What do you do when/if you feel stressed out? Do you have any tricks to calm yourself down?
I ask because I kinda freaked out this morning.
Why? Because I sat down to write, and it felt like pulling teeth! — like every word that plopped out of me smelled like flamin’ hot, stinky poo!
And things got progressively worse as my old writing ghosts returned: “Karen, you’re boring and nobody likes you! You suck. Drunken poodles could write better leads than this,” etc., etc.
It was overwhelming, and I just started to cry.
I tried a few things to halt the downward spiral, things that have worked from time to time over the years … like the note I wrote to myself and posted on my monitor: “Relax! Freaking out doesn’t help you.”
After the note, I went outside and walked around for a few minutes, taking deep breaths. Pretty soon I stopped crying.
Back at home I listened to some music, and that helped even more.
First, I played Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten (the intro song for The Hills). I tried to imagine how the songwriter must have struggled with the lyrics, yet after toiling for hours and probably freaking out once or twice turned all of that energy into something beautiful and meaningful.
Then, I played Notorious BIG’s Juicy… Yeah, an unusual followup to Natasha’s song, but I found it oddly inspiring: “It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine!”
Taking deep breaths, going for walks, writing myself notes, listening to music — all simple tricks (cliched tricks, in fact), but they helped. I’m feeling a little better now… 🙂
Do you ever feel stressed out or like you’re about to lose your sh*t? If you do, how do you calm yourself down? Do you have any soothing secret weapons? Please share.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen