How to Always Stay Cool, Calm, and Laid Back

You’re lazy. You like to take it easy.  You only like to put in as much effort as necessary to get what you want.

Hard work and diligence -- you ain’t about  that life. You take pride in your work ethic, or lack thereof. 

Whatever happens, happens, man. You are ever encompassing a Dude demeanor, or a lazy aura if you will. You’re so relaxed about life that nothing really bothers you, or shakes you out of your bed for that matter. After all, dealing with it is just extra work, man. Fuck that.
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It’s not the lazy way to make a fuss over things when they get out of hand. Getting overly upset about shit is quite simply, more effort than a true lazy person would ever want to invest.

I mean you spend time ruminating over negative thoughts and feelings, crying, yelling, kicking, and screaming. Man, I’d rather just take a nap and forget about it than go through that whole painstakingly awful ritual.

Problems come and go, man. You ain’t gotta worry.  Just let bygones be bygones. Flush shit down the toilet. Don’t let it sit in the bowl. It’s gross and unhealthy to worry and let negative thoughts and feelings about a particular event in your life linger on and on perpetually.

Today, we’re gonna talk about how to handle your problems the lazy way, and remain cool, calm, and laid back no matter what. 

And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it!

Worrying is more work than it’s worth. 

No matter how bad it is, worrying will only make things worse and not to mention, tougher to cope with. You’re only making it harder on yourself when you choose to worry and yes, worrying is something you do in fact choose to do.

Now that ain’t to say, you’re gonna avoid any and all negative shenanigans completely, but to pine on it endlessly, to harp on the pain you feel for ages, that’s something you decide to do. You can instead, relax and let it go. You can handle all the shit life throws at you with absolute poise and grace.

Look, life ain’t always smooth. Shit happens. You can’t always control every little aspect of your life and undoubtedly, cause stress at some point.  But that doesn’t mean you should fail to react in a smooth way when shit hits the fan. Embrace your inner-sloth and be smooth in your reactions to the troubles you face.

I mean, living a lazy, stress-free life, doesn’t necessarily mean your life is completely “smooth sailing”, in the sense that things always go right, they always go your way. No. Life is inevitably plagued with constant stressors. That much you can’t prevent or control.
Fasten your seatbelt! You’re in for a bumpy ride!

Thing is though, you’re in the driver’s seat. You can’t  choose what exactly the conditions on the road are, but you can choose how you handle the wheel. In other words, the people you know, the environment, the words and actions of others are all things on the outside (of your car) that you can’t control. They are the road. Sometimes it’s smoothly paved. Other times, there are pot holes. Sometimes it’s a beautiful drive out in the sun.  Other times there’s a huge line of traffic during the pouring down rain.

 There are both good experiences and bad ones in this “road of life”. Sometimes you make great friends, other times they betray you. Sometimes you get praised for your accomplishments, other times your good deeds go completely ignored.

You, as the driver, choose how to handle these road hazards and situations accordingly. In the traffic, you can slam on the horn and scream in a fiery road rage. Or remain cool, calm, and laid back about the whole situation, not letting it faze you for a second. You can turn on the radio and jam out to some tunes, instead of emitting a honking noise from your car in an attempt to force the flow of traffic to move faster.

(There’s no reason to get mad at traffic anyway. The lazy man is never in a rush. Low and slow is the way to go.)

 As you drive by the sunset, you can enthusiastically stick your head out the window like a dog with the wind in your face. Or just lean back and enjoy it, without going overboard.

What I’m getting at here, while outside circumstances are beyond your capabilities to change,  you have full control over what’s going on on the inside.

If you see a deer in the headlights. You choose how to navigate this situation. Do you slam on your brakes? Swerve around? Floor it? The choice is yours. 

You didn’t choose to place the deer there. You didn’t schedule for it to be right there at that right exact moment as you drove down that specific road.

A lot of the shit we come across in life is completely both unplanned and unpredictable.


Your refrigerator breaks.. Your significant other decides to leave you. A global virus outbreak strikes. You lose a vital source of income, a good-paying gig. You know, the usual “stresses” that life has to offer.

Despite whatever sort of pain or stress you’re experiencing, while it no doubt, put bluntly, absolutely sucks, you have to realize that you choose how to react to it, you choose how to handle it. You’re behind the steering wheel.

