“I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I was trusted to take and miss the game-winning shot. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that's why I'm successful. "~ Micheal Jordan
I believe that calming yourself down is the key to accessing all happiness and success. When all things are the same and someone is able to calm themselves down, they are more resourceful and powerful than those who have not yet learned this skill. Here's why.
Great success (whether professional or personal) goes hand in hand with a lot of responsibility. This responsibility can potentially lead to stress and is often accompanied by errors along the way. Most of us are familiar with this famous Michael Jordan quote – it was even in a '90s commercial.
Resilience is a great skill. In fact, this path is clearly visible to anyone who has achieved a lot. But perspective tells you that these mistakes are not "this is the end of everything and we are all going to die". Instead, they are just medium or even small stumbling blocks.
How do you know if you are not at the end of your career or your life? Well you don't. So how can you function when things don't go your way? How do you stay calm and grounded when something unexpected and shocking happens?
The "more monodimensional" action-oriented side of resilience consists in "surviving" the difficult times and sharpening the blade with your teeth. And while this works sometimes, it affects your emotional wellbeing – can you feel cortisol going through the roof?
It is easy to overlook the fact that monodimensional, action-based resilience is actually very weak and ultimately not sustainable if it is not supported by a strong and playful mind. And I believe Jordan had such a mind and demonstrated it throughout his career.
It doesn't just persist despite failures. It's also how you feel every day, about your mistakes and in general. The point is not to let all negative experiences poison your daily wellbeing.
How can you make resilience more sustainable? There is a softer way to deal with stumbling blocks that hopefully doesn't lead to too much stress or burnout. One that, when mastered, will keep the floodgates open to emotional wellbeing.
One that you would like to teach your friends, your children, your parents and also your enemies. This second dimension of resilience is self-reassuring.
I grew up in the household of Ms. and Mr. Stress. Growing up, I saw them dive deep into (probably unnecessary) stress pools. There was always something that was wrong, something that needed fixing, not enough money or not enough time.
Here is a classic scene from my youth: When a device like the washing machine broke, our whole family had to be part of the suffering, anger and fear that come with such an unfortunate event. But it wouldn't be fixed right away (because it … could heal on its own, no? ) If it were absolutely clear that there is no hope for them poor washing machine would shift the focus to panic about the money that will be needed to replace it.
The problem after the washing machine was replaced was that it may not be as good as the previous one, or it may take up more space or be louder. It was never possible to relax for fear that everything wasn't perfect. It was mandatory to look for potential problems and to scan every single detail with Terminator Vision.
When we could finally be sure that everything was okay, we could move on to the next step that needed to be fixed.
I was exposed to chronic stress for most of my childhood and adolescence. I didn't enjoy the surroundings but didn't know why. I didn't have the words for it and I didn't have the concepts to understand it. I didn't know that I could live any other way. Or better yet, I knew other parents were more relaxed, but I just thought that the y were happier individuals.
When I moved out at the age of twenty-two, I left the country and moved to Holland, a tiny student town whose pretty canals were filled with swans and ducks and where most of the family houses had cute and well-tended gardens. I saw children ride to school with their parents on tiny bicycles, and people of all ages sat for coffee in wooden cafes. It was nothing more than the stressful metropolis I was used to and the people seemed so calm to me.
I loved it right away and I felt the well being flood me, but I didn't know why. In the following years I lived in other places as well. I even went back to my parents' home for some periods of my life.
It wasn't until ten years after my first move that I was finally able to learn the names and concepts that defined the emotional dichotomy that I kept reliving when I paced back and forth.
The understanding took place in two steps. During my master's degree when I was studying the brain, I learned how the prefrontal cortex works as a simulator of experiences. As human beings, we are all able to imagine in detail something that has not yet happened and make it just as real as something that happened the day before.
I learned from psychologist Dan Gilbert that the brain can also synthesize happiness (or the cocktail of chemicals that we interpret as happiness). And a functioning brain will restore you to a state of happiness within months or within a year, even after very traumatic events.
In a fascinating TED (The Surprising Science of Happiness) lecture, Gilbert presents data from two groups of people: people who have won the lottery and people who have lost the use of their legs. One year after the event, the happiness level of the two groups is identical.
Very often we hear people (or even ourselves) say how in retrospect a terrible event turned out to be a kind of bliss. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what caused the happiness. If it feels like happiness, it's happiness.
The brain is able to synthesize happiness (or sadness or stress or panic or even anger) independently of external conditions. Not surprising. When you think about it, through meditation we are trying to do nothing but hold the stability of the brain tighter, which then leads (or maintains) us into homeostasis, a state of physical equilibrium. This is why meditation feels good, and it can be so difficult to start meditating when your mind is everywhere, if you don't let yourself into .
After understanding these concepts, I made my first leap into understanding emotional wellbeing. I saw people like my parents who constantly trained their minds to spot mistakes and problems, rehearse negative feelings, and therefore leave their effectiveness in responding to more important problems entirely to chance.
