Now this might seem like a silly question. You want to be calm because right now doesn’t feel good. Getting to the core of why you want to be calm is a significant first step into that nebulous cloud that lies between your current state and the one you desire. Once we have helped you delve deeper, you will find the process easier.

We’re well aware that when you feel stressed, calm is a wished for state. In this chapter we will explore what’s behind your desire to overcome stress. Real calm is knowing what exactly this means to you as an individual because, like the word healthy, it means different things to different people.

YOU WANT TO FEEL LIKE THAT HOLIDAY-YOU

You might be the sort of person who instantly unwinds when you’re on holiday. Or like most people it could take you some time before you fully relax. Perhaps you’re someone who can’t let go of periodically checking the work email or gets agitated when the hotel Wi-Fi isn’t working. Whichever type you are, one thing is for sure: there will be moments on holiday when you experience something other than what you go through on a daily basis during your normal routine. You might not label this as calm. Instead you’re likely to find yourself saying: I feel like me again. These are the moments or the periods when you like yourself. Go on then, you really like yourself. You return home and want to keep the holiday feeling going. Only how to stay calm when the email inbox is bursting, your boss is making demands, your team are playing up, the trains are delayed or aren’t running, your children or parents are sick, your teenagers have disappointed you, and one of your utilities has overcharged you? Is it any wonder you finally lose it over the neighbour’s rubbish?

And so the cycle begins. Stress takes over your life. One way or another, you get used to it and tell yourself that you can’t change work-life, society or the economy. This is how it is. The problem is that once this line of thinking sets in another set of beliefs develops: Well it must be me; if this is life and I’m stressed, agitated, low, unhappy, then there must be something wrong with me. And then you go on holiday, remember who you are, remember that no, there’s nothing wrong with you, and you try once again. With each new cycle negative beliefs become more entrenched: I’m alright on holiday but that’s not real life; real life is frantic and busy; I can’t cope with real life, I’m permanently stressed; what’s wrong?

“On the whole you can’t run away from life. And if you can’t do anything about the difficulties you’re facing, this can ramp up the stress.”

 Ed Halliwell, mindfulness teacher and writer

If you think in terms of keeping Holiday-You present throughout your busy life, that’s more tangible. Instead of wanting to be calm, you could ask yourself what you need to be even a little more You. Only you know what that is – is it wearing colourful clothes, or telling jokes, not nagging your partner or giving a damn about work outside work? Could you slow down just a little bit? Can you reduce your busyness by even 1%?

“Everyone can find 30 seconds to stop and breathe instead of checking Facebook. You will feel more in control, and control is the antidote to anxiety.”

Professor Ian Robertson, psychologist and neuroscientist

• You want: To always be that Holiday-You
• You need: To find ways to always be You

YOU’RE TIRED OF BEING TOO BUSY

You might be in a situation where life isn’t bad, where everything is going super-well, and if anything there’s too much of a good thing, or rather too many exciting things going on. You never stop moving, thinking, doing. And instead of enjoying what’s good you may have a low-level anxiety. You’re not alone.

Rushing has become part of our modern city culture, and being busy is virtually a badge of achievement. When was the last time you told anyone you were bored? When was the last time you announced you had nothing to do? Come to think of it, how many people tell you or post on their Facebook timeline that they’re doing absolutely nothing? Even if you are doing nothing there’s a sense of having to chronicle it with a perfect Instagram or Facebook post.

“We need to consciously make space in our busy-ness to create calm.”

 Sandra Elsdon Vigon, Jungian psychotherapist

In Chapter 1, psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Robertson explained that there’s a sweet spot for stress and if we’re aware of this, we can be outwardly calm but inwardly fired up to take positive actions. An awareness of where your sweet spot is can be down to the optimum level of busy-ness for you. If your job is pressurized and outside work you’ve set yourself the challenge of overcoming two left feet and learning to dance – and you’re also breaking up from a relationship and moving – you are most certainly overdoing things.

