The Art Of Being A Grounded Person: 9 Simple Habits Of Naturally Grounded People
Habits of people who remain steady and rooted, no matter what life throws at them.
Doğu Tuncer | Pexels Being grounded is deep, real-time awareness. It's being truly in the moment with someone. It is the state of being completely undistracted. It is giving yourself in an undivided manner. It is the total focus, with a sense of ease.
When you feel someone listening to you without a hint of distraction, they are grounded in the moment with you. Some of the most notable benefits of being more grounded are:
- More deep, nourishing, connected relationships (friendships, intimate partnerships, interactions with people you’ve just met)
- More acceptance of the people, events, emotions, and circumstances in your life
- Less stress and tension in your mind and body
- More enjoyment, happiness, ease, and increased emotional intelligence
- Greater resilience to stress, illness, and the ego noise that our (less than present) mind can throw at us
When you increase your daily sense of being a naturally grounded person, you simply let go of resisting or trying to control life, and you drop into the natural flow of how things actually are.
Here are 9 simple habits of naturally grounded people:
1. Re-establish your core values
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It’s easier to be present and grounded when you don’t have a lot of things clamoring for your attention. And the best way to minimize the number of things trying to get your attention is to get back in touch with your life’s core values.
When you know what things do and don’t fit in your life, it makes it that much easier for you to say no to things that aren’t aligned.
2. Declutter your calendar
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If you’re always running around like a chicken with its head cut off from meeting to meeting, then you won’t have much of an opportunity to be present.
Personally, I always aim to schedule a maximum of two things in my calendar per day, leaving room for spaciousness outside of those two commitments.
Keep your calendar clear of noise and distraction by saying no to all of the wrong things, and saying all of the right things. Say it with me now: boundaries!
Research shows that decluttering your calendar helps ground you by reducing stress, strengthening your sense of control, and freeing up mental resources. A crowded schedule creates mental overload, but a simplified one provides clarity and a feeling of stability.
3. Fill your life with reciprocal systems
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A reciprocal system is something that benefits both parties involved. Spending time with a good friend that you like is engaging in a reciprocal system.
Going to a job that you enjoy is a reciprocal system. Playing music with your band is a reciprocal system. Make sure you’re engaging in win-win situations across your entire life, and, with your integrity fully intact, you’ll be that much more grounded across the board.
4. Cultivate rituals
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By cultivating daily or weekly rituals, you won’t have to use up excess mental bandwidth on making thousands of low-leverage decisions every day.
Pick your clothes from a simplified wardrobe of outfits that you own and love. Have a weekly dinner with your favorite friends on the same night of the week so that you’re always kept abreast of each other’s ever-changing lives (no phones allowed at the table, obvs).
Eat the same thing that you like for breakfast every day. Figure out what makes you happy, make it a habit, and then stick to it. Voila! Increased sense of groundness.
Research suggests that rituals do not need to be complex to be effective; usually, simple, intentional acts are often the most powerful. The repetitive and formal nature of rituals offers a sense of safety and predictability.
5. Reclaim your attention from technology
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Technology was supposed to make our lives easier, right? In many ways, it absolutely does. But it’s also one of the biggest things to erode our ability to pay attention to our lives, and our partners.
Implement a few of the following strategies and watch your presence skyrocket by the end of the week.
- Unfollow everyone on Instagram that doesn’t inspire you or make you feel better in some way
- Delete Facebook from your phone
- Get comfortable saying no to people’s requests for your time
- Mass-unsubscribe from a bunch of email lists that you no longer receive value from
- Say no to watching most TV shows (especially if they have a ton of reasons for you to catch up on). Believe me, you won’t be cast out of society if you’re not up on the latest character gossip.
- As a default (especially when you’re spending time with friends, family, your children, or your intimate partner), and as often as you can, leave your cell phone on airplane mode. Because you own your phone, it should not own you.
- Batch-check your emails. Once in the morning, once at night. Maximum. Once a day, only on weekdays, if you can get away with it. Or, hire a personal assistant to manage your email inbox if you can afford it, and your email inbox gives you a headache.
6. Work through your emotional clutter
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One reason that many people struggle to be present in their lives is that they have yet to work their way through their internal emotional clutter. Feel your sadness.
Your anger. Your hurt. All of it. Let your emotions move through you. As Carl Jung once said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
The act of processing your emotional clutter involves confronting emotions that are often avoided or suppressed. Research indicates that suppressing or ignoring emotions can increase stress and anxiety and worsen psychological health.
7. Practice single-tasking
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Don’t pride yourself on being a proficient multitasker. In truth, no one is an excellent multitasker. The energetic cost of task-switching is a lot higher than most people will readily admit to themselves.
Focus on one thing at a time, always. First things first, second things never. The most grounded people know that doing one thing well is far more effective than juggling five things poorly. Instead of scattering their attention in a million directions, they give their full focus to the task at hand until it's done — and done well.
8. Listen to your body
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Your mind will always be beckoning you away from being grounded and in the moment. Conversely, your body brings you back into the here and now.
If you want a shortcut to cultivating more presence in your life, listen to your body. And if you want to more readily access your body, let your breath be the bridge that you take.
One study suggested that grounding helps shift the nervous system from a 'fight-or-flight' state to a 'rest-and-digest' state. Focusing on your breath or the feeling of your feet on the ground helps stimulate the vagus nerve, which regulates the body's stress response and promotes a state of calm.
9. Make spaciousness your default
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Don’t pack another five things into your day planner. Don’t say yes to that added responsibility/social event/obligation when what you really want to say is "No."
Don’t maintain a calendar that makes your mind and heart race every time you look at it (i.e., from anxiety, not from excitement).
Make spaciousness your life’s default, and becoming grounded will be the natural progression. If your life isn’t cluttered, your mind won’t be as cluttered. Then dropping into your body and into the moment will have that much lower of a barrier to entry.
Remember, the primary way that we relinquish our presence is by retreating into our minds and getting caught up in all of the anxiety, future-thinking, incessant worrying, and other head noise.
Drop back into your body, back into the realm of the senses, and re-acknowledge that you are not just a walking brain with hands whose sole task is to accomplish/do/achieve things. But rather, you are a human being who is having a real, right-now existence.
Your life is right here. Take a nice, full, deep breath.
Jordan Gray is a five-time #1 Amazon best-selling author, public speaker, and relationship coach with more than a decade of practice behind him. His work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, and more.
