7 Ways I Stay Sane in a Crazy World

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Here are 7 powerful tools to stay sane in a crazy world. As a result, you will handle situations better, improve your health, enjoy better relationships, and reach your goals.

Staying balanced and in tune with your body, mind, and spirit takes a commitment to self care. By taking care of yourself in these ways, you create better physical and mental health.

It does seem like the world is crazy at times.

I can’t say I feel sane 100% of the time—who does? But I’ve built some solid practices that I turn to again and again to help me feel better.

I just don’t write about practices I think “sound good.” I write about what works, day in and day out, over long periods of time.

The Three Foundations of Feeling Sane No Matter What 

For me, staying sane and balanced is feeling emotionally resilient, being strong and healthy, and getting what needs to be done, done.

Finding balance starts with the intention, belief, and commitment to feeling sane in the world no matter how crazy it seems.

BELIEF

At some level, you have to believe that something will work or at the very least go into it with an open and curious mind. Most of my successful practices require the belief that if I stick to it, I will feel better.

Skeptics and critics may cite the placebo effect. Perhaps there is some element to that? The brain is powerful.

But in a way, isn’t this what we are seeking? We want our brain to make changes in our body based on belief.

That is actually a GOOD thing. Getting our body and minds to heal naturally is way more beneficial than using actual medicine and drugs.

INTENTION

My intention with all I do, is to find peace and create positive energy in my body, mind, and spirit. When I feel balanced and sane; I do my best, not just for myself but for the other people who are in my life.

This is when I do my best work, get my best ideas, and have the best flowing into my life.

Creating and allowing balance requires intention. You have to want that MORE than you want regrets, guilt, worry, anger, disappointment, resentment, and sadness.

Feelings are potent and important. It’s good to feel what you feel. However, with an intention to move beyond feelings, you become open to a powerful shift in your energy.

For the record, I don’t make my best decisions when I’m anxious, worried, or mad. I don’t do my best work when I’m overcome with strong feelings.

I love the full expression of feelings, but my intent is always towards balance. It’s where I live my best, happiest, most productive life. It’s where good flows more easily to me.

COMMITMENT

It may seem counterintuitive to commit to spending additional time on things that may seem like luxuries to some people.

However, in my experience, by taking time for essential self-care practices, you free up additional time or you become more efficient with your time.

By caring for yourself this way, you are not adding on to an already busy day—you are actually creating breathing room.

Also, by committing, you give your practice time to work. We all know that exercise is good for us and helps us shape our bodies. We also know, that working out once a month is not going to get the job done.

The same is true with any balancing practices; you have to commit to doing them regularly over a period of time.

You create true change in your life when you commit to taking care of your emotional, mental, and physical self. We are programmed from the get-go to take care of other people’s feelings before our own.

That does make it difficult to wrap your mind around the absolute necessity of spending time on your own well-being.

You create true change in your life when you commit to taking care of your emotional, mental, and physical self.

There are so many diseases and mental conditions that are all around us. You are most likely dealing with something yourself.

I believe that when we ignore our body, our emotions, and our crazy thinking, we become more vulnerable to sickness and suffering.

I can’t say these practices will cure or prevent all sickness but I believe 100% that they will help you deal with whatever you are facing more effectively.

Here are 7 powerful tools to stay sane in a crazy world. As a result, you will handle situations better, improve your health, enjoy better relationships, and reach your goals.By being sane in an insane world, you let your body heal, you find time, you get solutions, and you just feel better more of the time.

By ignoring how stressed and out-of-whack you feel, you open yourself to illness, pain, and out-of-control emotions.

How I Stay Sane in a Crazy World

These are my top 7 ways I stay sane and balanced. Some of these are practices that I’ve used for years.

Others are newer practices that I’ve found to be super effective. When I find myself out of whack or off-balance, I look into these tools first.

WRITE THINGS DOWN

Stay Sane in a Crazy World by Writing Things Down

With a lot of moving pieces to my life, I have to keep things written down. By hand, with a pen, and on paper. I’ve tried online methods but they don’t work for me.

I write all my to-do things in an inexpensive composition book. I use one page per day. I write out what I want to get done.

There’s plenty of room for notes, phone numbers, or the odd inspirational idea. It’s also easy to go back and find information if I need to.

