room to be still and breathe, we can approach difficulty with more equanimity and compassion for ourselves and others.

2. Investigate your emotions.

Emotions deserve and are worthy of our attention, respect and care. Getting familiar with how emotions feel in our body as well as our mind can help us respond to our emotions skilfully rather than reacting mindlessly. When we allow our emotional lives to inform us, rather than control us, we give ourselves space to ask the very important question: “what is needed right now?”

3. Connect with compassion for yourself and others.

In response to painful experiences, most of us would probably like to respond with compassion, but we may not have the tools to put our intention into practice. And it isn’t easy. The starting point is getting in touch with our empathy and shared humanity. When we allow ourselves to actually touch with our hearts the pain of what’s difficult—the fear, the anger, the hurt—what arises is a natural tenderness. What we want to practice is allowing ourselves to get really close to that human experience, to tend to it.