What happens outside your vehicle is in no way part of your discretion, but the pedals, wheel, turn signal, and horn are all tools you have to make due with whatever you come across.

 Likewise, you have inner emotional tools that you can use to handle things.

The main key to remaining cool, calm, and laid back is knowing this, knowing you have the power to decisively decide on your reaction to any situation that life interrupts you with.

A smooth life, in sum, is not about having nothing go wrong. It’s about choosing the right thing when something wrong happens.
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Being stressed does NOT mean you need to stress OUT.

Whether it's a customer refusing to wear a mask, a dog that literally shits in your yard, or pressure to pay the bills on time during a friggin apocalypse, there are many factors in life that cause stress. Stress is a natural instinct. It’s pre-wired in our brains

What isn’t natural though, and within our conscious choice to decide whether or not to do so, is to let the stress get under our skin and react with some sort of outburst.

Stress is basically a built-in alert system, dating back to our ancestors, that warns us “Death is coming!” It’s an instinct we picked up for survival.

When predators were about, our ancestors would feel stress in order to know to be alert about a formidable foe. When they were low on food supply, our ancestors would feel stress to remind them they needed to go out on a hunt soon or gather more berries.

You see, stress is designed to tell us something important and how to deal with the situation. However, allowing stress to get the best of us and using it as a burden rather than as a tool, creates a more stressful situation than the initial stress ever was to begin with.

Of course,unlike our ancestors, most situations you find yourself in aren’t gonna be life or death. It’s not that stressful. Also, we have the ability to think a bit more rationally and logically, instead of relying on pure gut instinct.

We can make decisions based on the stress we feel.

If your job is stressing you out, you can decide to continue schlepping to hell or go ahead and  quit you 9 to 5 and make money from the couch instead. Or...I mean, you could stress OUT and yell at your boss or freak out at an innocent customer for no reason.
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Stress is inward. It’s the inner-feeling and pain you feel. Stress is inevitable.

It’s there for a reason though. Ultimately, it’s the inner-voice just trying to increase your odds of survival. But again, you ain’t gon’ die! So let it have its say, but don’t let it make the commands, ya dig?

How you display that stress, how you react to it, outwardly is where remaining cool, calm, and laid back comes in. 

The things you do, the words you say, on the outside, that is something you must realize you have authority over. You are taking that inner-stress and putting it to the outside world. In other words, keep stress as a passenger and don’t let him grab the wheel.

Living “stress-free” doesn’t mean you won’t ever, ever, EVER feel stress, or have to hop on board your vehicle for that matter. It means you won’t let it get to you. You remain unhinged, unfazed.

It means you don’t let it drive you (crazy). When you give stress the wheel, you’re gonna crash!

Your inner-turmoil does not need to be outer destruction.

Stepping back and realizing that stress isn’t some sort of dictator; it doesn’t make the decisions unless you let it, is what allows you to stay calm.

You have to be aware of your stress without making it a priority to put that stress in the outer world. Keep that inside.

Think of a calm and stoic Buddhist monk. He’ll purposefully make himself suffer the stress of starving or standing still in the same spot for hours.

He does this to train his mind to be aware of how he feels when he’s stressed - the bodily sensations, the thoughts, the emotions, and then practices appearing calm on the outside, despite the inner-turmoil.

When you are at peace of mind, there’s no amount of shit that can bother you and you can in turn, create a peaceful, Dude-abiding aura

Allow stress to, quite controversially, relax you.

Sure, your heart rate may increase, you may even tremble or star sweating, but don’t let that dictate how you behave. Don’t let the way you feel be the sole determining factor on how you speak and how you act.

Be in control of your emotions. Don’t let your emotions control you.
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Being in control of your emotions does NOT mean you are emotionLESS.

Now when I say “control your emotions”, I don’t mean to become this uncaring heartless bastard. 

No matter how you swing it, you’re going to feel emotions, whether that’s stress or grief or something else equally as negative, you are going to in fact feel that pain inside.

Being in control of your emotions doesn’t mean you ignore your feelings either. If anything, it means you have a high level of emotional awareness and listen to them very well.

You listen to what your emotions are trying to tell you and make a proper judgement accordingly. You are the parent to the child and don’t allow any sort of outer temper tantrum happen. You remain poise and stern..

Ignoring your feelings would mean you’re simply bottling them up and bottling up emotions just causes them to explode sooner or later. There’s only so much room in the bottle.

