Feeling Anxious About Daily Challenges?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and anxious about life’s daily challenges, it may be time to begin to cultivate equanimity. Equanimity is a capacity for calmness and balance despite daily challenges and life’s changing circumstances.

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Equanimity moves us toward steadiness and serenity, enabling us to be present without becoming caught up in what we see and feel. Like a sailboat that remains upright and balanced even in heavy winds, equanimity helps us sway in the breeze holding our centeredness, without being pulled too far in any direction.

While the term “equanimity” is used most frequently in Buddhist and other spiritual teachings, research in psychology shows how this calmer balance can be applied throughout everyday life.

Emotional intelligence is a building block for equanimity. Rather than being emotionally hijacked (Goleman, 1995) by automatic, knee-jerk reactions to difficulties and frustrations, emotional intelligence enables us to regulate our feelings more effectively, responding in a way that makes sense for the situation.

Employing our character strengths can boost emotional intelligence and equilibrium. Character strengths are among the evidence-based practices of positive psychology (Niemiec, 2018; Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Of the 24 character strengths that help us live our best lives, three strengths in particular can be integral to building and supporting equanimity: self-regulation, perspective, and spirituality. In a personal communication with Ryan Niemiec, a leading researcher on the science of positive psychology and character strengths, he suggested that the central strength involved in fostering equanimity is self-regulation. Self-regulation is the capacity to calm ourselves and manage our own emotions, behaviors, and impulses in a way that fits our ideals and values.

Well-developed equanimity invites inner calm, balance, and the ability to remain upright amid the strong winds of life. Like learning to exercise, eat healthier foods, or play a new sport, the skills that strengthen equanimity can be developed through awareness and practice. We can set an intention to navigate toward the internal spaciousness that equanimity offers, and practice incrementally. Gradually, we learn to reclaim our moments, more calmly managing our reactions as we navigate the dramatic conditions of our lives.

4 Strategies to Sail Toward Equanimity

1. Recognize that equanimity is not indifference, passivity, or resignation. Equanimity involves facing life’s struggles and challenges, acknowledging the realities of a situation, but not being pulled emotionally too far in any direction. Whether you draw on character strengths such as self-regulation, perspective or spirituality, practicing equanimity involves viewing the situation and dealing with the challenges with a sense of balance. From this place, it's possible to respond more calmly, with resolve and action. Equanimity can assist us in our personal and professional lives as well as when engaging wrongs, oppression, and other issues that confront us in our local and global communities.

2. Let it be OK to begin where we are. Life presents many challenges, for example, increasing demands at work, job transitions, health issues, losses, and political struggles. Many of us feel upset and yearn for the way things were before the change, but these reactions can impede awareness, acceptance and action. Consider adopting a calming "this too shall pass" attitude; a knowing that things are changeable. Cultivating evenness, calmness, and self-compassion can lead to acceptance that it's OK to start where we are today.

3. Build on self-regulation skills. We tend to experience our emotions before our reasoned mind can appraise a situation (Goleman, 1995). In difficult situations, it can help to slow down and learn to reflect on your reactions, giving yourself space to choose more effective ways to respond. Learn to identify and name the specific emotions you’re noticing and to distinguish between different feelings (Boyes, 2013). Have an inner conversation with yourself about what you’re experiencing. Practice ways to calm yourself, to accept and soothe your emotions as you need to. Know the difference between behaviors and actions, and choose responses and behaviors that fit the situation.

4. Embrace equanimity with mindfulness. Breath awareness and mindfulness practice can help us observe life’s challenges with a transformative sense of inner balance and spaciousness. In her book, Real Happiness at Work (2014), Sharon Salzburg reminds us that mindfulness is much more about how we relate to what’s happening than about the event itself. Thus living with greater equanimity can liberate us from the old stories we tell ourselves, reclaiming our attention and well-being in the arms of the present moment. Even when it feels that life’s stormy weather is pulling us in a hundred directions, the gentle discipline of becoming calmly present in the moment is a striking act of self-compassion.

Leverage your equanimity and character strengths by anchoring them to your breath or a calming word or phrase. Mindfulness researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn (2012) suggests noticing mindfully with what he terms an affectionate quality — an open stance offering compassion and kindness toward ourselves.

Here’s one simple strategy: Pause. Compassionately invite yourself to keep calm. Rather than fighting with the challenge or situation, notice your feelings and label them – worry, anger, sadness – with a mindful acceptance (Lieberman et al., 2007). Gently rest your awareness on your breath. Return to the rhythms of your breath as your mind wanders. Experience the peace of greater equanimity.

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** This post is for educational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.