Feel Grounded, Calm & Collected: Three Simple Practices and a Powerful Secret Ingredient.

The world has so much to offer us, it can be seen as a beautiful buffet of delicious experiences or it can appear to be a chaotic pressure cooker, serving up steaming hot overwhelm.

Depending on how you look at it, it’s pretty easy to forget who you are these days—lost somewhere between social media rabbit holes, the overwhelming buffet of life choices, and the general chaos of just trying to function in 2025. If we’re not paying attention, we end up living on a metaphorical funhouse floor where the ground won’t stop shifting--cue the uncertainty, agitation and “why am I crying in the Trader Joe’s parking lot?” vibes. With constant stimulation coming at us from every direction—Instagram, reality TV, magazines, and, let’s be honest, the soul-sucking vortex know as traffic—it’s no wonder our nervous systems are fried. So, what the answer? Live off the grid and start a goat farm? Tempting, goats are cute. But I once heard a wise person say (and I’d credit them if I knew who it was): the way to speed up is to slow down.

The best place to start is by intentionally slowing way down, like, in every way with these 3 simple steps.

1.   Grounding physically

Take a deep breath. Notice the ground beneath you, the invisible force of gravity holding you… Stay there for a few breaths just noticing. Feel your feet when you’re walking. Feel your seat when you’re sitting. Feel your body in contact with the surface when you’re lying down.

2.   Grounding thoughts.

Take a deep breath. What are you thinking about yourself? Intentionally take a day to notice and write down your self-directed negative thoughts as they come. Are these things you would say to a friend, or to a small child? If you did, you would not maintain many healthy friendships. Now burn that list! Relationships must be nurtured with kindness. Your number one relationship to tend with kindness is the one you have with yourself. Shining this light of awareness on your thoughts is the first step to improving your relationship with you.

3.   Grounding energetically.

Take a deep breath. Can you feel the energy in your body? Sometimes we feel it as fatigue or adrenalin, but in between those extremes there are more subtle aspects. Humans are made of energy. For instance, have you ever noticed what it feels like to enter a room where an argument had just taken place? That palpable energy can hang thick in the atmosphere. The same goes for positive energy. Here is a way to experience that: Take a moment to choose to feel gratitude for something, anything right now. Did you feel the shift in your energy? Ready for the bonus round? Bring to mind a challenge or conflict you are facing currently. Can you shift your thinking to feel a little gratitude even for this? Maybe it is making you more resilient or teaching you something. (Note: Some challenges are too big to see any good in. If this is impossible, simply keep practicing gratitude for easier things.) That energy of gratitude shifts you into possibility and out of resistance to the truth that life is 50% good, 50% not-so-good and all shades between.

The secret sauce of it all? It’s the portable, simplest and most overlooked tool we have. ~The breath. Just take one. Make it deep. Slow the inhale, ease the exhale. Feel it flow in…and out. How does that feel? You’ve just taken a step toward peace--without doing anything that looks like “doing” at all. And trust me, that step is profound. The world needs the healthy, calm and collected version of you. Because when you are grounded, you can show up as your best self--right here, in this moment.

Breathe well, my friend.