Ep 7: Calm Under Pressure: How to Control Your Mind and Body When Stress Hits

Stress doesn’t start in your mind—it starts in your body.

When pressure hits, your heart rate rises, your breathing speeds up, and your thinking narrows. That’s not weakness—it’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The problem?
 Most people don’t know how to take back control.

In this episode of Rhino Resilience, Chris “Rhino” Swenson breaks down Pillar Two: Calm and Steady—and shows you how to stay in control when everything in you wants to react.

You’ll learn:

•  Why you can’t think your way out of stress
•  What’s really happening in your body during pressure moments 
•  How to use “Brake Breathing” to slow your system down 
•  The difference between taking a break and hitting the brake
•  How to recognize when you’re reaching your limit—and what to do next 
•  Why real strength is knowing when to stay and when to step away
•  How to stay steady when someone else is overwhelmed

This isn’t about avoiding stress.
 It’s about learning how to move through it—without losing control.

Because real strength isn’t loud.
 It’s steady.

You don’t wait for pressure to pass…
 You train yourself to stand in it

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs it.
 And make sure to follow the podcast for more real-world tools to build strength, resilience, and control in everyday life. Plus, check out even more at Rhino Resilience Website!

Transcript

0:21

You ever notice that the strongest people that you know aren't the loudest and they're not the most reactive, right? They're the ones who stay steady when everything around them isn't. And yet, when stress hits most of us. We don't feel calm, we feel overwhelmed. We get short-tempered or distracted, or we start to shut down. That's not weakness. That's biology. You see, today we're gonna talk about pillar two of Rhino resilience, which is calm and steady, right? And this might be one of the most misunderstood kind of strength that there is because where I come from in rural communities like calm can look like doing nothing or even worse, people think if you're calm that you don't care. But I'm gonna challenge that a little bit here today because calm isn't the absence of strength. It's strength under control. You see if pillar one was about having the strength and the will to keep going. Pillar two is about how you carry yourself when things get heavy. Okay? So what's really happening here? Like what, what do I mean by, okay, this isn't weakness, this is biology, right? What? What does that mean? You see, when stress starts to hit, your body doesn't ask you for permission. It just happens. Your heart rate goes up, your breathing gets shallow, your thinking narrows. And here's something like most people don't realize, is that you can't think your way out of stress because stress doesn't start in your thoughts. It starts in your body. Your system reacts first, and your mind tries to catch up after. That's why in those moments, your thinking isn't at its best because your body is already taken the lead. Okay? But what's understand here, when your body does that, it's just your nervous system doing its job. It's trying to protect you and to prepare you to meet the demands of this situation. But here's the problem with that, because that same system. That's meant for emergencies, right? It's meant for emergencies. Like if you're being chased by a bear or a dinosaur or whatever, right? That that's what it is. So it's meant for emergencies, but today it's getting triggered by every day life. You know, it's finances, changes in weather. Long days, it's raising kids, it's being in relationships or just, uh, the pressure to keep everything going is beginning to trigger a lot of the, the same response. Now, what's crucial is if you don't learn to regulate your system, then your system is gonna run you, and this is where. Everything starts kind of breaking down for people because when this happens, you see, like people have short temper with, with the people you care about. Maybe you're sna snapping at your spouse or your kids, you're rushing your decisions or you're shutting down and just avoiding. And the worst part of this is most people don't even realize that it's happening. I've seen this play out a lot over the years, right? Just great people. They're doing everything they can to hold things together and it usually doesn't just come from one big thing, right? It's everything stacking up at once. You know, you get the stacked up of those long days and the financial pressures and things that don't go the way that they're planned, right? And you're trying to take care of everyone else. Then something small happens, a comment like maybe somebody makes a comment or you make a mistake, or they, somebody else makes a mistake, something doesn't go right, and that's when it comes out, they snap. And not because that one thing caused it, it's because everything before it wasn't dealt with. Think about it, back in the days when we would watch cartoons, you know, you'd see the one cartoon character holding up all this weight above its head and doing it successfully, and then suddenly just a little feather. Comes floating down this light little feather and it lands on top and then boom, it just crushes them under all that weight. Right? And it was this just something small, but with all the other weight that wasn't there, that wasn't dealt with. That's where it becomes, but when it does come out, that's when you see that short temper raising their voice, right. Saying something that they didn't mean and almost immediately they regret it. And it's not because like they're a bad person by any means, it's because that they just lost control in the moment. Okay. And if you've ever had a moment like that, I know I have, that's for sure. But if you've ever had a moment like that, you know exactly what I'm talking about. What's really important to understand. I keep, I'm gonna say this many times throughout, is the issue here isn't weakness. It's not knowing how to steady yourself under pressure, which is what this pillar is about. Because even when you know what matters and you're doing your best to hold onto it, there are still moments when things start