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How to stay calm while being more productive

By Eren Mckay  
Filed under Miscellaneous


 
Hi! I'm Eren Mckay and I would like to thank you for reading my blog. I provide helpful tips for families in their daily lives and educational resources for teachers.


Many times anxiety will cause us to not be as productive as we could be. Whether you’re wanting to remain calm at work or at home you can do certain things to change your environment to experience this kind of peace.



I have discovered two things that have enhanced my life greatly for productivity. They are explained in this blog post and you can click on the following links to go to each different section:

Mini Table of Contents


  1. The Power of Incorporating Music Into Your Daily Life


  2. Making Sure That the Objects that Surround You Daily Bring You a Sense of Peace







Music is Key

One of the things that I discovered when wanting to become more calm and productive in my work is the power of soothing music.
Music can literally transform you. Unfortunately many people don’t understand how to incorporate music into their habits and end up missing out on the opportunity to have more peace and joy in their daily lives.

Listen to your soul.

If you can listen to that “internal dialogue” that goes on inside of you, you’ll discover when you need to calm yourself down and when you need a bit more excitement. Sometimes our minds are racing so much that we need the calmness of very slow music just to be able to think straight. When there are too many thoughts in our minds, the ability to make a decision as to which task would be the best one gets hindered. Other times we are in that state of being kind of stagnant and a faster song would help motivate us to “snap out of it” and start moving forward.

Calmer songs

If your goal is to feel more at peace then slower songs are the best.
It would be better that they not even have lyrics so that they don’t distract you. But this really depends on each person individually. If slow songs with lyrics don’t distract you then by all means definitely listen to them.
You can just have it on in the background to keep your emotional state where it needs to be. Instrumental Celtic music with little to no beat is the ideal for this. You don’t even need to vary the songs that you listen to. You can listen to the same song over and over again.

Keep them handy

I personally have cds handy 24 hours a day.
You can also unite all the best soothing songs into one CD so that you don’t have to stop and waste time changing the CDs.

Listen to uplifting calm radio online

The other thing you can do is open up Paul Collier’s YouTube Channel. I have his music bookmarked and listen to it a large portion of my day.
He is a fantastic independent artist and I recommend his work. He has composed beautiful healing songs. I can honestly say that his songs help us get calmer and calmer. You can find out more about him at his website. I want to thank Paul Collier for this beautiful song.
The following is one of my favorite songs that I listen to as background music while I work:



Back to the Top



Create an Environment

Start to create an environment for yourself that will help calm your spirit down. If you work at home you should also communicate certain rules so that your family can respect your need to concentrate and actually get work done.
Surround your working space with things that bring tranquility and peace. That way you’ll be able to get inspired and feel the peace of actually getting a lot done without getting stressed out.


Ask yourself questions.

Here’s a few questions to ask yourself when you’re creating this space for yourself:

  • How does this object make me feel?
  • What objects would bring me the feeling of peace and joy?
  • What objects could I get rid of because they’re not useful or inspiring?
  • How can I make my surroundings more useful for me?



If the object brings you peace and calm and less stress when you look at it then you definitely want to have it near you. By paying attention to what you feel when you look at something you can be sure to only keep the things that will help you. Asking yourself this kind of question from time to time will help you make better use of your space.


I’ve decided to show you some of the objects that I surround myself with. Hopefully some of these pictures will spark creativity in you for your own environment.
I hope you don’t mind but I had to use my web cam to take these pictures. My other camera broke and even though the photos aren’t high quality they can still give you ideas.


One thing that you can do is put the objects that bring you joy where you spend most of the day so that you can see it. Since I spend most of my days next to the computer I put my blue Christmas tree behind my desk and these transparent ornaments right next to it.

Blue Christmas tree and ornaments.





Candle Calmness



Here are pictures of candles that I keep close. (Make sure you always blow out the candles if you leave the room that it’s in.)


heart candlegreen and pink candles















Other Inspiring Objects



Here are my colorful flowers and my pink wind chimes. Other objects that you can get that are decorative are coffee mugs, picture holders, calendars, etc.


colorful flowers pink mobile




















What about you? What objects and habits calm you down? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.


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13 Comments on "How to stay calm while being more productive"

  1. Sire  

    Some of this stuff may be a little hard when at work though Eren. If you are allowed to listen to music at work then I agree taking the right tracks to work could work wonders.

