How To Thrive During Turbulent Times

As I write this, I’m literally 40,000 feet in the air on a plane that is flying through a dark and rigid storm.

Daniela Avila @_danielita

We’ve been experiencing a significant amount of turbulence for a majority of the flight thus far.

Every five minutes or so I’ll notice my body begin shaking in between brief moments of surprise, as the plane unexpectedly dips up and down, left and right.

Cristian Baron @crisbaron

It wasn’t too long ago that this sort of experience really bothered me.

I would often find myself completely overwhelmed with fear and anxiety.

I HATED flying.

The fact that I couldn’t control what was happening - and even worse - couldn’t KNOW what was happening, was utterly difficult for me to deal with.

Can you relate?

Mario Azzi @spacemonkey

During these times of my life I loved cars.

I loved being on the ground.

I just felt much safer there, even though the reality was, it is much safer to fly than to drive!

My dissatisfaction with flying seemed to amplify over the years, until it started reaching all time level highs.

During these times, my mind felt like it was completely out of control.

Ehimetalor Unuabona @the_east_london_photographer

While on board, my mind would quickly become clouded with visions of my “inevitable death", my breathing was restricted, and my body was constantly tensing as though it was bracing for impact.

This would last the entirety of a fight, which as you can probably imagine, took a lot energy out of me!

This was my standard plane flight experience for a long time.

I had just accepted that I didn’t like plane flights.

I thought it was something I would just have to deal with forever.

But then something happened…

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My Fateful Discovery

One day I was taking a flight from Texas to visit my family in Wisconsin.

That day, my plan was to buy the onboard wifi so that I could work and hopefully distract myself from the undesirable waves of fear and anxiety that I knew I would experience.

Once I sat down in the plane and opened my laptop, I was immediately confronted with the unfortunate truth:

The wifi wasn’t working.

Shiiit.

Seeing that I had nothing else to distract myself with, I said to myself,

“I wonder if there’s something to learn here?”

In my experience, when things don’t go as I had planned - or in this case - when technology just isn’t working, I like to explore the opportunities for an alternate experience to emerge.

Sometimes we are given opportunities to discover things when life throws a wrench in our plan. I see it as a mechanism for breaking our go-to subconscious patterns.

As I put away my laptop and sat back up in my seat, I took a deep breath and asked myself,

“What can I learn here?”

At this point, I didn’t have any ideas as to what I should do to calm myself… so I asked myself,

“If I could feel calm and comfortable this flight, what would I be doing?”

The first thought that came into my mind was to describe how it felt to be in my body.

The thought felt kind of random... but I decided to give it a shot anyways.

So when the flight took off, I simply focused on my body, and described in detail, the sensations I was experiencing.

Andalucía Andaluía @yp8135

“I feel a tightness in my chest…”

“I feel like my body is being pushed down…”

“I feel tingling in my toes…”

After just a minute of focusing on my body, I immediately noticed a significant difference in how I was feeling.

The fear and anxiety was beginning to dissipate!

As I closed my eyes and really tuned into the experience of my body more and more, I noticed that the undesirable feelings had completely vanished.

At this point I was shocked at how effective this mindful strategy was!

I really hadn’t done much at all…just simply focused on the sensations in my body...

And wa-laa!

Like magic, I was able to regain control over my emotional state.

As the flight went on I started focusing on other senses than my feeling sense.

I focused on my auditory senses…what I heard around me.

This didn’t help at all.

Then I focused on my visual senses… what I saw around me.

This made things worse!

It became pretty clear to me that by tuning into my kinesthetic feeling senses, I was detaching from the emotional triggers I had experienced in the past.

I noticed that with my visual and auditory senses, my imagination tended to become very active.

In this particular situation, this wasn’t a good thing as my mind would begin creating a montage of scary thoughts and stories that were real enough to elicit emotion.

When I SAW that the plane was shaking or HEARD the plane rattling and making funky noises, my mind immediately started to create stories about what was happening.

Colourbox.com

This would then lead to an out of control, downward spiral of unresourceful emotions.

When I began to focus on my body, interestingly enough, my imagination wasn’t active.

My mind was able to focus purely on the experience at hand.

I was tuning into the present moment.

By tuning into the present moment, I could detach from any thoughts that existed in the past or future.

This detachment helped me to shift my experience because I wasn’t placing meaning on my body… I was just experiencing it.

Tightening in my chest or feeling like my body was heavy didn’t really mean anything to me.

I didn't associate these things with anything that would cause fear or anxiety.

And thus it was easier to control my thoughts and emotions because my mind was no longer creating fictitious thoughts and stories.

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A Subtle Change In Focus Changed Everything

Ever since I’ve discovered this focus strategy, I’ve used it to significantly alter my experience while flying.

Instead of spending hours and hours of my time dealing with thoughts and emotions that are unrealistic and completely exhausting, I can experience the flight on my terms.

Now I can read, sleep, work, and most importantly, be creative while I’m flying, and it feels no different from being firmly on the ground.

Bambi Corro @bambicorro

I literally wrote this entire article on the plane.