It’s worth bearing in mind that studies on willpower (one of the most researched areas in psychology) show that our willpower reserves are finite. Willpower guru Roy Baumeister¹ advises resting, sleeping and eating well to fuel willpower because our reserves are drained by the demands of everyday life plus unexpected demands.² To cultivate your calm self will require willpower. You might have to start changing your habits, taking on fewer commitments, saying no and reducing your busy-ness to a level that suits you.

• You want: To handle being ‘so busy’ calmly
• You need: To reduce the busy-ness

YOU JUST WANT TO BE HAPPY

When stress becomes so invasive that you lie awake anxiously and feel miserable all the time it’s inevitable that you associate finding calmness with happiness.

A more useful appraisal of happiness is to think of Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s mental state of flow.³ Csíkszentmihályi’s studies found that when we’re in a state of flow, regardless of what we’re doing, we don’t want to be doing anything else – we lose all sense of time and are fully absorbed. Mindfulness expert Ed Halliwell agrees with Csíkszentmihályi’s concept that ‘similarly, happiness is a state of not wanting to be in another state’.

This comes back to cultivating the skill of calm in order to handle whatever it is that’s making you unhappy, tackling how to make changes, coming up with a plan, gaining support and seeing it through. Being fixated on going from stressed to calm in order to be happy is like being stuck in a car that won’t start, desperate to arrive at a magical destination – without knowing what’s wrong with the car and which destination would make you feel happy. First you need to fix the car and then consider your route and destination. Yes, that might be a slow drive through sleepy, scenic surroundings arriving at a blissful place. But equally it could be an adrenaline fuelled race along the motorway to a bustling, vibrant city.

• You want: To be happy
• You need: To know what you need to be happy

YOU WANT YOUR TEAM TO BE CALM

Being promoted to manage a team or getting offered the job of being a manager or leader in a work arena is exciting. But at some point you realize that management is also about managing emotions – other people’s. And if they’re not calm and you’re not calm, covering up your stress to somehow help your team deal with their stress isn’t easy, to say the least.

When RADA in Business trainer Charlie Walker-Wise started working with CEOs and business leaders he quickly realized that being a theatre director was an enormous advantage. Leaders, he discovered, are the same whether working in arts and entertainment or the corporate world: ‘They are setting a vision, communicating it with passion, bringing together a team, releasing creativity both latent and explicit, giving confidence, and giving people permission to fail.’

“Actors tell a story in a compelling way and change the way the audience feel. It’s the same in business. You tell a story in a compelling way so that people do something differently.”

Charlie Walker-Wise, RADA in Business trainer

All leaders, regardless of whether they were always driven to lead or found themselves managing by accident, have enormous responsibilities, demands, packed diaries. There is never enough time. And that’s just work. If your team are frantically trying to cope and are making yet more demands on you or letting you down, you have the double challenge of handling their stress 
and yours.

• You want: Your team to calm down
• You need: To let your team experience you as calm

YOU WISH YOU COULD SHUT DOWN 
YOUR MIND

When stress becomes chronic it can feel like you have a permanent scream in your head that you want to escape from. If only you could shut down your mind. The most common way people deal with this feeling is to have a drink or two, or more. Alcohol, however, doesn’t address or solve the stress. It takes the edge off and in excess creates other problems.

It’s vital to get to the heart of the stress matter because long-term stress damages the body’s ability to manage health, including the heart. How the brain affects health is a relative new area of scientific research. Even though scientists are 
still exploring this, in the past few years a number of studies have underlined that there most definitely is a link between 
the two.

A groundbreaking 2012 study⁴ by Professor of Psychology Sheldon Cohen at Carnegie Mellon University discovered that the effect of chronic psychological stress is that the body loses its ability to manage inflammation, so the result is the onset of disease. This is because we need the hormone cortisol to deal with the inflammation – but if it’s called on by the brain to deal with mental stress, then it can’t do all its work. An earlier study by Cohen focused on the common cold, demonstrating that it’s the body’s inflammatory response to the virus that leads to an actual cold, rather than the virus itself – which is why you’re more likely to catch a cold when you’re run down.

A recent major and in-depth study by the Center for Healthy Aging and Department of Biobehavioral Health,⁵ Penn State, found that adults who don’t keep calm have higher levels of inflammation in the body. Moreover, women are at a greater risk. Inflammation leads to obesity as well as serious health disorders like heart problems and cancer.

