I NEED HELP!

Are you an undercover agent??

...

This feels like an 'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you' kind of moment lol

For me, I deal with stressful situations by just separating myself from everything for a moment, take a deep breath and try to clear my mind - and I remember that in the grand scheme of things whatever the stressful issue is, it will only last a fraction of the time that I will be alive and that I just have to get through it.

(That made more sense in my head I think...)

 

IDK if this will work because you're already good at analyzing situations from afar, but it helps me to practice. I practice almost everything - whether it's a speech, debate, or presentation, or if I'm asking out a girl, interviewing for some award, or diffusing a bomb.

Oops. You already said no practice, but I don't want to erase that

In that case, physical preparation helps me. Before the day of whatever you have to do, eat a good dinner, get good sleep, and eat a good breakfast. If you have fewer physical things to hyperfocus on, you can hopefully concentrate on the task at hand. Further, take things one step at a time. Obviously this tip only works depending on the situation, but in a similar way that you might handle a long list of things to do, you can go about results-sensitive work. Let's imagine that you're making a building's blueprints while people watch you to examine your genius, when, in reality, you are only genius when you work from the comfort of your home. If you tell yourself that you just need to finish the living room, and, when that's done, tell yourself you just need to finish the kitchen, it might help you relieve stress as you start to see a bunch of easy tasks that you HAVE done over and over again. That reminds me. Try to bring a comfort item. I know you don't have time to practice, but if the situation mandates that you've already done it before (like 1,000 hours flight time for pilots), you can incorporate an element that happened to be in all those hours of required practice. For example, if you always were drinking Dr. Pibb in the past, drink it in the stressful situation.

I'm guessing that the problem is physical nervousness. So let's say you're undercover. If you can, wear sunglasses: this may seem really silly, but I find that your eyes are the hardest thing to control. If you can't wear sunglasses, be sure to make eye contact, so you seem like a normal person. Next is the mouth. If you find yourself smiling a lot, don't worry about it too much, as long as it's reasonable for you to be a happy person. Some people (like me) smile when they're hiding something, but I can often play it off as something else. If I tell a white lie to a friend and he can't tell if I'm serious, I'll say that I'm smiling because it's fun to watch him suffer / watch him realize that I'm not lying. If this is you, it would be good to have prearranged excuses for smiling, which you can develop in a few minutes on the way to work. The next biggest giveaway would be your hands. IDK why, but nervous people seem to move their hands a lot, either to cover part of their face, scratch themselves, or wring each other. Keeping your hands at their task, or simply at your sides (outside of your pockets, imo), makes you physically appear much more calm. My hands shake, which is bad if people are being critical of your appearance, but people don't comment on it for the less pressure sensitive tasks that I listed in the first paragraph.

So I've listed a few things you can do to actually be calm, and a few things you can do to appear calm. Luckily, each one can play into each other. If you need to actually be calm, having people believe you (smiling is even better here) can boost your confidence. If you need to appear calm, force yourself to take a comfort item.

I'm an example driven person, so it's a bit harder for me to formulate ideas without the event that you need to be calm for. I just included things I've used in the past. Finally, I'll let you know that it's either a lot easier or a lot harder to be calm if you have advanced notice, and it's important to figure that out about yourself. My friend Evan loves advanced notice, because he practices like crazy, or at least does some mental prep. I start to nitpick if I have too much time and I will realize what I'm doing wrong- if I'm thrust into a situation, I'm more willing to let myself make mistakes and I've learned to just play along with it.

 

I'll make the shortest post:

YOU CAN DO IT !