Photographer: Triond’s Dee Huff

In the first half of this article we looked at several physical steps we could take towards making our response to stress a little less pronounced. Here we will mainly examine a few psyche related ways in which we would learn to calm ourselves. (These start from number 6 because this is the second half of an article).

6. Soothe With Water

Water has always been a source from which life is borne. A baby spends 40 weeks in a sac filled with water. In baptism, people are immersed to bury their old selves and to be re-born. Gardeners like myself, would instantly know when a plant is dying of thirst merely by the wretchedness of its stance. However, just a few drops of water could literally bring that half-dead living organism back to life.

In the process of diluting, water plays an essential role. Likewise, if stress is to be diluted, water is the salvation. Listen to running water in the garden, sit by a stream and read a book, go for a river ride and hear the water lapping against the boat, hydrate yourself by drinking a glass of water if you feel stressed at the end of the day. Sometimes, just the act of pausing everything else to pour yourself a glass of water, then drinking it, can absorb a lot of the frantic beeline to aggravation we take in our daily lives.

This is almost a cliché, but even having a long, warm aromatic soak in the bath is a simple, cheap, readily available, relaxing technique which shouldn’t be scoffed at just because it works so effortlessly.

7. Eat the Food of Love

When you feel stress coming on, or you know that you’ll have a problematic day ahead. Take out your old “happy occasion” music. This could be the songs you danced to when you were younger, or the tunes you played for your children when they were little, etc. Listen to these and try singing along. I’ve worked out that if you wait for when you’re happy and relaxed to sing along to your favourite music, it wouldn’t happen often enough. Instead, sing in order to become happy. This will sound impossible only until you’ve tried it and see that it truly works. Not only would the music remind you of good times, but singing along helps you to take your mind back and mentally participate in these occasions all over again.

8. Something for your Face

In the evenings, get a damp, wet towel and place it on your face. Not only would it soothe dry achy skin, but the warm moisture also absorbs stress and tension from your face. Stress causes us to unintentionally frown. Frowning often creates permanent frown lines which means that you look miserable and angry even when you’re not. Our faces somehow manage to remember each frown we’ve ever made, and makes us pay back in creases when we hit 40. We can’t have that.

Now the psychological benefits of having a tension free face is that we really do mirror the people with whom we come into contact. Do you know a person who’s tightly wound? How do you feel when you’re around this person? And the laid back people? Do you tend to let your stiff shoulders drop and sit in a more relaxed manner when you’re around them?

Our stress-free faces will encourage others to act calmly when they’re with us. If you notice that people stiffen up and sit straight when they’re with you, it’s because of what they can see in your face. Using your face to help others to relax, comes right back to you. Someone approaching to gear up for a fight, when met with a smiling, calm person, backs down. Their retreat means that you have no reason to stress.

9. Leave Some Things Undone

It is very difficult to keep calm in today’s world where success is no longer measured by who we are, but how much we’ve achieved. It has become acceptable to be as nasty and as cunning as possible as long as it can help us to achieve material success and world-wide fame.

Give yourself permission to leave tasks uncompleted when family and friends need you. You can’t concentrate fully on both. Remember if you were to die today, you wouldn’t regret not having completed the filing. Rather, you would feel terrible about neglecting that loved one who needed you. While striving to be a dependable worker, don’t fight too hard and stress over things which can be done later.

10. Be Happy With What’s Yours

Overburdening yourself to strive crazily for what you don’t need will only raise your stress levels. You work, you enjoy life and have your family and friends. Never mind what they have, you personally have more today than you did this time last year. Next year you will have still more. Your life is improving, maybe not at the same pace as the person’s next door, but they may have started way before you or may have had a boosting head start.

Be thankful for what you now have and start doing the things on your to-do list. Don’t wait for something else to fall into place before you begin. Start now, slowly at first, then pick up speed and keep on moving.