10 Tips for Cultivating Calmness

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Calmness may not seem like much of a virtue to you. Maybe you prefer a life of excitement, adventure and risk-taking. Maybe you harbor the suspicion that calmness is very much like premature death.

Or maybe you do crave calmness and would love to live your life more calmly but can’t figure out how to pull that off given your chaotic circumstances. And maybe you also doubt that you have the inner mastery or correct wiring to live calmly.

Just look at how recklessness and drama may be preventing you from doing your best work.

Calmness may not seem like your cup of tea, or it may seem like something unavailable to a person wired like you or caught in your circumstances. That’s what you may be feeling.

For the sake of your art, however, you may want to rethink your position. Just look at how recklessness and drama may be preventing you from doing your best work. Your life may not be completely in your control, and your circumstances may conspire to rob you of equanimity, but it is still on your shoulders to create greater calm for the sake of your art.

Maybe you are indeed wired in such a way that anxiety seems to want to course through your system no matter what — but still, you must make the effort to breed calmness in yourself. By creating less turbulence, you allow your art to flourish.

How do you fashion this calmer lifestyle?

1. Make choices that support calmness.

2. Rest rather than run around.

3. Quietly create rather than loudly resist.

4. Refuse to manufacture unnecessary dramas and distractions.

5. Visit with friends rather than make enemies.

6. Love rather than plot revenge.

7. Put your diva clothes away in mothballs.

8. Meet deadlines step-by-step, not at the last minute.

9. Organize your space, your life and your mind.

10. Learn what supports calmness and what eliminates chaos.

Make the choices that support calmness, and you will reduce your experience of anxiety. Create a lifestyle that supports calmness. This is infinitely easier to say than to do, but even so, you must start somewhere.

Eric Maisel’s latest book, Secrets of a Creativity Coach, is available online for purchase.