I cross things off as I get them done. If I don’t get to something, it’s still there in writing that it needs to be done. Even if I’ve written down something I don’t want to do but I must do, I will eventually get to it.

My “planner” feels like a friend and it honestly keeps me moving forward at a steady pace.

Get things out of your head and onto something that is in front of you.

MAKE A DECISION

Unmade decisions can cause all kinds of problems such as anxiety, sleeplessness, and lack of focus

I wrote about the power of making decisions a while back. I had no idea how powerful just making a decision could be.  At the time, I had a few things going on in my mind that I just couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

I made a decision to—you know, DECIDE. I picked the one that was most worrisome and I just made the best decision I could with the information I had.

And that worrisome problem that had been bothering me for months—went away. My mind was at ease about that subject.

Once I had decided what to do, and committed to doing it, my mind could let it go. It was on the calendar, paid for, and was going to happen.

Looking towards the actual event was not even close to being as troublesome as not having the decision made!

But there were more decisions out there. I did the same with them. Honestly, I was blown away how powerful making and committing to an actual decision could be.

This is probably one of the most helpful discoveries I’ve made for myself.

WALK OUTSIDE

Walking is not just good for the body, walking is good for the mind

Eating well and having a fit body is not solely about aesthetic appeal. It’s because having a functionally fit body, is less stressful than worrying about extra pounds or not being able to get around.

I’ve written extensively about walking. It’s that big of a part of my life. When I hit my walking trail, something in my body immediately relaxes. Walking outside truly helps me keep my body in shape but it also helps my mind too.

Long walks outside can also help lower stress hormones which damage your body and can cause extra weight.

HAVE A GRATITUDE PRACTICE

Stay Sane in a Crazy World by Being Thankful

I don’t practice gratitude because it’s the trendy thing to do. I do it because it calms my mind and shifts me into a place where I can think clearly and tap into my creativity.

My life moves at such a pace that it would be so easy to overlook the positive things that happen every day.

Sometimes I’ll sit down to write about things I’m grateful for and I’ll be surprised at how many there are. I’ll even have forgotten a couple until I take the time to recollect the day before.

I actually have three gratitude practices. One just wasn’t enough!

FORGIVE AND FORGIVE SOME MORE

Stay Sane in a Crazy World by Forgiving

Forgiving someone is the ultimate freedom. And sometimes the most difficult one to achieve. Yet, it is so worth it. It’s easy to get caught up in holding a grudge or being mad. Been there, done that, way too many times.

In fact, I believe practicing forgiveness is the most powerful thing you can do to feel sane! When you hold on to anger and hurt, you are truly hurting yourself.

Carrying long-term resentment is the opposite of sanity!

I’m not perfect at this but I actively practice forgiving and letting go. I believe in it so much, I enlisted a counselor colleague to create a forgiveness script and I produced a guided mediation to help with this.

The act of forgiveness is difficult to define. It sometimes feels impossible! However, by having the intention to forgive you create the environment for forgiveness to happen.

Sometimes that is all you can do. But don’t minimize the importance of taking this step.

This guided meditation takes only five minutes to do. It’s one of the best five minutes you can spend to help yourself keep sane.

5 Minute  Meditation for Forgiveness

TAPPING

Stay Sane in a Crazy World by Tapping

Tapping or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) as it is officially known is probably my most out-there practice. But I’ve been using it for a couple of years to manage anxious feelings and negative thinking.

EFT uses pressure points to help with physical and emotional issues like acupuncture does, but without any needles. It’s something that is easy to do at home and I find it immensely helpful in managing worry and anxiety especially.

There are many practitioners out there but for free access to quality tapping, I recommend Brad Yates. He has a YouTube channel and puts his work out there for free. He has tapping on just about any subject you can imagine.

I’ve bought a couple of books on the subject but I just can’t follow a written script. I need to have someone in front of me doing it, to follow along with.

Here’s a link to Intro to Tapping. It’s super easy to follow along with. Here’s Brad’s YouTube channel.

WORK IN SMALLER CHUNKS

Stay Sane in A Crazy World

I wrote about this in a post called How to Get Unstuck in Life. I discovered this process when I was at my lowest point in life and felt that I couldn’t get anything done.

