Ground yourself

When you feel like your thoughts are racing and you can’t think clearly, or you find yourself acting without thinking things through, it can be helpful to spend a few moments actively grounding yourself. If you are wearing high heels or tight shoes, remove them discreetly and place both your feet on the floor. Make sure your body weight is evenly divided and send all your mental energy down your body. Feel the solid ground under your feet.

Unplug

These days, we simply have too much stimulation happening at once. Try to unplug and put away all your gadgets for at least five minutes and just be in silence without screens, phones, music, documents or other things that require you to take in new information. Rest in this space where you can process what is already on your plate, without having to take in even more.

Journal

When feeling stressed, it is easy to get caught up in what is right in front of you, and lose track of your values and what is really important. Journaling is a great and easy way to reconnect with yourself to instantly feel calmer. One great practice is to write in a stream-of-consciousness where you set a timer for 5 – 10 minutes and write continuously about what is on your mind until the timer beeps. Another simple practice for instant calmness is to write a list of what is worrying you, or what you have to remember. Keep the list close and add to it throughout your day. Remind yourself that you don’t have to think about these things right now, and that you will deal with them later.

Put away all your gadgets for at least five minutes and just be in silence without screens, phones, music, documents or other things

Connect with nature

If you have a lunch break or 10 minutes to spare, try to spend it connecting with nature. For maximum impact, go outside to get some air, feel the sun on your skin or take a short walk in a park or green area.

If going outside isn’t an option for you, you could keep a plant or flowers on your desk, a stone or seashell in your drawer, or even listen to soundtracks of birds or the ocean. Nature can help give you a break from the stressful environment and quickly calm you down.

Breathe

Research on deep mindful breathing shows immediate benefits for your physical and mental health. However, you probably already know how relaxing and calming it feels when you inhale deeply, hold for a few seconds, and exhale mindfully. If you have five to ten minutes to fully devote to focused breathing that’s wonderful, but remember that this is a simple tool you can use any time, anywhere. Great places to stop and breathe are in the elevator, at the water cooler, in your car, or discreetly through your nose to calm yourself down during a busy meeting.

Spend some time alone

With population growth, urbanisation and the highly debatable efficiency of open space work areas, we rarely spend time alone any more. However, as with unplugging, spending just a tiny amount of time alone can work wonders on your body and mind, giving them a pause from overwhelming sensory stimulation and information. If you don’t have many places to be alone, try the balcony, the staircase, library or a coffee shop in your neighbourhood.

If you have 10 minutes to spare, spend it connecting with nature

Soothe your senses

Using your senses and stimulating them in a soothing way is a simple and flexible strategy to instantly feel calmer. On the go, try a drop or two of essential oil on your wrists, a piece of dark chocolate, or play your favourite song. If you have a little more time, create a visually relaxing environment, and give yourself a massage. Small and easy strategies like these can help a lot, especially over time when you form a stronger association between the sensory input and the relaxation response.

Move your body

Physical activity is great to relieve stress. And no, you don’t need to do a full workout. Even a few minutes of stretching, soft yoga or getting up from your desk to walk around the office can help you relax. In her TED talk, psychologist Amy Cuddy from Harvard Business School suggests that just a few simple tweaks to your body language can change your body’s chemistry and balance hormones.

The next time you feel your calmness fly out the window, try one of these simple practices. Only by experimenting with different tools can you find something that works for you. And don’t forget, when you’re in the need of a little extra feeling of control in your busy day, raise your arms above your head in a “winner” pose. The theory is, if you use your body as if you are confident and relaxed, chances greatly improve that you will be.

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Published by: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 978-1476785462

Pages: 224

Price: INR 353

When we hear the word “creativity”, visions of paintings, poetry and music float through our minds, our conventional wisdom suggesting that it is a special gift. However, creativity expert Barnet Bain holds the view that everything we do is a process of creativity.

In The Book of Doing and Being, he walks us through a series of over 40 practical exercises while providing eye-opening insights into recognising and reactivating that spark we all possess, that we call creativity, no matter what our job involves.

This is a book best read in small doses. And reading alone is not enough. As the author suggests, the book can be a helpmate in our journey of rediscovering our creative self. Have a journal handy and jot down your thoughts as you work through the exercises in this book.

Starting with a call to become aware of our hurdles to creative expression, the author provides what he calls a Self-Inquiry Practice to help us identify if the barriers to our inspiration are hand-me-downs or self-imposed, i.e. more of a habit than a conscious choice. When we often trust popular culture to give us an understanding of our world, we diminish our originality and eventually suppress our inherent artistry.

Whether it is the way we care for the people we love, or how we brainstorm in a boardroom, we have an innate desire to improve the world in some way, based on our values. The author urges us to jot down a Life Wheel to serve as our values map—a tool for identifying our goals, desires and  priorities, not only in career and finances but also in family life, love life, health, relaxation and spirituality—represented as seven slices in this life wheel. As we tailor this wheel, reflecting on how much attention we would like to give to each slice, we are better able to recognise our deficit areas that need attention.

Life being what it is today, many of us get overwhelmed and stressed. We cope by conjuring up a mixture of thoughts and feelings that numb these powerful emotions, acting like anaesthetics. We learn this numbing mechanism at a young age and rely on it to handle feelings that overpower us. The four emotional anaesthetics—self-pity, blame, guilt and control—work to undermine our creative self. However, if we are cognizant of this fact, we can certainly learn to thrive under distress.

Neuroplasticity, the ability of our brain to form new neural connections at any stage in life, allows us to compensate for injury and disease and reclaim our functions. Similarly, the author proposes Creative Plasticity, an imaginative malleability that welcomes and enhances creative flow. The four exercises in this chapter essentially serve to rewire the brain through relaxation. Be it mindful breathing to promote alpha brain waves, or a nap, or a nature walk, or a sojourn at a favourite body of water, we can all find what relaxes us and helps us refocus. Another practical and easily doable exercise for rewiring is to change our routine—write with the non-dominant hand, drink beverage from a different utensil than the preferred one, sleep on a different side of the bed, sit at a different spot at the family dining table, take a new route to work. By approaching common things a bit differently, we can rekindle the flames of creativity.

In the chapter, “Engaging the Muses”, we encounter the nine Olympian muses—not the relics of made-up ancient world, but the creative forces that are outside our structured, logical framework. The muses await invitation. Despite the obstructions that hold us back, if we are willing to move forward and are raring to go, the muses will accept our invitation to co-create, working with our subconscious intelligence. Even if we don’t believe in Thalia, the keeper of joyous humour, or her counterpart Melpomene, the protector of tragedy, we can certainly extend the idea of the muses to mean that we are inclined to give laughter a chance, and that we are prepared to face adversity with courage.

Barnet Bain notes that, “when the dynamism of doing comes together with the receptivity of being, creative innovation cannot be stopped.”

The Book of Doing and Being ends with urging us to be brave and to “let go”—of a job, an identity or a way of being or relating, especially when it is difficult and full of complaints. The fear of what we could lose by letting go of the familiar is not easily offset by the promise of where we think creativity can take us. As a reassurance, the author acknowledges that creativity is a gift—a gift that is given to everybody, if we are open to receiving it.

This was first published in the January 2016 issue of Complete Wellbeing

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