to build that's normal. It's a part of being human, right. That pressure, it's gonna be there. That's normal stress. That's gonna be there too. That's also normal. And that frustration that you feel normal as well. All the part of just being human. And it doesn't take much for this to activate in our nervous system. You know, it might just be a long day or something goes wrong and there's one more thing added to our plate. And then now you're sped up. I've seen this a lot, right? People that are great people doing wonderful things, they're, they're wonderful people, but you know, they're doing everything they can, but eventually it shows up in how they respond. What's absolutely important for you to understand is that shorter patients, you know, those quick reactions, that feeling of being overwhelmed. That's not weakness. That's your nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do and is trying to take over and run the show. But here's where it matters. How you respond matters, and this is where calm and steady, the pillar two comes right in. Because it doesn't mean that, that you don't feel stress. And it, you know, it means you, you don't let stress or your nervous system control your next move. And this is where a lot of people get thrown off because when that stress does kick in it, it doesn't feel calm. It doesn't, it feels like a battle. A battle inside your own mind for control. You know, your body is ramping up, your thoughts are speeding up. Everything in you is trying to take over. And here's the important part. That's exactly what it was designed to do. Now, your nervous system doesn't, doesn't know the difference between a real threat and everyday life, or even an unreal threat, right? Your nervous system and mind does not know the difference between that. You know, because it's like, it's your nervous system's reacting. Whether it's real, a real threat or everyday life. It's reacting like there's a bear chasing you, right? When really, in reality, it's a tough conversation. It's pressure, it's stress or something not going the way you planned. So when that feeling hits, you know, that intensity, that discomfort, that doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It means your nervous system is doing its job, even if it's overdoing it, and I want to be real with you. Being able to remain calm and steady in the moment. It is easier said than done, no doubt, because in that moment it doesn't feel like you have control. It feels like you've already been taken or hijacked, like emotionally hijacked. But here's the truth. Control is still possible. Even in the middle of that internal battle, you can slow it down. You can steady yourself. You can choose your next move, and that's exactly what we're training here with this pillar. You see, a rhino doesn't panic stays steady even when things get chaotic. But here's something that many people were never taught. You know, you ever heard the phrase, you know, you rise to the occasion when something happens, yes, you'll rise to the occasion. The truth is, is you don't rise to the occasion. You fall back on your training and how you've trained your mind in pressure situations, you fall back on that, so when pressure hits like your, your body reacts right, your heart rate starts going breathing is, is difficult or speeds up. Your mind starts racing, right? That's not failure, it's just survival. So the problem isn't the reaction, it's when that reaction begins to take over, okay? Because there's a battle happening, and it's not just around you, but inside of you. Your body is trying to take control, and your mind is trying to make sense of it. In other episodes, I've talked about this, that your mind doesn't care if you're happy, it's just if you are safe and comfortable. Yeah. Now, I did a lot of studying over the years of the Samurai. Culture. And with Samurai it's been a big influence on a lot of the four pillars of Rhino resilience. Um, there's been many others, but the samurai's been one of those. And the Samurai understood this better than most. Like they didn't just train to fight. They trained to stay calm in the middle of the fight because they knew if, if they lost control of their breath and their focus, then they lost everything. It's the same thing with firefighters. Imagine that having to sit there and look at a burning building with flames going everywhere and you have to go in there. You see everything in their body is telling them, do not go in that building, but they go anyway. And it's not because they're fearless, it's because they're trained. They've trained their breathing, they've trained their focus so they can override what their body is telling them. And here's what that means for you, is, you know, you don't need to eliminate stress. You just need to learn how to move through it, because calm isn't natural in pressure. It's trained. Lemme give you an example. I went through, like one of my mental toughness training program that I went through conducted by a former Navy Seal was cold water training and just cold water exposure, whatever, wanna look at it. So these were like, I had to do ice baths, cold showers for how long? Right. And during those times, and I'll like, I remember the first time. The first time with that was just to do it for 30 seconds. Like at the end of your ice bath, you just do it for 30 seconds, right? And so, uh, before I did this, my mind is already going, this is nuts. This is crazy. This is gonna be cold. Why are we doing this? Nobody's, it's looking for a way out already. And once we get in there, we're, we're told that we have to go ahead and count from 30 to zero. To stay focused. So I get in there and all of a sudden this water hits, you know, and it's cold, uh, takes your breath away, right? And I'm starting to count 30, 29, 28, 27. Pretty soon. I'm like, man, this is cold. This is freezing. Whew. I'm trying to get the Bri. Oh my gosh. And then I realized that, oh my gosh, I, I forgot where I was counting at. And so then I decided, okay, well, whatever. It's zero. And I turned all the water off. I. Failed miserably, I guess, at, at that moment. But as time went on, you know, you had to take cold showers or whatever for the whole shower and getting