While going through the self check-out recently, I witnessed what is no doubt a frequent grocery store event - a spectacular, full-bodied toddler meltdown. The drama, the tears, the anger - an overreaction to something seemingly small, but very real and relevant to the child. How we respond to a distressed child has a direct impact on its behaviour. While our first instinct might be to lecture or discipline, we all know that kindness and understanding generally work better. Helping the child to breathe and relax goes a long way towards its ability to self-soothe in the future.
But let's be honest, emotional self-regulation isn’t just hard for toddlers - many of us struggle with it throughout our adult lives. How often are we standing at the self check-out feeling tired, frazzled, or overwhelmed? How often do we take the time to do a self check-in? To breathe and take a moment to center ourselves. Here are some simple yet effective things we can do to embrace the relaxed way of life we might be craving:
Reframe Relaxation: Too often we think of relaxation as something that is the opposite of work and chores - a vacation or an activity we have to carve out time for. This line of thinking makes our daily responsibilities feel like a burden, and means that we can only be relaxed under certain conditions. Yet relaxation can be more of an orientation towards life. We can, in a sense, be relaxed all the time, as we are doing day to day things - meeting with clients, cleaning the house, walking our pets. Living this way brings a lightness to life. It also allows us to develop a quiet inner confidence, that no matter what is going on around us, we can rise to the occasion and figure out what needs to be done.
Practice Urge Surfing: Our behaviour during times of stress, is typically very reactive. We have a thought or feeling and we follow it, often down a rabbit hole. But if we stay still and pay attention something curious happens. Things pass, sometimes much faster than we think. Andy Puddicombe, former Buddhist monk and Headspace founder, points out that we are good at knowing when a particular feeling wells up and peaks. But we rarely notice when a feeling subsides and ends. Observing the full wave of an emotion until it passes is often called 'urge surfing'. This practice allows us to feel more in control, rather than being at the mercy of our own knee jerk reactions that keep us from feeling relaxed.
Keep things simple: Leading a relaxed life is much more feasible if we simplify the small things that cause stress - many of them of our own doing. In his Ted Talk on staying calm, Canadian neuroscientist Daniel Levetin reminds us of how cortisol hijacks our rational thinking under stress. Our minds become too clouded to even recognize that we are being irrational. He suggests simplifying our lives by having processes in place to manage all the little things that trip us up on a daily basis. He gives the example of having a consistent place to put things that we lose easily - keys, glasses, wallets - so that we don't get frantic looking for them. Changing such seemingly small habits can add up to a more relaxed day.
Conduct a pre-mortem: For bigger situations in life that are more fraught with risk Levetin also suggests we prepare in advance. He recommends conducting what his friend, economist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann, calls a 'pre-mortem'. This involves imagining how we might handle big stress-inducing things in our lives - like facing health issues, moving to a new place or starting a new job - and preparing our response to them while we are calm. By thinking through what could go wrong in each situation and how we want to manage our emotions, this exercise can help us stay more relaxed as and when those big things come to fruition.
Maybe right now, being a relaxed person seems like an impossibility to some of us, something that only a lucky few can achieve. But by implementing one or more of these ideas, we can move closer to embodying relaxation and integrating it into everything we do.