International Stress Awareness Day: How to Find Peace When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

With all of the stresses that we deal with on a daily basis, finding peace seems like a dream. Being in a state of mind where you’re not worried, anxious, and just feel cool and calm can benefit you and the people around you. But how do you do that when you’re feeling overwhelmed? Check out the tips below that has helped me to find peace when I'm feeling overwhelmed. 

But what exactly is peace? Even though most of us have heard of the term “peace or inner peace”, have you ever really thought about what it means? Peace is when you are in the state of being mentally and spiritually at peace. When you find peace, you are in a place where you don’t easily get stressed out. It’s the opposite of feeling constantly stressed out, or anxious. Here are a few tips that have helped me find peace and get centered: 

Tips for Finding Peace When You’re Overwhelmed:

• Find what’s causing you stress: Consider what in your life is causing you to not feel calm and peaceful. It may not be something obvious on the surface, so try to dig a bit deep when considering this. Is it overwhelming at work? Maybe you find yourself on social media too much and that brings up some negative feelings for you? Once you’re aware of what is preventing you from feeling inner peace, you can start to eliminate it or set limits.

• Set limits: When you know what is causing you stress so that you can’t find peace, you can start to set limits around it. So if the example of social media is something that you enjoy, but you find yourself stressed out if you spend too much time on it, try setting a time of day or a day of the week when you can check it. Setting limits can take time and a lot of self-restraint in the beginning, but once you’re used to your limits it becomes a lot easier.

• Learn to slow down: If you feel like you constantly have a dozen things you should be doing and your mind feels like it’s going 100 miles an hour, it’s time to learn to slow down. You need to slow down your thoughts so that your mind can remain calm and peaceful. Most of us are guilty of overthinking, so taking a moment to take some deep breaths and just slow down your racing thoughts so that you can focus on one thing at a time can really help. 

• Leave negative or unnecessary thoughts behind: We all have negative thoughts once in a while, but those negative thoughts can really weigh on us. The more they pop up, the more time we’re spending thinking about them or analyzing them, the farther we get from inner peace. When you find yourself thinking or worrying about something, ask yourself if it’s something that’s worth stressing out over. Is it something you can change? Or is it the thought something that you can try to train yourself to stop thinking about so often? 

• Practice meditation: Meditation has a certain reputation. Some people think that only certain types of people meditate. They picture a really zen room with someone sitting on the floor cross-legged. But the reality is that meditation is simply the act of slowing down and being mindful of your thoughts. Practicing meditation can not only reduce stress, but it can teach you to observe your thoughts and let them go which is a huge key to inner peace.

• Learn to truly focus: If you find that you have a lot that you need to focus on at once, you can clearly see how that would be the opposite of inner peace. Removing as much as you can from your plate and focusing on one thing at a time can clear your mind from clutter and reduce the amount of mental overwhelm you’re living with.

• Declutter your physical space: Even though we’re talking about inner peace, which is a mental state, your physical environment can have a huge effect on inner peace. If you’re living in a place that is stressful to you and you’re having to be in that space and interact with it every day, it’s going to be hard to achieve inner peace. Remove anything from your physical space that causes you stress or negative feelings.

Finding peace when feeling overwhelmed isn’t exactly an easy task, trust me I know. It’s a process and it’s ok to take it one step at a time.  You owe it to yourself. If you're anything like me, you're dealing with so much information being thrown at us all at once and it can become a lot. Taking these steps will be worth the effort when you’re able to truly find peace.