Yet, I discovered that by committing just a few minutes a day to something that was important to me, not only did I get it done eventually, but I did it well.

Since that time, I’ve continued to use this method over and over with equally great results. I cannot even explain how powerful this is.

But I do know from many years of working with college students, that there is a tendency in humans to think if we can’t do something in a BIG way, we shouldn’t even bother.

That is so not right!

In fact, I have seen that thinking you can only do something if you can do it in a big way, create situations that are actually detrimental to the overall goal.

When you bite off more than you can chew, you get overwhelmed, discouraged, and eventually give up.

By working in smaller do-able increments, you begin to achieve measurable results that in turn motivate you to keep making progress.

Eventually those small steps create momentum and projects and goals you thought were impossible get done.

Stay Sane in a Crazy World

Staying balanced is a worthy goal. But it’s unrealistic to think you can feel like that 24/7.

Aiming for feeling that way 80–90% of the time. You can do that! By taking care of yourself first, you handle all situations better, improve your health and fitness, and maintain healthy relationships.

And while I don’t have a practice around it, maintaining your sense of humor through everything really helps too. There truly are things that happen that are no laughing matter.

But around those things, in life in general, there are things we can find to laugh about. And finding those things–helps keep us sane even when we’re dealing with the worst.

Keep showing up my friends!
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11 Comments

  1. Aundrea on October 7, 2016 at 7:09 pm

    I love what you said about commitment. It’ vital to take care of ourselves in a well rounded way

  2. sandra on October 7, 2016 at 2:15 pm

    Great points! I find it very hard making decisions, because I’m always afraid to make the wrong one.

    • Sara on October 10, 2016 at 8:48 pm

      Me too. That happens! But it’s all part of the process and journey. Thanks for reading and commenting.

  3. […] writes about how she stays sane in a crazy world! She also weighs in on the rules of blogging. We all need to follow […]

  4. Welile Vilane on October 7, 2016 at 12:36 pm

    I need to start implementing these into my life, especially walking/exercising and being thankful. Great list.

  5. Elizabeth Storie on September 27, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    This is wonderful! Such great points and reminders. I also have to write things down! I’d be a mess without a pen and paper, and I’m not much for walking, I’m very much a runner. I find so much peace and do my best thinking on my runs. Having a balanced life is a real struggle. Life moves too fast and trying to keep up is exhausting! Thank you for this post, I will be sharing it for sure!

    • Sara on September 27, 2016 at 9:15 pm

      Elizabeth! I’m so glad you found my blog because that means that I found yours. I love it!!! I dream of a yard, garden, chickens, and a compost pile. I am looking forward to exploring your site.

  6. Paula, The Geeky Shopaholic on September 22, 2016 at 8:31 am

    More great advice Sara! I prefer to write things down physically too. It’s not as satisfying using my phone or laptop for my to-do lists. And I want to start walking more. I’m hoping to become more consistent with this now that the weather is getting cooler.

    • Sara on September 22, 2016 at 11:31 am

      Hi Paula. Yeah, if I put any to-do stuff (except appointments) in my phone, it just gets forgotten–even if I set reminders! But once on paper, it’s going to get done at some point. Hope you’re closer to cool weather than me. It was 99 degrees a couple of days ago here!

  7. Autumn on September 21, 2016 at 11:32 am

    Love this post! This is how I have been trying to live this year! Walking every morning has really changed my outlook on the day! So has working in smaller chunks. I stop working at 3 everyday now and pick my son up from school and then it’s family time. Then after family time is mom time (meaning I sneak in a Netflix show with or without hubby show when our son is asleep)!

    • Sara on September 22, 2016 at 8:11 am

      Hi Autumn. Thanks for the comment and the share on FB. I think that you just gave me an idea for #8 on the list, set boundaries for work time. I think that’s fantastic you prioritize family and mom time and stop working at a definite time. That probably helps with productivity during the day as well?

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Hi, I'm Sara Garska and I'm so happy you're here! Big changes can happen with a shift in thinking. Over time, you transform your life into the one you always dreamed of having. As a certified life and weight loss coach, I can help you create a life you love. Click here to schedule a free 50-minute coaching session.