That's something I would have NEVER even considered had I not discovered this strategy.

All it took was a simple shift in HOW I was choosing to focus my energy.

Once I did that, and really committed to it, it changed my experience FOREVER.

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How To Overcome Turbulence in Your Life

Now this strategy I shared with you does not just apply to flying.

Turbulence shows up in our life all the time!

Would you agree?

How useful would it be if you had a go to strategy that always worked when life became shaky and unstable?

What if you could feel peaceful, calm, and focused during times of absolute chaos?

Brooke Cagle @brookecagle

How valuable would that be for you?

I know it would be extremely valuable for me, thus I want to share a quick and rapid process for taking control of your emotional state, regardless of what is happening around you.

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Process For Overcoming Turbulence

As we discovered in the story I shared, there’s something magical about tuning into your senses.

We know that some senses are more effective then others, so keeping this in mind, the first step is to determine which senses are actually resourceful to you.

Different situations may favor different senses, so do a quick test to find out which ones work for you.

I would recommend starting with the main three senses: sights, sounds, and feeling.

These are often the most effective to start with.

Typically one of these senses will be your go to sense, depending upon the situation.

For me, my go to sense was my feeling sense. It was the one thing that helped me to remain present and in control of my emotional state.

Natalia Figueredo @nataliafigueredo

This isn't always the case, so sometimes we need to discover which sense is best for us in the moment.

Below I've listed out the three primary senses that you should test for yourself.

When you are experiencing turbulent times, try focusing on these three areas.

Find which one is most effective for you, then place all your focus on it.

The more you do it, the more your mind will begin to assimilate this perspective.

Soon the focus will run on autopilot.

Now it usually takes me about 5-10 minutes of focusing in order to feel totally fine for the rest of a flight.

It'll take longer at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's easy as pie.

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Option 1: Focus On Your Feeling Sense

Ask yourself:

What do I feel in my body right now?

averie woodard @averieclaire

Then describe the sensation of what you are feeling.

Describe the sensation you are experiencing in detail.

Remember that this is a sensation you are describing, NOT an emotion.

I tend to notice that when I ask people “what sensation do you feel in your body right now” they might say something like: “I’m feeling anxiety in my chest.”

Anxiety is an emotion, not a sensation.

We want to focus on the sensation for this to work effectively.

If you notice yourself doing this, just ask yourself this:

What does anxiety feel like right now?

That will usually lead you to describe some sort of sensation.

Focus in on those sensations!

Then, continue asking yourself the question,

What do I feel in my body right now?

Do this until you begin feeling better and in control of your emotional state.

Sometimes nothing will happen.

Sometimes it will get worse.

Oftentimes I’ve noticed that when I’m in physical pain, focusing on the sensation doesn’t always help as much.

If this isn’t working for you, then it’s time to test out your auditory senses…

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Option 2: Focus On Your Hearing Sense

Ask yourself:

What am I hearing right now?

Eric Nopanen @rexcuando

Then describe the sensation of what you are hearing.

Avoid labeling the sounds that you hear (i.e. "thats a bird", "I hear people talking", "thats a loud fire alarm").

Labeling what you hear can lead to issues because we naturally place meaning on most things within our environment.

We hear a bird and say “that’s a bird’s call” but that doesn’t mean we actually HEARD the bird.

What's actually happening is that our mind is associating the sound with the memory of a bird call.

The problem with this is the fact that we are accessing memory at this point - NOT the present moment.

Thus when we detach from the labels we detach from the meaning and can easily connect with the present moment.

So, instead of saying “that’s a bird’s call”, just focus on the pitch/tone, volume, and rhythm of the sounds.

In example:

If you did hear a bird, instead of labeling as a bird’s call you might say:
“I hear a loud, high pitched noise every three seconds”

In this instance, you’re only focusing on the auditory sensations.

You aren’t accessing memory, which is what we want.

Continue to ask yourself,

What am I hearing right now?

Do this until you feel better or until it’s either clearly not working or it’s making things worse.

If it’s doing the latter, then move to your sight sense.

Option 3: Focus On Your Sight Sense

Ask yourself,

What am I seeing right now?

Sean Brown @seandbrown

Then describe what you are seeing.

Again, instead of labeling things such as “chair, tv, couch, etc…” instead, just focus on the shapes and colors you are seeing.

Detach from the labels completely. Just see things as they are.

The more you practice this, the easier it will be.

Do it long enough and the mind will begin to subconsciously focus in this way.

Finding Peace Within The Chaos

What's the most powerful skill a human can have?

In my opinion, it’s the ability to take control of your emotional state.

For when you can do this, it doesn’t matter what is happening outside of you for you can feel however you want to feel.

We can never control what is happening outside of us, but we can take full control of how we interpret it.

Julian Wildner @julian_wildner

That’s the great opportunity we have been given here.

The good news is that it’s very easy to do.

Does it take practice to master?

Absolutely.

Thankfully, life provides us with countless opportunities to exercise our mind powers.

When we approach chaos with a desire to accept our circumstances and take full responsibility to how we respond…

This is where we discover our true power.

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