Create ‘instant calm’ buttons for yourself

Your most important priority in business is you.  You may have a thousand customers but without you, there is no business.

“Put yourself first, pay yourself first and take care of yourself first, physically and emotionally!”

An instant calm button is an immediate fix when you upset, frustrated or flustered, and you need to calm your mind.  Four of the best calming buttons I have found are:

a)   Deep slow breathing and eyes shut visualization.  There are many options for visualization – imagine a serene place, your favourite activity or imagine that with every breath you are inhaling and exhaling the entire Universe.  That’s my favourite.  It is so empowering.

b)   Exercise! This also results in deeper breathing.  It doesn’t need to be highly aerobic though.  A 30-minute walk will do it.  Make sure you keep your head up and say hello to everyone as you walk past.

c)   Water – drink plenty of it.  I find water calming as opposed to coffee which stimulates but may not necessarily calm me.

d)   Chocolate, which does nothing for my breathing but I focus on its antioxidant health benefits (yeah right!).  Be careful of the amount you eat.  Eat too much and you will replace one problem with a more serious health problem.

It is always the case that when I feel at my worst, doing any of the things I have listed above are the very last things I want to do, except eat chocolate of course.  But a little elbowing myself usually brings the need for a calming button into conscious focus.

Exercise is not always possible but deep slow breathing (we call it KI breathing in Aikido) and plenty of water always does the trick for me.  In our busy lives, air and water are the two ingredients that we don’t intake enough.

Until next time!

Gary