How to Handle Stressful Situations (The Hawk Method)

Life likes to throw us curve balls once in a while... you lose your job, there’s been some drama with your family, your car gets rear-ended (this happened to me a few months ago). Stuff happens.

While these things can take an emotional toll on you, that doesn’t mean they have to.

Most of the things we stress and worry about every day are things that are totally out of our control anyway. When a stressful situation arises, the most important thing to do is step back for a second and look at the situation as a whole. Ask yourself if this is something that you can control, or if it happened because of an outside force.

I’ve found a very helpful technique for stressful situations, which I got from Emotional Intelligence 2.0. It’s simple: watch yourself like a hawk.

Hawks soar above the ground and watch what happens below them. They offer an indifferent, impartial view of the world. In a moment of anger, fluster, or strong emotion, try to disengage from your emotions and “look down” at what you are doing. Visualize what the whole room would like if you were to look down on it from a bird’s eye view.

When you’re angry, it can be easy to start saying things you don’t mean to someone you care about. The hawk method truly helps with this. By taking a second to breathe, think, and look at the situation from an omniscient view, you realize how silly the whole thing really is.

I am constantly reminding myself that life is short and we are all just little organisms living on a rock together, floating through an infinite cosmos. We get so caught up in ourselves that we often forget this.

Why should we spend so much time and emotional energy on something so temporary? Something that likely won’t even matter a month from now?

Take advantage of your short time here on earth— stop worrying about things that are out of your control and focus on what you can control.