The second jump happened a few years later. I finished my studies and anxiously juggled different areas of my life.
In less than a year, I lost my job in academia. I didn't manage to get a new one (bug). I was kicked out of a house I liked to live in (mistake two) by someone I considered a friend (mistake three). The man I had a relationship with was someone else (mistake four), and I injured myself in such a way that I couldn't use my right arm for months (mistake five). Forget typing – how should I apply for new jobs?
As soon as I could, I packed my things, moved back with my parents to look after them, and got the last part of the treatment for my arm.
This setback happened when I was thirty-three to thirty-four. After experiencing loss and grief for my previous life for the first few months, I realized that I wasn't making it easy for myself. I was angry, obsessed with everything that wasn't right, and devastated by all the big ones that weren't right at all.
Then it clicked. My situation was no different than worrying about broken home appliances, arguing about taxes, feeling offended by bad books or films, angry about politicians and lost socks.
I had to make it easier for myself. I had to find the irony in everything and spend more time thinking about what was working.
I wanted to “detoxify” the victim mentality. I started to see my life as the emptyest blackboard. And was thrilled.
In fact, my life was even better than a blank blackboard. I had all of my skills, knowledge and health. I had no ties, no debts, no contracts and no furniture that was kept anywhere . Ultimately, I had a very supportive family and temporary accommodation in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Today this list of positives is easy to make and I could go on. Now it's easy for me to see how I had previously made myself miserable and focused on whatever went wrong. But I can still remember how overwhelming it all felt and how it seemed impossible to keep that snowball from rolling down and becoming more bitter.
From my new place of clarity, balance and bliss, I decided to develop tricks to avoid ever falling into deep negativity again. If I cared about how I was feeling each day and developed practical techniques to take my attention away from the little daily problems, maybe I would develop enough muscle to use when big problems arise.
So I took a "master class in me". I've learned what makes me laugh, what gets my attention, what relaxes me. Knowing these things anyone can stop that negative snowball before it completely hijacks your mind.
I have a great passion for comedy and I have found that listening to my favorite comedian will 100 percent reset my mood, regardless of my mental state. I know that nature documentaries (especially those about the pace of S ) will hypnotize me and detach me from my body easily. So when I'm sick or in pain, these are my go-to places. I know when I'm feeling nervous or my mind is feeling distracted, walking and listening to certain music brings me closer to calm.
Making a list of ready-to-use resources like this one, but tailored for you, is one of the greatest resources a person can have. And the more of those resources are in the autopilot, the easier it will be to juggle your life. To me, listening to comedy when I'm annoyed is as natural today as drinking water when I'm thirsty. And every day I keep adding new practices to my arsenal.
All of this has two caveats: Be aware of the cause of why you are feeling bad and watch out for escape.
If you are chronically depressed, I would never recommend watching comedy from morning until bedtime. If you're having recurring anger issues, I wouldn't recommend pumping them away at the gym. You need to seek professional help. Likewise, finding things to cheer you up is great, but spending your entire day looking for ways to entertain yourself may not be the most constructive way to shape your life.
Self-regulation is one of the jobs that adults have and it is great to take on. As a rule of thumb, if you're still enjoying whatever calming yourself down, that's great. If you are neutral on this it is time to move on. And when you find that you are not enjoying other things that you could have enjoyed, then your self-reassurance is out of control. But don't get ready; n ext Time in which you do better.
In general, however, it is sufficient to distract oneself sufficiently from the negative thought / memory of the event. Another time, you may want to cement something positive in this memory. There are many options (from NLP techniques to meditation techniques to hypnosis and more) but for simple daily life this three step process works well for me:
1) Allow some time for my immediate reaction to express itself. I don't want to suppress anything, but I don't want this state of reaction to be where I live now.
2) I will continue my self-soothing technique of choice and try to reduce the time my mind sends thoughts about the problem.
3) After a while I will take up the topic and briefly discuss it with a trusted friend. Someone who is not involved, who is not triggered by it, and who can make both constructive and positive comments.
Once you master a basic self-calming practice you will see immediate improvement in dealing with the little daily hiccups. And with a little time (really not a lot of time), you can solve bigger, more complex problems with a lot less effort.
The wonderful thing about this ability is that it continues to grow with you. As you add more pieces to your personal growth journey, they will strengthen this new skill as well.
A strong self-soothing practice enables you to help and feel sorry for the people around you. It will also trickle down on your children, providing them with one of the greatest resources they can get from you.
About Marta Castella
Marta is a writer, language coach, teacher and founder of Glorified Babysitters – an institute that aims to raise the bar in early childhood education, promote multilingualism and pay attention to the environment and care they need to discover and appreciate the world. She has her Ph.D. in formal linguistics and worked as a researcher, expanding her expertise in early childhood neuroscience, language and education. Check them out on Instagram or read their childcare articles here.
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