I’ve always admired people who can stay calm when things go wrong.

This is not one of my strongest attributes. I’m working on it, but I have a long way to go.

Here are some things that have helped me to stay calm when things go wrong.

Go for a walk.

When something goes wrong and I feel myself getting upset, I don’t do the proverbial “count to five.” Not that I don’t find value in it–it’s that I don’t remember to do it. Instead, I’ve had to focus on creating habits that help me to be more calm overall.

My mom always told me I was tightly wound and came out of the womb stressed out! That’s probably true, and is one reason I find habits like regular walking to be helpful.

For me, there is something about the regular habit of moving and walking that is meditative, and when I’m practicing it daily (or at least several times a week), I am a calmer, more focused person.

dome tent on mountain top with sun as background photo — Photo by Kevin Ianeselli on Unsplash

Learn that some things won’t change but my response can.

I used to get very angry with how people acted in certain ways. It ground away at me the way some people would use control or manipulation to get their way. This seemed to happen without ever coming back around at them, and it wasn’t right.

I’d find myself getting tense, upset, and stressed out just thinking about being around these people. As a result, my interactions with them were poor, because I was setting myself up for failure. I was setting up to have a bad encounter with them.

And guess what? It always happened that way.

But, I began to realize over the last couple of years that though I cannot change other people, I can change my response. I began to learn that I didn’t need to respond in anger and I didn’t need to expect the worst.

I began to set boundaries. I didn’t feel that it was necessary to communicate those boundaries in all circumstances, but if a boundary was crossed, I simply found a reason to leave the room or the conversation.

In some cases, I just lowered my expectations, and this helped, too, because I stopped expecting a particular interaction and just accepted whatever came my way.

I’m not saying I’m perfect in any of these, but I’ve grown because I’ve focused on changing my response.

Try to focus on what is making me uneasy or angry about the situation.

When I started to peel back the layers of why I hated interacting with some people so much, I didn’t like what I was seeing. Instead of finding more ways to be angry with them, or new things to blame them for, I began to see that my anger and unease reflected parts of me that were very similar to the things I was angry about in others.

My anger over how others tried to manipulate me reflected my own attempts to manipulate others. My frustration over somebody’s control tactics revealed that I, too, tried to control others.

I didn’t like this. But it was good for me to learn, because I have been able to reflect clearly and openly on my challenges. I have been able to address some past traumas that have hurt me, and to find some emotional healing for these.

Growth is hard. When we truly set ourselves on this path, we need to expect to climb some grueling mountains and fall into some nasty valleys along the way.

But what comes out at the end is pure, clean, and new–we become transformed.

Set your path for growth, and stay on it. Let me know how I can help you.

Simple Spirituality

What To Do When Things Go Wrong