Controlling your emotions is about pouring that bottle out steady so it doesn’t spill all over the floor. It’s about allowing your emotions to be constructive rather than destructive.

It’s listening to what they (your emotions) have to say and setting the best course of action. 

If you’re feeling angry that your mother refuses to go to the doctor. You may want to argue and yell at her.

That anger you feel (your emotion at the time) is a legitimate concern for your mother’s health. It stresses you that she refuses to see a doctor and you feel that stress why? Because of a deeper concern.

But again, stressing OUT about that situation and placing the burden you feel on the inside into the outer world is simply no bueno It’s no good. It does nothing to either make you feel better or solve the situation at hand.

All it does is create more problems.
You must be aware of your emotions without letting them take over.

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Relax, it ain’t a big deal.

Whatever shit you’re going through right now...It’s not the end of the world. It’s really not. (even with coronapocalypse going on, though ti may seem like it)

You know one of the reasons, life seems so difficult or whatever stressful situation you’re facing right now seems so difficult is because we have the habit of making it out to be a really, really HUGE deal.

It’s like diving off the high board into a pool. To an Olympic diver, it’s just another day in the life. To you, it might seem like a fearful height to even make an attempt to do such a thing.

Thing is, when you make something a big deal, you’re bound to stress about it. I mean heck, even going back to the driving analogy. 

When you first started driving, all the different functions of the car seemed so...overwhelming. You might’ve gotten a little sweaty learning how to properly merge onto the highway or linear park on a busy street.

Now, it’s second-hand nature. It’s just something you do. Now you drive with ease, without even thinking about it.

Approach any problem you face like it’s second-hand nature. As if you’ve seen it all, heard it all, done it all before.

The bigger deal you make it out to be, the bigger amount of stress you’ll feel inside, and the bigger amount of temptation you’ll hold to let that stress OUT.

While you can’t avoid feeling any amount of stress, you can prevent it from accumulating into a larger amount of stress than you can handle.

Take it easy. Life is only as hard as you make it out to be. It’s not so much the events taking place that make life hard, it’s your own inner interpretation of said events that does.
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Take a deep breath

Breathe. Seriously. Just...breathe. And let out a good yawn.

You want to talk about being cool, calm, and laid back. Well, yawning literally cools your brain. It reduces stress. It makes you feel...a lot better.  Studies have actually shown how yawning can be a small, yet effective positive thing to do.

It’s amazing how one little thing like taking a deep breath can benefit you and your ability to stay cool headed (literally). 

Breathing deeply allows you to calm down and focus.  It allows you to work on the problem rather than get worked up.

It gives you that extra boost of peace and level-headedness that you need to deal with shit. It allows you to take a (slow n’ steady) step back and look at the situation form a third person perspective, without getting too attached to it all emotionally.

Always take a deep breath before making a decision, before choosing a reaction. It’s honestly a low cost and low effort way to relax and embrace inner-sloth.

Float on

Man, I say it all the time, but just go with the flow, dude. You can’t be cool, calm, and level-headed if you’re aggressively trying to swim against the current, if you’re feverishly trying to change things you flat out can’t change even  if you wanted to.

You’ve got to...let it be. Let things be the way they are. Make peace with your inner feelings about that, but don’t stress yourself out by trying to change everything all at once.

Things can and will change. For the better, too. But all that...takes time.

We have the vaccine now for coronavirus. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. Things are looking up.

Man, for a while, surely we were living in hell. It seemed that way. Felt that way. But it wasn’t. We all float on. The same principle applies to our personal lives too.

It may look like hell with what’s going on, but just go with it. It’s not as cursed as you make it out to be. Again, you’re making it all a bigger deal than it really is.

While you might feel stress about it, you ain’t gotta let that stress corrupt you.

Stress is just telling you “do something to survive”. You’ll survive though. You’ll get through.

Overall, if I had to summarize the mindset you want to achieve in one line or catchphrase it’s this: “It’s all good. I’ve got this.”

Tell yourself that. Right now. Say it. “It’s all good. I’ve got this.”

That’s the attitude you want right there. Repeat that to yourself until it’s ingrained in your brain.
Being able to say that and really believe that is really what allows you to remain cool, calm, and laid-back at all times.

As always, embrace your laziness because it’s all good. You’ve got this.








Take it easy,

N8
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