One of the many downsides to stress is the creeping belief settling in your mind that maybe you can’t ever be calm. We hope that by this stage you’ll feel more confident in your analysis of why you find yourself stressed and that this gives you the a-ha moments of recognizing what’s going on in your brain and how this affects you. These a-ha moments are your launch pad for learning to be calm. We hope that the research and the advice from our experts has already reassured you that yes, it’s possible to change.

In Part One we focused on what it really means to be calm, steering you towards a new definition based on being your best you as well as developing the skill of calm for when it’s necessary. Then in Part Two we examined the reasons you might not be able to deal with stress, from how you were brought up to handle pressure, to understanding what you are experiencing right now. We presented six stress triggers which sabotage all your efforts to be calm.

You may find that by making some adaptations to how you handle stress, you don’t need to learn to be calm for the most part. Yet modern life being the way it is, learning to be calm is an essential skill. In this final Part Three we will outline what it is you need to learn to be calm.

• Stop: Telling yourself (or letting anyone else) tell you that you’re hopeless at slowing down
• Start: Telling yourself (and everyone else) that you’re learning to handle stress

UNDERSTANDING THE BRAIN

We’ve aimed to demystify the brain for you, so that you realize you can tweak it. The more you learn about the brain and how it works, the more you know what the brain needs to boost your mind.

The brain is so plastic that it can adapt even during periods of acute stress. Research at the Rockefeller University¹ found that although chronic stress affects the brain’s neural circuitry, keeping it ‘trapped’ in states of anxiety and depression, recovery is possible. Glutamate, the chemical signal affected during stress, has ‘windows’ of neuroplasticity.

Neuroscience expert Professor Ian Robertson believes that the key is learning how to respond to stress. Learning to view stress as a healthy challenge can help enormously. We don’t need to allow our ancient brain to launch into fight or flight. It’s about learning to take advantage of the brain’s ability to change through experience. It’s about mind management.

Professor Robertson’s book outlines the ample research that the human brain can change through experience. Experience is the crucial point. You might think there’s a chicken and egg situation here: how can you change your experience from frazzled to calm when you’re too frazzled to think straight?

Understanding what happens in the brain can inspire you to make some simple changes. Professor Robertson refers to research² that demonstrated the way genes in the brain can change. The proteins ‘expressed’ by the brain’s genes control functions in our bodies, including behaviour. Experiences and environment can turn off the genes’ protein synthesizing activity, and this is especially the case with stress. Let’s say this in simple words: Stress switches off your brain’s ability to change.

When you’re stressed you’re often on autopilot, trying to survive and get by, and the last thing you might feel like doing is making an effort to go to a new restaurant, or try a new activity, so there’s another vicious cycle. But the smallest changes can get you in the mood for change – and make a difference to your mood. From choosing a different coffee to taking a different route home, from eating a different cuisine to booking a different type of holiday, when you begin to introduce changes you are boosting your brain’s ability to change. As we saw in the last chapter, a wandering mind isn’t conducive to calmness, so when you make changes you’re also helping yourself to be alert.

• Stop: Following identical routines every day
• Start: Making small changes to your choices

YOU CAN’T HURRY CALM

We saw in the previous chapter that making calm the goal triggers more stress, so how does that tie in with learning to be calm? Well this is all about you – that calm Holiday-You, your best you. The more you learn about yourself, identify what you need and learn to cultivate bringing this into your life, the calmer you will feel. Cynics of course will retort that this is nonsense. Of course you know yourself. And yes, you do, but when modern life takes over and you’re living an overwhelmed life, eventually that little you is buried under responsibilities trying to cope. Stress becomes a wall around you and you can’t recognize yourself. The reality is that the further along the continuum you are, the more time you need to recover your true self.

This isn’t an instant process. It’s a slow, organic one. We’ve been giving you a range of tips to help make that calm feeling you yearn for accessible, from taking a six-day holiday to bringing some Danish candle-lit ‘hygge’ into your life. But these tips in isolation are not enough. They are another layer.

