Finding Your Inner Calm
Some ideas for creating a shelter inside yourself
Hello, friend. I’ve missed visiting your inbox! Once again, thank you for your patience with the gap between Snail Steps posts. Although I intended to write much sooner, these past few months have kept me occupied with challenges—not all of them negative, but all of them, well, challenging.
Hopefully each of us has a comforting place to go when we need to retreat from the chaos of life—a cozy reading nook, a quiet home office, a friendly coffee shop, a peaceful nature trail, etc. And I’m guessing most of us have a sense for the kinds of activities we find calming, whether that’s enjoying a cup of tea, going for a bike ride, baking a cake, listening to a jazz album, or something else. But how do you find a sense of calm within yourself when you have nowhere to retreat?
I’ve had a lot of opportunities to explore this question lately, and I don’t think it’s the kind of question that has a definitive, once-and-for-all answer. Rather, it’s a question that must be answered again and again, whenever I’m faced with challenges that shake up my world. However, I have discovered some essential practices that I can use to build a shelter inside myself, my own eye in the center of a storm. Here are a few that empower me to face day-to-day crises of the garden variety (read: non-life-threatening):
1. I create a pause.
I’ve realized that in most situations, unless my life or someone else’s life is under immediate threat, I can spare at least a few minutes to create my own intermission. When faced with a difficult decision or an emerging crisis, I take a deep breath, close my eyes if it’s safe to do so, and wait until my heart rate slows down a bit. As much as possible, I release my racing thoughts and show panic the back door. I may even make a silent address: Thank you, panic, but you’re not needed. I can take it from here. While still breathing slowly and deeply, I set aside another minute to assess the situation and ask myself: What is the problem? What do I need right now? There is great power in taking a pause, however brief, to remind myself that I don’t have to take immediate action or make a split-second decision if I feel uncertain about what to do.
2. I choose my response.
An important, life-changing truth I’ve taken to heart very recently is that I can choose how I respond to any situation. As obvious as this may seem in print, for most of my life I didn’t understand the power in this truth, even after hearing numerous variations ad nauseam of the saying, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond.” What finally clicked for me? Understanding that just because the culture(s) I grew up in taught me to respond a certain way, it’s not the only way. Just because I’ve always responded to certain situations with certain behaviors, these are not my only options. In other words, our actions may shape us moment by moment, but they don’t ever set us in stone. We always have the power to change.
In the past, I may have repeatedly responded to obnoxious drivers cutting in front of me with the same angry invectives (which of course they can’t hear and only makes me more furious), but this does not prevent me from choosing a different response the next time someone cuts me off. Instead of cursing and fuming, I can simply honk my horn in warning and be grateful I wasn’t hit, which will allow me to cool off more quickly and look forward to the rest of the day with clear skies rather than brooding storm clouds in my emotional climate.
Most of the internal battle when facing a crisis is remembering that while I can’t always choose my problems, I can always choose my response—and it doesn’t have to be the same default programming every single time. The biggest revelation for me has been realizing that I don’t have to panic, even when a crisis is imminent (as I mentioned in the first step above). Panic is not a necessary response. It is learned helplessness. When I give in to panic, I’m choosing to give up my own agency, to relinquish my own ability to solve the problem or crisis. Instead, I can collect my thoughts, gather my courage, and call on my own power to come to the rescue.
Note: I credit consciousness development facilitator for helping me become more self-aware of how I respond to and interact with the world around me. If you're interested in learning more, you can visit his Substack blog, The Infinite Zero Experience.
3. I trust that I will find help.
I talk a lot about claiming my own power in the previous step because I’ve seen how easily I can surrender my power, to my own detriment. However, please don’t mistake my emphasis on claiming your own power for absolute reliance on self-sufficiency. Another life-changing lesson I’ve learned is that help is always available, if and when I need it. I am never completely alone. Trust is the key ingredient here. I must trust that in any challenging situation, I will always be able to find help—either from within myself, or from someone else. It has taken me many years to build trust in myself and my abilities, as well as to build trust in a higher power that is working for my good and the good of every being (call this higher power God, the universe, the interconnectedness of all beings, or whatever makes sense to you). This is another topic for another post!
For now, I’ll just say that trust is a muscle I have to keep exercising, or else it becomes weak. In each new crisis or dilemma, I must reach out in trust and ask for the help I need. Sometimes I’m very fortunate and I find help immediately. Sometimes it takes a while to find help. Sometimes I cross paths with a snake oil merchant, or a well-intentioned but clueless rescuer, before I get the right sort of help. As I’ve learned from experience, though, it’s critical to keep asking and keep seeking until I finally get the help I truly need.
How about you?
Do any of these practices resonate with your own experience? What are some other practices that empower you to tap into your inner calm when you’re facing a crisis or a major decision? If you haven’t yet figured out what works for you, I hope these ideas will serve as a launch pad for your own exploration.
May you discover just the right building materials to create your own inner shelter that can weather any storm. 🐌
This post is part of a series about the gifts of slowing down. You can read descriptions of these gifts in my earlier posts, The Gifts of Slowing Down and More Gifts of Slowing Down.
A note to my regular readers: Snail Steps is taking a break for the winter holidays but will be back next year with more posts about creating a meaningful life one step at a time. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and take some time to rest and reflect, if you can. Thank you so much for reading!