“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”

- Lily Tomlin

Anxiety, pressure, tension — what would an ordinary day be without them? We’ve all suffered the symptoms of everyday stress and we’ve all ridden them off as trials you just deal with.

And there are many proactive steps we generally take to keep functioning on all of our mental cylinders during tough times. These steps range widely from basic relaxation techniques to the development of a reliable support network.

But all of these things take time, and there are many instances when you need something you can do immediately, to keep yourself grounded, focused and able to make good decisions. After all, you don’t always have time to take a walk, relax in a hot bath or call a friend to talk things over. That’s what we’ll be talking about here — a 3-minute trick for handling stressful situations in the moment.

1. Stay Grounded
      elapsed time: 60 seconds

Let’s take for example emotional eating. It happens when you lose connection with your grounded self. Stress itself is not what makes you reach for something to eat. In fact, stress is often a good thing: We need the physical stress of exercise to keep our bodies in good shape just as we need the stress of intellectual and emotional challenges to keep our minds healthy.

Nine times out of ten, what really leads to emotional eating is getting caught in a “mind storm” of worst-case scenarios, projections, misinterpretations, and all the emotional overreactions that come with these thoughts. This disastrous “storm” turns a manageable challenge into something that makes you feel helpless, overwhelmed, ashamed or afraid — and sends you to the kitchen to find something to stuff those extreme feelings. When you can stay grounded in the moment of stress, you have many more options.

Here are some simple, effective techniques to keep you grounded when something (or someone) pushes your buttons and your feelings start to spiral out of control:

Take a few deep breaths. (You can also count to 10, as it helps you mentally step away from the stressful moment.) If the stressful situation involves someone else, take a timeout and agree to continue the discussion in a few minutes.

Remind yourself where you are. Take a look around, noticing and naming the colors and shapes in the space around you.

Notice the physical sensations you are experiencing. Whether it’s a sinking feeling, turmoil in your stomach, tension in your hands or jaw, restricted breathing, or heat on the back of your neck, try to name the feelings that go with the sensation. Is that sinking feeling fear, or dread? Is the heat a symptom of anger?

The idea here is to stay in your body and in the moment — with what’s real — instead of going inside your mind where all those delusive scenarios are just waiting to get spun out-of-control.

2. Reality Check
      elapsed time: 60 seconds

Once you’re calm enough to start thinking constructively, put all those thoughts that are clamoring for attention inside your head through a quick reality check. Here are several very common thought patterns that have no place in reality. Do any of these apply to you?

All or nothing thinking
Example: You rationalize: (1) You have to follow a super-strict diet to succeed and (2) if you fall off the wagon you’ve blown it altogether. So if you go over your calorie limit or eat something on your “forbidden” list, you decide to keep eating because you’ve already “blown it.”

Reality: The first way to avoid all-or-nothing thinking is to shake the idea that you must follow an extremely restrictive plan. Weight loss or any other goal you set is not a one-day event. If you stop overeating now, you’ll gain less and have less to re-lose later. That’s something to feel good about!

Reading your own thoughts into someone else’s words
Example: Someone made a mildly critical or unsupportive remark to you, and you feel absolutely devastated.

Reality: The more bothered you are by such remarks, the more likely it is that you are being overly critical of yourself. When you treat yourself with respect, what others say won’t matter nearly so much.

Either-Or thinking
Example: You make a mistake or have a bad day and feel like a complete and hopeless failure.

Reality: No one does well all the time. Mistakes are a necessary and valuable opportunity to learn — if you don’t waste them by getting down on yourself.

Taking care of other people’s business
Example: Something is going badly for someone you care about, and you feel responsible, or pressured to fix it.

Reality: People need to learn from their own problems. You aren’t doing anyone a favor by trying to fix things just to make yourself feel better.

3. Putting Things in Perspective
      elapsed time: 60 seconds

The most common obstacles that you face in everyday life are much easier to handle when you keep them in perspective and avoid making mountains out of molehills. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to make sure you aren’t in the mountain-making business:

How big a deal is this, anyway? If I knew I was going to die in a week, would this be something I would want to spend this minute of my remaining time on?

Will any bad things happen if I postpone thinking about this until I have more time to figure things out?

Do I have all the information I need to decide how to respond to this? Do I really know what’s going on here, or am I making assumptions? Am I worrying about things that might not even happen? What do I need to check out before taking action?

Is there anything I can do right now that will change or help this situation?

Am I trying to control something I can’t, like what other people think, say, or do?

Have I really thought through this problem, and broken it down into manageable pieces I can handle one-at-a-time?

Use this approach whenever your thoughts or situations begin to feel overwhelming.

You’ll find that the mountains that seem impossible at first can instantly morph into what they really are — manageable hills that you DO have the ability to climb. All it takes is about 3 little minutes of your time.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it on del.icio.us or vote for it on Digg. Thank you!