in there and doing that, eventually, you know, you, you became better at it. However, your mind still always tried to talk you out of it because it's interesting because there's nothing in your body that wants to step into freezing water because like I said, the second it hits your brain's looking for a way out. Right. I mean, it takes your breath away, your body tenses, your mind, says, get out. All of that is what I'm talking about. It's biology. But you see the point of doing that wasn't like, oh wow, we can do ice baths for how long we can do cold showers. Look what we did. That wasn't the point. The point was control. Learning how to stay in control. In the middle of discomfort, that's what was being practiced. That's what was being trained. So you slow your breathing, you control your focus, and you settle your system. You see, the discomfort didn't change, but your response did, and that's an important thing. The discomfort you're facing may not change, but your response can. And when I did that, you had to remember your why, your purpose of why are we doing this? Because when your body wants out, it's your purpose that keeps you in and in life, it's the same battle. You know those hard conversations, the pressure, we feel, the stress, everything in you wants to react. Calm and steady lets you stay in control right there in it. And let me give you a simple tool. One I learned from another one of my training programs is, you know, is box breathing. And, you know, it's a pretty popular way of breathing and it's not necessarily a breathing that you utilize to just relax or calm. It's, it's also one that can do that, but it slows things down. It helps you focus. It helps you get grounded. And to do box breathing is a, it's a simple exercise, basically is, it looks like a box. So if you imagine a square or a box, it's got four sides, right? So there are four steps in this breathing thing. So at first you inhale and you want to inhale through your nose and make it diaphragm breathing, so you breathe from the stomach. Okay. Breathe in through the nose. Stomach up. So you inhale for four seconds, and then you hold it for four seconds, and then you exhale for four seconds, and then you hold it again for four seconds, completing the box, and then you repeat. Inhale for four, hold for four. Exhale for four. Hold for four and you continue to repeat that over and over again. This is something that can help you to remain focused and grounded. And in fact, it's something I do quite often, especially as I start my day before I do appointments, um, and I invite everyone just to kind of get into a daily practice of box breathing. The benefits are, are immense, and so just going through and doing those is highly recommended. There's another kind of breathing also that, um, I utilize for people and I call it break breathing. Okay, break breathing. B-R-A-K-E. Break breathing. Um, if you picture, like, and this is what I ask people when you, if you're driving in a car and you're going down the, you know, you're flying down the street, everything's cool. Then all of a sudden you look up and there starts to be a lot more traffic. There's a lot of people walking on the sidewalk, some in the street. There's even some kids riding bikes around. It's getting a little intense, right? I ask people, when that happens, do you speed up or do you slow down? And most people when they say that, hopefully you know most people do that, they'd slow down. You know, because they don't want to get sped up during that time. They really need to focus. They need to concentrate, making sure that they and everybody else is safe, right? And so then I always wonder like, okay, so why is it in life that when stress kind of hits us, we start to speed up when we need to slow down? And so that analogy helps understand something because your system has an accelerator, okay? And that's automatic, right? It just goes. It happens. It runs, but the break you have to use, okay? You have to do that. And to do so is simple. You inhale through your nose, but the exhale. Has to be longer. That's the key Inhale. The exhale has to be longer than the inhale. When you do that, you activate the other nervous system that isn't automatic, that helps release chemicals and whatnot to kind of help calm you down, slow things down for you, and that doesn't happen immediately. It just helps you to manage through in this situation. Right. And so when you think of break breathing, have you ever heard anyone do like a sigh of relief? You know, where they'll. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. The exhale's longer than the inhale. And I wanna tell you kind of a funny story about this is, uh, there was one time I was at a movie theater and it was a scary movie, or so had thought it wasn't quite as scary movie. It was one of those where the ad was supposed to be scary, but it was mainly just a bunch of. Crazy drama killing type stuff, whatever. But anyways, in this movie, there was a scene where these four teenagers who had a plan to try to like break into this house, they were sitting across the street in an alley and all four of 'em were in the car and they're just looking at this house, right. The whole theater is silent. Like there's no background music, there is nothing. It's just a moment of silence as we're all staring at the screen at these four teenagers who are staring at this house, right? So at that moment, I read, I, I take my eyes off the, the screen and I go to grab my, my soda, and as I lift it off, right then in that moment, a dog. Enters the scene and goes flying at this car, barking and growling and it was loud, just a sudden loud noise. Well, all of a sudden, whew. I almost launched my drink, right? I was lucky that I hung onto this drink, but it went and I could hear the ice like, you know, move in there when I almost launched the drink. Thank God I did not launch that drink. That would've been probably ruining someone's night. He was sitting in front of me. But after that, I realized that, okay, from now on, I'm not taking my eyes off a screen during a scary show. Well, what's interesting is if you, if you've ever been to like when a horror movie or a scary show at a movie theater, you know when you start hearing