What’s groundbreaking about the above study is the finding that it’s not the level or frequency of stress that is damaging to the body, but the mental response to it that creates the inflammation. While most research looks at chronic stress or laboratory-induced stress, this study focused on everyday situations including arguments and avoiding arguments at work. If you are feeling that conflict wears you down, then you can be assured through this research that your sense is entirely justified. It really is wearing out your body and it’s essential to find ways to deal with the problem.

Identifying what triggers you is not only helpful, it’s also essential for your body’s health. Here are some pretty alarming figures, but the awareness will give you the incentive to avoid being triggered to the extent of an angry outburst. A 2015 study at the University of Sydney⁶ investigated emotional triggers and heart attacks and found that the risk of a heart attack is 8.5 times higher during the two hours after an angry outburst. The study also showed that episodes of anxiety increase the risk of triggering a heart attack by 9.5 times. Patients admitted to hospital were interviewed about their activities in the 48 hours before admission. Though it may be reassuring that only 2% of the sample experienced an ‘anger-triggered’ heart attack, those who did were at a significantly higher risk. The study’s conclusions were that people with heart disease need stress reduction training in addition to health advice on diet and giving up smoking.

Finding inner calm can literally reduce health risks, while worrying can make you more ill. Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology⁷ (JACC) in 2007 outlined the benefits of relieving anxiety for people suffering from heart disease. Relieving anxiety helps to further erode disease. The three-year study involved patients suffering from coronary artery disease recording their feelings. Those who scored high in anxiety had almost double the risk of heart attack or death.

Our objective is to steer you to take measures so that you manage the stress that can potentially lead to heart disease in the first place. If there’s a family history, it’s an issue that may already be on your radar. When someone or something upsets you, now that you know the latest research on the links between mind and body you can ask yourself whether your long-term health is worth this something or someone. This question in itself will lead you to take actions.

We believe that finding ways to be calm is as important as watching your cholesterol. If you’re full of angst about your weight, finding ways to feel calm will do far more for your figure than trying out another diet. Investing long term in your health, even if you feel you’re too young to be worrying about heart problems and cancer, is as smart as measures like saving for an emergency or your own property, paying into a pension or a savings scheme.

• You want: Relief for your mind
• You need: To take control of your mind so that your body can be healthy

YOU WANT TO BE YOUR BEST AT WORK

Jungian psychotherapist Sandra Elsdon Vigon says that after three decades of working in Los Angeles and London she has noticed that technology has changed people dramatically. ‘At the beginning of a session, it often takes clients 15–20 minutes to land in their body. I liken this to a flock of birds circling overhead, looking for a place to land.’

Of course it’s easy to blame addiction to social media and a reliance on email and texting for the effect technology has on us. But there’s also the change in the work culture. For when does the work day end? A recent study led by associate professor of management Liuba Belkin at Lehigh University¹⁰ is the first to demonstrate a link between emotional 
exhaustion and after-hour work email demands. The study ‘Exhausted, but unable to disconnect: the impact of 
email-related organizational expectations on work-family balance’ highlights the need for corporations to change their demands. Dealing with work emails at all times creates what the study terms anticipatory stress, which is a constant state of anxiety.

Working excessive hours damages rather than boosts your work performance. It may appear efficient to be responding to emails after official hours, but this keeps your body in the stress mode and prevents you relaxing. Consider ways to limit email contact when you leave the office (like setting a cut-off time in the evening, switching on when you’re on your commute instead of first thing when you wake up, and sticking to a strict weekend window of time). You might consider showing the above research to your manager or Human Resources.

“Stress occurs when demands made on you exceed your ability to satisfy these. If you are asked to do more than you can the result is anxiety. And anxiety reduces your ability to manage stress.”

