How to Foster Peace and Limit Stress

When I started training for my pilot license, I was amazed at how I felt at the end of a flight. If I’d ever lifted off from a bleak world drained of color from life’s challenges, I always landed back in a bright and vivid landscape revived from my time in the air. No matter what mood I’d been in before the flight, a lightheartedness kept my feet hovering above the earth after I landed for the rest of the day.

At first, I thought flying was the magical elixir. If everyone could float in that mystical well of blue sky and peer down on Earth’s expansive green and gold, most would find their stress melted away. But at some point, my perspective shifted. I thought the euphoria sprang instead from the fact I’d started to fulfill a lifelong dream. I had leapt off life’s bench to get into the game.

Both were valid, but now I know something else had been the primary reason flying had melted my stress. I lived in the moment for that hour I spent in the air learning to fly. No thinking about work. No worrying about bills. No scanning a to-do list to check off the next item. While I concentrated on flying that plane, I couldn’t fret about my future or regret a long gone past. And that, to actually live, made life sweeter. We don’t truly live when we stay stuck in our heads.

What activity thrusts you into the moment so your troubles get pushed behind? What lifts you? Once you figure it out, do it often.