Keeping a still hand: part one
credit: Rabinito
Rudyard Kipling advised us to ‘stay calm and keep your head, while all around are losing theirs‘. If you can heed those words, you possess an advantage. If you ‘lose it’, you lose it. If however, you face adversity and stress with calmness and decisive action, you are taking the shortest and most reliable route to your success.
A brilliant example of the effects of losing your head to fear and nervousness, involves a guy who attempted to assassinate the South Korean president.
“The assassin stands up, and he shoots himself in the leg. That’s how it starts. He’s nervous out of his mind. Then he shoots at the president and misses. Instead he hits the president’s wife in the head. Kills the wife. The bodyguard gets up and shoots back. He misses. He hits an eight-year-old boy. It was a screw-up on all sides. Everything went wrong.” – Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear
In three-point-five seconds, two men – both military trained – missed their goals, due to being overcome by the stress of the circumstance. Although it can be excused and argued away, neither man met their objective. When it came to the crunch, neither man was calm enough.
In contrast, let me refer to one of my favourite moments in film fiction. It is the moment in which Michael Corleone begins to evolve into the Godfather. It isn’t at the end of the film when Clemenza embraces him. It isn’t when he shoots Sollozzo and McClusky in the restaurant. It isn’t even as late as when McClusky punches him in the face, disfiguring his jaw, and darkening his demeanour. It is when he is still a ‘civilian’, in the moments immediately after he has bluffed a car full of would-be-assassins – as he’s lighting a cigarette for Enzo – and silently realises that his hand is not shaking. From that moment, his power begins to grow.
Similarly, in public speaking, asking the girl for her number, or sinking a jump-shot at the buzzer, being calm and focused in the present is an advantage over the alternatives. Because whether you are bluffing or not, when you decide to go all-in, the only reason you should suggest weakness is because you intend to.
Methods for doing that will be in part two. Check back soon.
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