  2. Eren Mckay  

    I agree Sire. It really depends on the employer and their vision of productivity. Japanese companies are very much into allowing things like music and time to rest in between tasks. Ultimately employers need to think of ways to bring more joy and happiness to their companies so that the productivity goes up. I personally could not work at a place that didn’t allow for my individuality.
    Blessings,
    Eren

  3. BK  

    So far I have used music or soothing songs to calm myself when I am driving. I wouldn’t say it always works but so far so good. Listening to music or soothing songs helps me to relax when I am driving and I don’t have the tendency to speed. I should also incorporate music into work so that I can feel peaceful and inspire.

    I like the idea of surrounding our environment with soothing objects too. I have never thought about this seriously but now that you mentioned it, maybe I should look further into this.

  4. Eren Mckay  

    Hi BK :-) ,
    I never knew the power of music in my daily life until very recently when I decided to start listening more. I started to notice my mood change. It is sooo awesome.
    If I felt kind of slow I would turn on a faster song and boom I was productive. If my mind was racing I would put on a very slow song and was able to slow my brain waves enough to actually write or do something stressful.
    Listening to music all day just brought me a whole new quality in my life. It has increased my productivity and my joy a lot.
    That’s why I wanted to write this post – so others can understand this.
    Thanks so much for commenting and tweeting the post. I really appreciate it ♥.
    Blessings,
    Eren

  5. Maria @ Conversations with Moms  

    I think one of the best investments I made last year was buying a system for the kitchen. I listen to music in the morning while getting ready for work and it always puts me in a great mood. Not to mention, my kids have fun dancing.

    Reading calms me down and for some reason, driving does the same for me.

  6. Eren Mckay  

    Hi Maria,
    Absolutely. Putting music on in the kitchen is a great motivator. My boys love dancing too- totally get ya there.
    I love reading but I never know what I’ll feel like reading so I have tons of books around me. Nowadays I mostly read blogs.
    They’re just more alive than regular book reading.
    Thanks for stopping by.
    Blessings,
    Eren

  7. Ruth  

    Once again you have brought to our attention the very things that we ignore so often. God wants us to be at our very best and these are ways to do that.
    Thank you, Eren, for listening and writing…
    Ruth

  8. Eren Mckay  

    Very true Ruth. We often think about other people so much that we end up forgetting about ourselves. This is such a mistake. The golden rule is to “Love your neighbor as yourself”. So Jesus was stating that we also need to love ourselves.
    It kind of reminds me of when the plane is in an emergency situation that we need to put the oxygen mask first on ourselves and then on the person next to us.
    In life we often forget that we need oxygen too and that we can’t help anyone if we’re passed out.
    So this is a lesson I have learned the hard way and want to encourage others to really take care and love themselves – guilt free.
    Thanks so much for your comment :-) .
    Blessings,
    Eren

  9. Ching Ya  

    I just love the message! I love music and it’s a dream for me to have a band of my own. sshhhh.. :-) Music has helped me a lot in the ‘calming’ & relaxing process, that’s for sure. It’s amazing how the rhythm can change our mood in just a few seconds. Just yesterday I heard a very nice song, after learning about the singer’s background and how he persevered from his incapability it touched my heart so deeply! I learned from the story and the lyrics are just beautiful. Music — one of the best creation from Above.

    @wchingya
    Social/Blogging Tracker

  10. Eren Mckay  

    Hi Ching Ya,
    Yes it is wonderful. Music has been one of the biggest tools that God has used to help me recover from the many things that I’ve gone through. I listen to music most of my day. When I’m working I listen to instrumental music so I can think. I have found that doing this has given me a lot of peace. I hope others can incorporate music into their daily lives too and discover its soothing power.
    Blessings,
    Eren

  11. Tulsa Homes  

    Eren, music definitely heals the mind from stress. When I start doing my monotonous tasks I immediately turn on some mild music and I never feel bored at all. One day I wanted to test the prowness of it and decided to work without music, and you wouldnt believe I couldnt even complete 10% of the task. Its like an addiction for me now, which i feel is not at all harmful. Glad for sharing this with you. Stumbled across this post when looking for something else and really wanted to say the above.

    Warm Regards,
    Alan S Rosson

  12. Eren Mckay  

    Hey Alan,
    I totally agree with you. There have been scientific studies done on the power of music and how it helps our health in general. Anyone can greatly enhance their productivity if they find out how to incorporate music into their daily habits. Unfortunately many people don’t try new things and miss out on it. I hope to tell more people about it.
    Blessings,
    Eren

  13. james samy  

    Once again you have touched with posts that beyond the human mind. Healing through music and making our mind in peace.

    Thank you Eren for your time to share the goodness to me.

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