Feeling Overwhelmed? Try These 15 Simple Calming Techniques

If you want to excel in life, being able to stay calm when feeling overwhelmed is an essential skill. The consequences of not doing so can be significant (e.g., addiction, damaging relationships, job loss, missed opportunities, etc.).

Knowing your triggers (people, places, and situations) and how you typically react when overwhelmed, prepares you to handle these circumstances.

You have three choices when feeling overwhelmed

Choice #1: Supressing your feelings by pushing them down and acting as if everything is fine. This causes depression, anxiety, avoidance, and resentment.
Choice #2: Expressing your emotions through venting and overreacting. This leads to negative consequences, including damaging relationships.
Choice #3: Experiencing your feelings by letting them arise and learning from them. This leads to staying calm, learning, and taking positive steps forward.

When I'm overwhelmed, I can get controlling, negative, critical, and worried. Remembering my tendencies prepares me to stay calm when triggered.

When flooded, your brain's emotional center, called the amygdala, overrides the rational part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex. I think of this as experiencing "brain lock", as my brain becomes useless, except for fleeing the situation, fighting whatever seems threatening, or freezing up. When emotions are high, logic is low.

When Under "Brain Lock"

• I lose my sense of humor
• My problem-solving abilities dwindle
• I take almost everything personally
• My social skills become dormant
• I'm much less creative
• I see almost everything as negative or threatening
• I'm basically miserable

15 Simple Calming Techniques

Here are 15 actions that help me stay calm when I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed. My goals is to recognize I'm flooded in the moment and do something productive rather than destructive.

1. Focus on Your Goals

Write your top 3 goals for the next 6 months on an index card. Pull it out whenever you're flooded.

2. Help Someone Out

When I'm stressed, there's always an opportunity right in front of me to reach out and help someone. This takes the focus off myself and places it on having an impact on someone else. This action lowers my anxiety every time.

3. Organize

Take 10 minutes to organize your pictures, files, iPhone, desk, room, or bookshelf.

4. Reading

Take 15 minutes to step away and read something inspiring. In fact, get uninterrupted time reading a good book every day. Here is a list of some of my all-time favorite books.

5. Engage in a Hobby

Take a few minutes to focus on a hobby. If you love fishing, sort through some of your fishing gear. If cooking is a passion of yours, take a few minutes to search for a new recipe.

6. Think About a Hobby

Flip through a magazine or research a favorite hobby. Go fishing, hiking, golfing, or dream about eating a great meal - all in your mind.

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7. Stop Avoiding

Often, we're overwhelmed because we are avoiding facing a core issue. Being overwhelmed is "safer" than facing a fear. Face whatever it is you know needs to be addressed. Be assertive, vulnerable, and let go of the outcome.

"The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance." - Viktor Frankl (author of Man's Search for Meaning)

8. Get Physically Active

Exercise helps prevent "brain lock" by engaging your prefrontal cortex once "brain lock" has set in. A walk for 10 minutes might be all you need.

9. Pictures & Videos of Friends & Family

Go back and watch some pictures and videos from your past. Set an alarm for 15 minutes and focus. This will calm your mind and probably make you laugh as well.

10. Listen

Listening to an audiobook, podcast, or music can help. Choose uplifting content, not content that fuels your fears and negative emotions.

11. Watch How-To Videos

YouTube can be a valuable resource. You can learn new skills and find inspiration on YouTube if you are disciplined in your content consumption. I'm a fan of some Ted Talks as well.

12. Journal

Journaling your thoughts, ideas, emotions, and more is great for calming down a flooded mind. Our thoughts are clearer on paper. Journaling moves brain activity away from the emotional center (amygdala) and activates our rationality (pre-frontal cortex). Here are some journaling prompts.

13. Gratitude

Thinking about and write down what you're grateful for can do wonders. Gratitde impacts your brain in a similar fashion to journaling.

14. Breath

Take 2 minutes to focus on your breathing. Breathe for 4 seconds in, stop at the top of the breath for 1 second, and breathe out for 4 seconds. When you blow the breath out, act as if you are blowing it out through a straw. This will calm down your central nervous system.

15. Call a Friend

This is usually the last thing I want to do when stressed, yet the most helpful action I can take. I dislike admitting I need help, yet "going it alone" is not the path out of my stress.

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Make your own list of calming actions when feeling overwhelmed and apply some of the above. Practice applying them to your life, and see which ones have the biggest positive impact.

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