Professor Ian Robertson, psychologist and neuroscientist

How we react in stressful work situations doesn’t alter our ability, yet it does influence performance. One study by the Rotman School of Management¹¹ found that calm candidates did better in job application tests. Of course that’s common sense, anyone could have guessed that. But it’s interesting that the report published in the Journal of Applied Psychology recommended actively seeking ways to minimize anxiety. This of course won’t be a surprise to you if you find that your abilities are hampered because you get into an anxious state, and then feel frustrated because colleagues less able than you but more confident get promoted. At least you know now this isn’t in your head. Mastering ways to reduce anxiety and induce calm, plus your ability, will transform your opportunities at work.

• You want: To perform better at work
• You need: To eliminate work demands outside work and focus on finding relaxing activities

WHEN YOU ARE CALM YOU CAN COPE

When life gets too much and everything feels as if it’s going wrong, at the same time you need a clear head: to make a plan, to get support, to keep your job going and/or to be a responsible parent. But as you have probably already experienced, your mind is fraught and exhausted from running mental marathons on a loop.

“When people are suffering they need help because the pain is intolerable.”

Sandra Elsdon Vigon, Jungian psychotherapist

One of the main reasons people want to be calm, and this might resonate with you, is because life can feel like a daily suffering. Sometimes it’s obvious what that suffering is due to, but when it’s not so obvious this can feel terribly frightening. When worry becomes chronic and is consistently present in your life you live anticipating the worst.

In his latest book, mindfulness teacher Ed Halliwell charts his own journey of finding relief from suffering, describing with admirable clarity, empathy and humility his struggle of overcoming a hollow melancholy feeling, a ‘vague premonition of a fearful future’.¹² Despite being a ‘meditation failure’ to start with, Halliwell embarks on a journey of healing through the mind and describes feeling ‘calm’ after crying at a retreat. What’s reassuring about Halliwell’s journey is his message that to some degree this suffering is a universal condition.

As we highlighted in Chapter 1, there’s the state of calm and the skill of calm – and cultivating the skill of calm empowers you so that you can deal with whatever life is throwing at you. There are stressful events that can’t be avoided, like a loved one suffering from a disease and bereavement. We need to keep our reserves so that we can keep going through unavoidable stressful events. In Chapter 1
we outlined what happens in the brain when we are stressed: it activates the fight or flight response. The one thing our brain can’t do, despite its sophistication, is tell the difference between a mortal threat and not being able to find your keys. You may very well be experiencing that being on constant alert wears you down.

“Any problem, from a full inbox or a noisy neighbour, to illness, activates the threat-detector in our minds.”

Ed Halliwell, mindfulness teacher and writer

The brain needs to be calm because of the way it’s affected by stress. An interesting study by two neuroscientists at Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center New Orleans in 2011¹⁴ showed that the area of the brain involved in memory and learning can be affected negatively through being exposed to just one incident of acute stress.

One of the reasons we are confident you will benefit from this book is because of the scientific evidence that the brain is ‘plastic’. The brain can change. However, just as the brain’s plasticity can be used positively, what this study underlines is that it can also be affected negatively. What we learn from this study is that it’s essential to allow time to recover from the stress of extreme events like accidents and bereavement. You need to be calm to boost your brain’s ability to handle stress so that its other functions are not affected.

• You want: To cope with everything now
• You need: To take time to recover

By analysing what it is you really want beyond calm we hope that you can begin to find ways to introduce calm into your life by addressing tangible issues: you want to feel and be the best You, that person who is in a good mood and great to be around on holiday; you want to live life to the full, but not so that you’re worn out chasing your tail; you’d like to be doing things that give you pleasure from whatever isn’t great in your life; and for all the pressures of the world you’d like to find a way to inspire those around you. You want to live up to your best abilities at work and you want to deal with whatever life throws at you.

You might not have considered why you need to be calm and we’ve highlighted this because, yes, there is a certain urgency to needing it. You need to address finding calm spaces in your life because stress destroys health, and there is ample evidence for this. If you feel you’re not coping well at work, at least there is confirmation now that the current work culture of emails outside work creates anxiety and burnout. Rather than pushing yourself and keeping your brain in a constant alert, you’ll hopefully now give yourself time to process and recover from any stress beyond your control – like moving, divorce, bereavement, redundancy. Investigating what you need will help you develop specific ways to look after yourself. Real calm comes from a foundation of self-care.