that music and everything goes up and you know something's gonna happen, right? If you look around the room, you see people stop moving and they stop breathing. We just kind of freeze up. And when we do that, especially we don't breathe, our body's like, holy crap, we're not breathing. And it's gonna activate that nervous system even higher. So one thing I, I do, and this is a way of practicing, being in discomfort and training that skill into your mind is when you're watching a horror movie, especially at a movie theater, is when those scenes start happening. Make sure you're relaxing, you're breathing. And you're keeping your eye on this on the screen, so you relax the breathing and you move around a little bit. Then it's, you know, then sometimes the scary parts aren't as bad, but some of those are great movies and they definitely do a good job. But the key point here to understand is with this breathing is, is that you're not trying to relax in these moments. Okay? That's not gonna be possible. You're not trying to relax with this. You're trying to regain control. And if you look at these, at this word break, you know, as I used it here as like a break on a car spelled B-R-A-K-E, but there's another kind of break that sounds exactly the same, but spelled B-R-E-A-K, right? And we all know how to take a break or walk away, but most people don't know how to break or apply that inner break. It's just a kind of a great way of remembering break breathing. So you want to take a break and walk away when you can, but grab that internal break when you need to. Right. And trust me. And seriously, and sometimes you, you've, you've gotta step away, you know? And that's the part of it, because strength isn't just staying, it's having that wisdom to know when to step back. It's being smart. This is where all the, the four pillars come together, right? Because you look at the two, like calm and steady is what regulates you being adaptive and wise, which is pillar three. We'll get into in that next episode that, that that's what decides, you know, because they all come together, you know, like I said, strength isn't just staying. It's knowing when to step back because real strength is knowing the difference. And you know, sometimes you know what, what's going on. It might not even be about you. You know, there might be someone else who's overwhelmed, you know, they come to you with something heavy, right? Something stressful, something they don't quite know what to do with. And in that moment you're gonna feel it too. Their stress, their emotion, their intensity. You're gonna get up in your head and wonder, okay, what do I do? How do I, it's gonna be running right? And it can pull you in and your system just starts reacting along with theirs. And that's what makes this hard, because now it's not just their pressure, it's yours too. But this is really where calm and steady really matters because they don't need your reaction. They need your steadiness because if you match their intensity, you escalate the situation. And if you shut down, then you're not helping. You're making them feel awkward and not understood, and man, they might not even reach out to others after that experience. They feel very invalidated. But when you stay calm. You become the steady ground that they don't have in that moment. Calm people, help other people calm down. So what do you do in those moments, right? The first is you gotta regulate yourself, as we've talked about. Slow your breathing. Stay steady because you can't help them settle if you're getting pulled into it too. And the second part, don't rush to fix it. You don't have to fix it. Just listen. Let them talk. Let them feel heard, empathize with them, because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do for them in that moment is not react and just be there for them. And third, you don't have to carry it for them, you don't. But you can help guide them, help them slow down. Help them think, help them take the next step. You know, just be there for 'em, because sometimes you're calm. That's what helps them find their way to help. The biggest thing is, is your calm matters more than you think. So when you step back and kind of look at all of this that we've talked about today, I mean, common steady isn't about being relaxed, right? My hope is you understand it. Calm and steady is about being relaxed. It's about being in control. When everything in you wants to react, right, you hit the inner break, or you walk away and take a break. But you choose your response by being in control, and over time that becomes who you are. You begin to see yourself as someone who stays steady in the middle of pressure, just like a rhino strong. Grounded and controlled. So you don't wait for pressure to pass. You train yourself to stand in it. And if this episode has helped you or someone else, please feel free to share it with someone who needs it. It's a big thing, uh, that you never know who you kind of reach and you never know the influence you can have on others. Beginning to share this and talk about this stuff is something we all need to do out here. And if we can share some of these things, we can help each other. And if you want to keep building like this kind of strength that we talked about, follow along. You know, there's gonna be more episodes coming up. You know, you can head over to rhino resilience.com. There's many articles, blog posts that are on there that has a lot of great, helpful things that are, that are along, that are on there. Also, if you haven't signed up, signed up to the Rhino Resilience Newsletter, just go to the website and put your name and email in there and get signed up. Those, those I send out and they don't contain a lot of things that I put on the podcast or they don't contain things that, um, I put on like social media or even on a blog post. These are, there's, there's certain tips and tricks I put in there that are exclusively for people that are on the email list as well. So definitely get in over there and check that out. So I'm hoping this episode made a difference in people. Please let me know your thoughts, those kind of things. But as we close for today, I just want you to know, stay steady. We're in this together.