10 Ways Successful People Stay Calm

Success Magazine recently published an article by writer Travis Bradberry detailing the 10 ways successful people stay calm. Since staying calm under pressure is highly important for success in your field, we thought we’d highlight a few of our favorite tips here on the GQ Law blog.

Bradberry writes “The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance.” TalentSmart conducted a study with more than a million people. Ninety percent of the highest performers out of the million people were good at managing their emotions under stress, they could remain calm and keep control even when stress was high.

A Yale study found that prolonged stress essentially leads to the shrinking of an area in the brain responsible for self-control. That said, stress is also necessary. We need to feel stress so that we take action, moderate levels of stress actually lead us to our best performance. To summarize, long periods of high stress are bad, moderate stress that doesn’t stick around is good.

So, what are we supposed to do about stress? How do we keep our stress levels in the “perfect stress” zone, not too high, not to prolonged?

10 Ways to Stay Calm and Manage Stress

1. Have and Attitude of Gratitude: Take time to think about what you’re thankful for. It will improve your overall mood. One of our staff members at GQ Law keeps a gratitude journal, they write at least one thing they are thankful for in the journal each day.
2. Avoid asking “What if?” : “What if?” brings on a lot of stress and worry. Things can go many different ways but trying to walk down each possible road is unnecessary and super stressful.
3. Stay Positive: Throughout the day take moments to consciously turn your thoughts to something positive. Think about your day so far and find one positive thing that happened. Some days that might just be that you got a couple green lights on the way in to work or a smile from a stranger while waiting for your lunch, other days you’ll be able to draw up a nice long list.
4. Disconnect: You read that right and yes, we know its difficult. Disconnecting from technology can be magical! Try it. Turn off your phone, take a break from work, go on vacation and don’t check any emails. Even a short, true, break from technology can work wonders.
5. Limit Caffeine: Drinking caffeine releases adrenaline, the stuff in your body that brings on your “fight or flight” response. When caffeine puts your body in an extra aroused state of stress you’re more likely to let your emotions take over your behavior. The cherry on top of the caffeine-makes-stress cake is that stress coming from caffeine is constant and takes quite a while to work its way out of your body. Just say no!

Click on over to success.com to get 6-10 of this awesome list. You won’t regret it.