All of this might seem frustrating if you want to calm down right now. Wanting an instant fix when you’re stressed is natural. Understanding why you want a quick fix in relation to what’s happening in the mind can help you deal with what mindfulness expert Ed Halliwell calls a ‘mismatch’ of modes. When the fight or flight system kicks off in your brain, you’re wired up to do something. But the doing mode is not equipped to solve feelings of worry, stress, anxiety, depression.

First you need to slow down and be with yourself, taking time to appreciate what you need. When you learn to be with yourself, calm follows.

“People want a quick fix because of the human survival instinct. There is a threat alert which feels unpleasant and uncomfortable and we want 
to get out fast.”

Ed Halliwell, mindfulness teacher and writer

• Stop: Looking for a quick fix when you’re wound up
• Start: Looking to accumulate calm fixes throughout your day

LEARN TO IDENTIFY YOUR STRESSED HABITS

You can’t go from stressed to calm without a conscious awareness of how you behave and appear during any form of stress. Does your voice become shrill? Do you get snappy? Do you put on a glazed smile? All too often people want to reach a state of calm without a conscious awareness of their stressed state. It’s like wanting to swim to the opposite side of the channel while drowning. Pretty impossible.

In Chapter 3 we gave you an idea of how real calm feels, and this included the fact that others experience you as calm. When people don’t see you as nervous or anxious you are able to shine. Identifying your nervous habits, however, can take some investigation. You spend most of your waking hours working, and during those hours you have probably found a way to disguise the stress surging inside you. This might be so natural to you that you are unaware of all your efforts to do so. Learning to uncover where and how you dump and disguise your stress, from tensing up in your body to raising your voice, is a crucial learning process. Only then can you begin to find alternative ways to release the stress.

• Stop: Being unkind to yourself about looking stressed
• Start: Noticing where and how you feel tense in your body

“Your habits got you to where you are, so they have been useful. But are they useful all the time? What shifts do you need to make right now?”

Charlie Walker-Wise, RADA in Business trainer

IT’S ALL ABOUT TRAINING

Learning implies that there are facts, concepts and processes to learn and remember. But the word training is probably far more accurate in the context of calmness. You don’t need to learn anything because you don’t need to consciously remember to do anything. When you train your mind to handle stress, your mind develops the ability to focus on looking after you. When you train, you become conscious of what it is you need to do to look after yourself.

What you train in is up to you. We will give you recommendations, but the key is to find a form of training that works for you. Anything from setting out to make a daily lifestyle change, to going on a mindfulness course to learn specific mental techniques, can help you. We don’t believe in prescribing any one way, but we do know that you have to find what works for you.

This could be a practical skill like tackling an issue you’re not confident in. To become competent inevitably you have to work at ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ is. RADA in Business trainer Charlie Walker-Wise says it’s not uncommon for people to have a hang-up about their voices which makes them nervous about presenting. ‘We give people a voice exercise regime and suggest they practise three times a week for a few minutes for six weeks. You can learn all sorts of skills but if you want to change you have to practise.’

Rather than a practical skill, you may find what you need is to learn specific relaxation techniques. Again, these need practice so that they become regular conscious habits.

“There are many relaxation techniques. But they are just that: techniques. You can do something else like go for a walk.”

Jeremy Stockwell, performance consultant and TV coach

• Stop: Saying you’ve no time to learn anything
• Start: Exploring what would be fun to learn

The crux of this chapter is that the more you learn about yourself, the more you can learn to be calm. Learning to be calm is a process that develops naturally, albeit slowly, as soon as you begin to heal whatever needs to be healed and as soon as you identify what you need.

Of course there are practical skills that you might believe are essential, like making effective business presentations and being able to talk to your team without getting agitated. These aren’t as rigidly based on learning rules as you might imagine. Communicating effectively is about learning to get rid of tension in the body and the mind and the starting point is learning where and how you store tension and nervous habits. We hope you’ll be fascinated to learn how words come out of our mouth and be poised to learn more about calm communication.

One of our themes in this book is a mindful understanding of oneself, by which we mean a kind appraisal of who you are. The biggest challenge is learning to be kind to yourself.