Are you stressed right now? Are you afraid of something? Or do you even panic?

Then you should first of all get out of this situation and try to find out what is actually going on!

To do so, it’s best to leave the scene and find a quiet place. If you are in a public place, it may be enough to just go round the next corner. If you are sitting in a meeting with other people, this can also be the next toilet.

It’s best to sit down and take a deep breath first, and then try to ground yourself a little. These exercises can help you to do so:

Once you have centered yourself and relaxed a little, you should consciously deal with the situation you have just left by listening AND feeling into yourself.

1. Consciousness

So it’s about consciousness or self-awareness – and it’s interesting that we colloquially associate the term self-awareness with a form of inner strength, although semantically this term only means that we are aware of ourselves. But that’s no wonder, because the more we are and remain truly with ourselves, the better we can deal with a challenge or disruption from outside!

But back to creating consciousness! To do this, it is helpful to first answer a few questions for yourself:

  • What am I experiencing here right now? And how do I explain this to myself?
  • What exactly is it that is stressing me out here right now? What might I be afraid of? And how likely is it that my fears will actually materialise?
  • How am I feeling right now? And how am I judging these feelings or the fact that I am in this situation? How do I talk to myself internally (e.g. “Now this has happened to me again”)?
  • How do I experience my body? How do I breathe? Am I hot or cold? What is my body posture like? How does it all feel in my stomach?

2. Empathy

If another person or even a group is involved in the situation – e.g. your partner or boss, or your team at work – you should also use your empathic skills and include them in your reflection. The following questions can help you with this:

  • How do you think the other person(s) experience this situation? How does he/she/they feel about it? What do the other(s) think and feel?
  • How does the other person or persons behave? And how do you explain that to yourself?
  • What reasons, interests or needs do you suspect for what was said or done?
  • How does the other person(s) feel about it?

Of course you can’t see into the other person(s) mind, but just trust your intuition. Then you are probably not totally wrong with what you suspect.

If you do this with an open mind, you should very quickly get a good feeling for what is currently stressing or worrying you – and what would help you to ground yourself or relax again.

Just give it a try!

P.S.: Of course, you can’t walk out of every situation and you can’t stay in the toilet forever during a meeting. It therefore makes sense to repeat the above exercise again with a little time in between. In the evening, for example, to round off the day. Many people also find it helpful to write down the answers and read through them again afterwards or a few days later. Because time pressure is naturally more of a handicap than a help when it comes to grounding yourself and reducing stress. In addition, the time (and often emotional) distance helps you to really be with yourself and answer all the questions in peace.

However, many people try to do exactly the opposite: as soon as the situation seems to be halfway over, they try to return to “normality” and forget and suppress the stressful moment as quickly as possible. This feels better on the surface, but of course it means that nothing changes at all and that you experience the same situation as just as bad, or even worse, the next time.

In order to increase your own resilience, you should therefore take enough time to really “understand” a challenging situation through consciousness and empathy and, based on this, develop ideas on what you could do differently next time in order to deal with it more confidently.