Power Of Calm

Calm is an amazing power that enables you to deal quickly and effectively with any situation you face.

I wasn’t consciously aware of this until one of my clients said: “It doesn’t matter how frantic everyone around you is, you remain calm; then you come up with the simple solutions. How do you do that?”

Before giving any serious thought to that question, I responded with the rather flippant: “The cool head wins and I like to win.”

Later, I gave more serious thought to that question and realized that I’m not all about winning; I’m about producing results. I don’t care who gets the credit; I just want the result. While that is true, it still didn’t give me insights into how I was able to remain calm in the midst of chaos.

It wasn’t until I was encouraged to write books on confidence that I gained insights into what enabled me to remain calm. As I developed the books and confidence programs, I realized that my calm was the result of my awareness of and confidence in my ability to learn and adapt.

In other words, I know that there is a solution to every problem we face and that, with our ability to learn and adapt, we are all capable of finding simple, easy-to-implement solutions.

The ability to learn and adapt was the true answer to: “How do you remain so calm when everyone around you is frantic?”

So how does calm enable us to deal more quickly and effectively with the wide array of situations we face?

Calm’s power

Calm makes it easier to deal with challenges we face. Armed with the knowledge that there is a solution, we are able to devote our mental energies to finding a solution. In other words, the absence of doubt frees us from fear and anxiety which allows more brain power to be devoted to exploring solutions. Here’s a simple example:

I was serving on the Board of a not-for-profit school. The school had instituted a double-digit tuition increase the previous year. The executive director wanted to assure parents of the students that their would be no increase in the coming year. The finance director wanted to require parents to sign up for automatic withdrawal to alleviate the administrative burden of depositing checks each month. The executive director objected saying that she was fearful that parents would feel they were being required to do more after having suffered a significant tuition increase.

As is typically the case, each director had an emotional tie to their position. A calm head enabled me to suggest that the message we use to parents was: There will be no tuition increase this year. You can help us keep future increases to a minimum by signing up for our automatic withdrawal program…a message that accomplished the goals of both directors and won the acceptance of parents.

Calm also diffuses situations when anger surfaces. In the situation above, both directors were becoming agitated at the other’s intransigence. Calm was able to reduce the tension level and provide a solution.

When people attempt to pick a fight, when they want to do verbal battle with you, remaining calm and quiet prevents an argument. When someone is trying to push your buttons, the void of quiet provides no enemy against which they can battle. Calm enables you to realize what the person’s purpose is, what they’re trying to accomplish, so that you can recognize that quiet is the best solution.

Calm enables you to deal effectively and unemotionally with people who are hurting. Typically when someone lashes out at us, it’s because they are hurting. Someone who is calm realizes that the person is hurting and deflecting their hurt in an attempt to lessen their pain. It’s calm that enables a person in this situation to say: Wow, you must really be hurting to say something like that. How can I help you?

When you’re calm, you’re also able to respect others’ rights to their values, beliefs and choices whether you agree with them or not. Your calm makes it easy to express that respect and ask, without emotion, that they reciprocate by respecting your values, beliefs and choices even though they don’t agree.

Takeaways

Calm enables your to deal quickly and effectively with any situation you face because calm is an unemotional state.

Calm comes from awareness of, and confidence in, your ability to learn and adapt as well as your knowledge that there is a solution to every problem you face.

When faced with highly-charged situations, pause and remind yourself of these two things:

1. There is a solution to every challenge you face.
2. Your ability to learn and adapt will help you discover simple, easy-to-implement solutions.

Do this consistently and you will have others asking you: “How do you remain so calm when everyone around you is frantic?”

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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.