8 Ways to Cultivate Equanimity

equanimity • \ee-kwuh-NIM-uh-tee\ • noun. 1 : evenness of mind especially under stress 2 : right disposition : balance.

– Merriam-Webster Dictionary

No one goes through life without occasionally facing difficulties, disappointments and tough times.  That is just part of the human experience.  So, being able to handle stressful situations with grace and serenity is an important skill that we all need to develop.  That is why it is so important to learn how to cultivate equanimity.

When you possess equanimity, your mind is like a still pond.  If you throw a pebble into a still pond, there will be a momentary ripple.  But then the pond quickly will revert back to its still state.  Similarly, if you possess equanimity, when you experience a stressful situation, you may be momentarily perturbed.  But then your mind, like the pond, soon returns to its calm state.

The problem is that equanimity is elusive!  If equanimity was easy to possess, we’d live in a world of folks who manage stress without issue.  Instead, that are lots of people who fall apart when faced with stress.  They start yelling and carrying on if life doesn’t go their way.  Or, they use drugs, alcohol or nicotine to manage their stress.

The good news is that you can cultivate equanimity.   With the right habits, you can have a “still pond” mind and possess the equanimity that you desire.  Follow the approaches below, and see how much better you can become at handling stress, and how much happier you can be!

Practice Mindfulness

One way to achieve equanimity is to practice mindfulness throughout your day.  Mindfulness is simply the act of paying attention to what is happening in the present moment.  Being mindful is incredibly challenging because we typically spend our day doing one thing while thinking about another!

The benefit of mindfulness is that it stops us from fretting.  As human beings, we fret about all kinds of things.  We may mull over bad memories from the past.  Or we may worry about the future.  And neither activity is productive.  After all, you can’t change the past, and you can’t control the future.  So, focusing on the present is the only sane thing to do!

A mindfulness practice trains your brain to do just that.  When we practice mindfulness, we give our full attention to the present moment.  Now, that isn’t easy.  For the next 10 minutes, I challenge you to stay fully present.  If you accept my challenge, I guarantee that you’ll find that your mind wanders away from the present moment.  Our minds are difficult to control!

But with a mindfulness practice, we can get better at being fully engaged in the present moment.  In doing so, we can achieve can achieve greater equanimity because we aren’t feeling stressed out by the past or the future.  Instead, we can be calmer because we are fully engaged in the present moment.

Start A Gratitude Practice

We also can achieve greater equanimity by simply being more grateful.  Unfortunately, gratitude doesn’t come easily to most of us.  It’s something that we have to work at.

Realize that the human mind is a funny thing.  It fights against being grateful.  Instead, our brains tend to focus on what is going badly in our lives.  For example, let’s say that you receive five compliments and one criticism today.  I guarantee that you will focus on the one criticism, and you’ll forget about the five compliments. 

As humans, we tend to focus on our problems because we like to fix things.  So, if there is problem, our attention goes there.  Admittedly, our natural desire to solve problems is a good thing!  But it does get in the way of our being grateful.

So, we have to train our minds to be grateful.  Some people do so by keeping a Gratitude Journal in which they regularly write down the things for which they are grateful.  Others make gratitude part of their meditation or prayer practice. 

Regardless of which approach you choose, the key is to train your brain to be grateful.  If you do so, equanimity will come more easily to you.  That is because when a stressful situation arises, you’ll take a step back and put that situation in perspective.  “Yes, this one bad thing has happened.  But given the many good things that are happening in my life, I’m really quite lucky!” 

Develop Your Self-Awareness

Another way to cultivate equanimity is to become aware of what causes you to become overwhelmed or to react irrationally.  For instance, I become overwhelmed when there is a mess in my house.  An unmade bed or a messy room gets on my nerves in a way that it just doesn’t for other people.  So, I have to be mindful that the way that I react to a mess may be out of proportion to the problem itself.

We all have things that irritate us or trigger us to be unreasonably upset.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  After all, it’s human nature to find certain things to be more annoying than others.

However, if you want to cultivate your equanimity, it helps to recognize what kinds of things particularly upset you.  Then you can manage your stress and respond in a more even keel way. 

For example, I’ve now learned how to deal with my irritation when I see an occasional mess. These days, if I stumble upon a mess, I don’t let my blood pressure go up!  Instead, I take a breath, and then I just take 5 minutes to calmly clean up whatever mess I’ve encountered. 

When you know where your “trigger points” are, you can maintain your equanimity.  That is because you then can make an intentional choice to not get upset, but rather handle the situation with serenity.

Engage in Physical Activity

There are so many benefits to regular exercise.  Exercise makes us stronger.  And it keeps our weight at a healthy level.  But most importantly, when we exercise, our bodies release endorphins, those wonderful hormones that make us feel good!

