As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Teach me how to become the calmest person in the world
Peas
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Please bestow the knowledge and techniques of being the ultimate chill guy on me o wise ones
0
Posts
If you're experiencing severe anxiety or anger might be worthwhile to see a medical professional for help too.
Like, is this a work thing? Are you constantly mumbling obscenities under your breath at the sheer idiocy of the world you deal with?
Is this anxiety in your free time? Like you've got too much to do, and not enough time to do it so you don't know how to start?
Or is this more a recreational kind of looking to chill? Looking to be more easy going in new environments or groups?
We're all here to help, but we need to know what help you're looking for.
I have the tendency to go from 0 to 1000 panic under duress
General chill is good too
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
With the drawback of having a personality like a rock.
I'm not sure such overwhelming passivity and patience is what you're after though.
Some combination of:
Overall studying it, with it's focus on that sometimes the best action is non-action, means it has a pretty chill approach to life without resorting to nihilistic cynicism.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
If no, then I shouldn't worry. What will happen will happen and it's out of my control.
If yes, then I shouldn't worry. I have the power to change this situation so I should do so.
It doesn't make the stress or panic disappear instantly, but it helps me work to discard frivolous worries and focus on what's important.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
1) When stressing over decisions due to risks, I run a quick "What's the worst that could realistically happen?" scenario. Say, for example, when I tried to run ethernet lines upstairs through my house. I put it off for the longest time because I was worried about what might go wrong, until I thought it over and realized the literal worst thing that could happen is that I would need to replace some drywall and repaint if I fucked up. And I did indeed fuck up, and punched through the drywall over the living room by accident. Oh well.
2) It's okay to fuck up. Repeat it to yourself: It's okay to fuck up. Nobody is good at things the first time. Or the second time. Or often the tenth time. You can and will fuck up, many many times. It's how you learn. This sounds like common sense, but I know many people who won't try things because they don't want to fail. Fail often. Once you get accustomed to failure, once failure is less scary, you'll feel a lot more free to experiment and try new things.
3) Change the things you can, ignore the ones you can't. It's an old line but it's true. Focus on the choices that are in your control and you can do something about. Feeling in control of something helps me feel calmer. The economy might be crashing as we speak, but I can't do anything about that, so there's no point looking at my savings and tracking how much money I lost today. Instead, I can focus on selling some stuff in the garage I've been procrastinating on and putting that money in savings instead. Try not to stress about whether the actions you can take are enough to prevent some unforeseen disaster (my garage craigslisting isn't going to save me if I lose my job) - the idea is to give yourself a feeling of control over a situation.
4) Even if you're not calm, try to act calm. Slow down, deep breaths, keep your voice level. Panic induces panic, and keeping a veneer of calm, however thin, calms the people around you. That's not to say that you should hide your emotions from the people around you; I was open with my wife about being upset when I lost my job. But you can be upset and stressed and still be calm. "It's okay, I have a plan, I have these people to talk to today and I've applied to X jobs this week," helps keep other people calm, and saying it out loud to others also helps me remind myself that it's not the end of the world.
5) Sing 'Hakuna Matata" :cool:
EDIT:
6) Actually, one other thing. Try to laugh. Honestly, it sounds stupid, but try to find something funny in your predicament, no matter how stupid or sardonic. There's always something comical if you look hard enough. I can't tell you how often I've used the dumbest fucking jokes to break tension in a situation. Make people laugh. If you can't do that, make yourself laugh. The day I got laid off, I came home and exclaimed "good news! I have the rest of the day off!" It was dumb, I felt like shit, but it made me laugh, for a moment. I don't actually think "calm" is the opposite of stress. I think laughter is.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
Mine's always "Is anything on fire, are mortars landing around me, is anyone throwing juice boxes of poop at me? No? Then it's not that big of a deal."
Another way to frame this is that you’re engaging a different part of your brain, which helps calms down the part of your brain that’s freaking out. Getting in the habit or applying a tiny bit of reason to the situation will force that to happen, which helps calm the fight or flight response.
This is an absurdly simple version of what’s going on, but it’s certainly helped me as well. Even just counting backwards from 10 or doing simple math like powers of 2 can have a huge impact. When you sense yourself freaking out, getting angry, panicking—any kind of strong emotional response—try and force your brain to do something analytical. Going through a checklist, doing math, whatever—it will force your brain to adjust a bit and it’s easier to deal with the emotion.
Breaking things down into easily manageable chunks helps assuage immediate 0-100 panic and stress. If you can control something, then take how you'd solve it and break it down into steps and go through them one at a time.
This is a technique you use pretty heavily in IT and programmer and I've found it has bled into my personal life in how I deal with stress. It's not perfect but it'll help a lot.
It helps to detach myself from the issue and to get in the mindset of someone who could totally kick ass at whatever is happening.
Also, when you do catch yourself in that angry state, practice thinking about it as if you are talking to another person who is angry, and try to be compassionate towards yourself. A lot of my anger is self hatred for things that I feel I have failed at, so this helps me a lot.
So you knew what you thought would happen, and you know what sort of thing would derail that - so stop, assess what has failed and fall back to Plan B.
You know Plan B has gaps, and was a stop gap thing until you knew what you were dealing with - so if that fails, there's some inkling of stuff that might work in Plan A and B, and you've seen what's going on and so better understand the problem.
If you think visually, imagine pull back the focus from the chaos around you where things aren't working to a distance away, where you can assess what is coming and what you had planned to do in this circumstance. Then if that doesn't work, pull back from that place and look at the problem from above. You can see the bits of A that worked, and the bits of B that worked, and the bits that failed in both, with those bits revealing the weakness in the system.
You don't have to be ready to deal with any issue that comes at you, that's a recipe for stress becomes no plan is perfect. But having a plan for how you will work out how to deal with any issue that comes at you is more easily applied, more universal and takes less thought. It's easier to remember a single process than a multitude of 'what ifs!'.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-our-mental-health-stories/
problem with this approach, you're screwed when someone starts firing their flaming poop-box mortar in your general direction