Step 1: 7-11 Breathing.
Provided that you are not in an immediate life or death situation and you have a moment to pause, this is the first action to take in any stressful situation. I found it really helps.

What is it, why does it help and how do we do it?
It is a breathing technique that causes you to breath out for longer than breathing in. It acts like mini moment of meditation. Martial artists often use this method when they need to think clearly and apply their fighting techniques.

When we breath, our heart rate quickens upon inhalation and slows down on exhalation. During a stressful situation, our adrenal glands are doing their thing and pumping out stress hormones. This is what triggers the ‘fight or flight’ instinct. But in modern life, sometimes we just want to get a moment of calm and clarity to get the task in hand done. You might be engaged in a heated argument with a loved one (or not a loved one!). You might really want to abseil, but are frozen with fear at the top of a 150ft cliff face. Or even just having an extremely stressful day at work. So when we spend longer breathing out than in, we are slowing down our heart rate, which in turn slows down the production of adrenal hormones. In addition to this benefit, we become so focused on the breathing, it steers our mind away from the stress itself!

So when you get stressed, start to calmly breath in for 7 seconds. Then breath calmly out for 11 seconds. Repeat this a few times until you start to feel more relaxed. It usually takes me about 3-4 breaths (in and out counts as one breath), but try it yourself and see what works best for you. I know that counting for 7 and 11 equal seconds when you are trying to calm a stressful situation can be a bit of a faff. So here is what I do. Start breathing, but instead of trying to count, just gently tap your leg or whatever is comfortable for you. Each tap does not have to be an exact second. They just need to be equally spaced. This way you are breathing out for longer than you are breathing in. You will very quickly start to feel calmer.

Step 2: Take a leap forward in time.
When we get stressed, we tend to live in the moment. Nothing else matters. Just the problem at hand. But what if we could just click our fingers and we leapt forward to the moment that everything was ideal? The problem was solved and all was good again. What would that look like? Have a 360 degree look around at the ideal outcome in the future. Now start to move towards it. Let nothing else matter. The only thing that now counts is to make the everything good again. Your mind will become so busy thinking about what you want, that it will not have the capacity to think of what what you don’t want. Therefore, what you don’t want ceases to exist in your mind.

Step 3: Own it
Whatever the problem or external source of stress might be in your life, get ready to take control and own it. The reality of the situation is that, as humans in the modern world, we have responsibilities to fulfil. That might be bills/debt to pay, relationships to maintain, jobs to hold down, school exams to pass etc. No matter what… These ‘problems’ need to taken care of and dealt with appropriately. Some can be quick, others may take a while. But until the problem is brought under control, the stress will keep trying to re-enter your thoughts.

It would be like having your house on fire and trying to rebuild it while it is still ablaze! …So extinguish the problem, so that you can think more productively.

Step 4: Get Real
Stop whining and blaming everyone but yourself for what has gone wrong in your life. Doing this only gives more power to the cause of the problem and weakens your own mind when trying to find a solution. You are where you are, because that’s where you put yourself.

If you allow your thoughts to convince you that an external force, entity, person or situation put you in a bad position, that you and you alone have just given it the power to hold you down. I found myself in a bit of a tough situation many years back. A friend of mine at the time told me that it was not my fault and then went on to blame others for my woes. I found myself disagreeing with him, because it would have been more painful for me, to think that I was powerless against this external force and had no way of controlling it. How would I have found my way out of that!

Instead, I took control (Step 3), took responsibility and very quickly made moves to fix the problem.

Take it on the chin… Acknowledge your error and learn from it.

Step 5: Straight ahead… No deviations.
So now you have calmed your thoughts, figured out what you want, controlled the problem and learned from your mistakes. Next you need to think about what you want… ONLY. Not what you don’t want. This is what caused the problem in the first place!

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them… Albert Einstein

This may take some discipline to start with. But once you gather momentum, you will become a very difficult force for anyone or thing that wants to stop you. Start to see what you want as if you already have it. I often see, hear, read about people who say ‘Follow your dreams and anything will be possible!’ Firstly. Don’t follow your dreams. Dreams happen when you sleep! And you won’t achieve anything by sleeping on the job! Instead… Make your dreams a reality!

One caveat on this thought. While you should always reach high and dream big… Remember to how to walk before you can run!

Move towards your ‘want’ make it your ‘have’ and you may even find that others might follow!