Endorphins are mood boosters.  And when we are in a good mood, stressful situations just don’t seem so bad, and we are better able to manage them.  We all know this to be true.  If you’re in a bad mood, every problem seems dramatically worse.  However, when you are in a good mood, it’s a lot easier to shrug off problems and say, “No big deal!”

Exercise is a great way to get your body to release those endorphins.  So, don’t shy away from exercise if you want to cultivate equanimity.  Go for a walk or a run.  Lift some weights or do yoga.  Find ways to get your body to release endorphins so that you can face any stressful situation with a more positive frame of mind.

Develop a Meditation Practice

One of the best ways to cultivate equanimity is to have a meditation practice.  Now I know for many folks, meditation sounds sort of New Age-y.  But you don’t have to have incense and a Buddha statue to practice meditation.  Rather, meditation is a practice that is for everyone, and it is one that will benefit anyone.

Meditation simply requires you to stop thinking.  That means that you take time of out of your day to stop thinking about your To Do List.  And your worries.  When we meditate, we stop the whir of thoughts going through our brains, and we focus on something simple, like our breath.  Or, we focus on a sound, such as the breeze going through the trees.  The idea is to focus on one simple thing, and to stop the constant thinking, mulling and fretting that we all sometimes do.

When you meditate your mind becomes calm.  And the funny thing about our brains is that once you start meditating, your brain will crave being in that calm state.  So, when something stressful comes up, your brain initially may be upset by the situation.  But then, it will desire to that calm state again.

So, if we practice meditation, we can better keep our equanimity even in the most stressful situations.  That is because our brains will gravitate toward being calm, no matter what is going on around us. 

Learn How to Let Go

Letting go is very hard.  It’s hard to just say, “Yes, a bad thing happened.  But it’s over and done with.  I’m not going to give that situation any more mental energy.”  But if you want to cultivate equanimity, you have to learn to do just that.

The best way to learn how to let go is to stop taking things personally.  To do so, it helps to analzye a situation that may have been upsetting to you.  For example, in the past perhaps someone was rude to you.  Take a hard look at that situation.

If you dig deeper into the situation, what you’ll find is that the person who was rude had issues.  They may have been under stress.  Or, perhaps he or she has a serious character flaw, or maybe even a mental health issue.  Regardless of the cause of their rudeness, the bottom line is that their rudeness had nothing to do with you.

Once you realize that the behavior of others has nothing to do with you, it becomes very easy to let go.  Yes, the behavior of others may be annoying or even upsetting.  But their behavior isn’t a comment on you.  It’s purely a reflection of the other person and their issues.

The good news is that once you stop taking the behavior and comments of others personally, it is much easier to maintain your equanimity.  Because you know that what other people do and say is all about them.  So, you can be calm because their behavior is their problem.

Practice Self-Compassion

Now, of course, there are times when we make mistakes!  The key to maintaining your equanimity when you make a mistake is to engage in self-compassion.  And that means to stop being so tough on yourself.

The reality is that most of us are too hard on ourselves.  We go through life demanding perfection from ourselves.  And that is a losing battle.  Because we’re all human, and as a result, not one of us is perfect.

So, we have to learn to live with our imperfections.  And we have to accept that we may not always say or do just the right thing.  And that’s OK! 

The good news is that when you learn to offer yourself self-compassion, you are better able to relax.  That is because you stop expecting perfection from yourself.  You then can handle your mistakes with equanimity rather than beating yourself up for not being perfect.

Live a Balanced Life

Often, we lose our equanimity and are unable to handle stress because our lives are imbalanced.  Realize that we are most relaxed when our lives are in balance.  To be at ease, your life needs to have a proper balance of work, rest and play.  If you have too much of any one of those three things, you aren’t able to easily handle the issues that come your way.

We all know what an imbalanced life looks like.  Take a look at any mother with a baby!  When you have a baby, all your mental, emotional and physical energy goes toward that child.  And rightfully so.  Small children are completely vulnerable and need our undivided attention.  But for those couple of years, while your child is small, your life is not balanced.  As a result, you are tired!  And when you’re tired, simple life stressors can be overwhelming. 

Similarly, our lives can become imbalanced if we are too focused on work.  If we are consumed with our jobs, we have insufficient time to just relax.  And then we struggle with our equanimity because we are just plain worn out!  Conversely, if we don’t work or have another way to occupy our brains, our lives are imbalanced because we have too much down time.  We then become less sharp and are less able to address problems.

But when we have balance between work, rest and play, we are at ease.  Having that “right” balance allows us to handle stress more effectively.

The ability to handle stress with equanimity is one of the most important skills that we can develop.  If you are seeking to cultivate your equanimity, try the approaches above.  If you do, you’ll find that you are able to handle stressful situations with serenity and grace.