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March 21st, 2010

Keeping a still hand: part two

In most situations, staying calm is a huge advantage. It allows you to properly assess a situation and make corresponding decisions. It anchors you to reality. Which is why people who can stay calm under pressure often make great leaders.

It’s easy to talk about staying calm. Especially from a position of hindsight or a comfy chair. Which is why sports fans across the world are slow to forgive the missed buzzer beater or crucial penalty.

To stay calm under pressure, you must train yourself, under pressure, to be calm. Anything short of that and it’s hard to predict how you’ll react to a highly pressurised situation. The reason is simple: under intense pressure performance slips. Players who swish jump shots in training, throw bricks at the buzzer, because the adrenalin rushing through their body essentially makes them malfunction.

Allen Iverson famously derided practice, but for most people practice makes all the difference. It’s impossible to completely simulate a high-pressure situation, but good practice makes certain actions and reactions automatic, which reduces errors come game time.

What does this mean for us mere mortals?

  • Do what you can to create situations in which you must perform to a high standard to achieve a specific goal
  • Meditate – it will help you recognise what calm feels like, and train your mind to control itself
  • Detach yourself from your fears and stay focused on your goal. If you find yourself losing your cool during an argument, remember that putting your point across simply and clearly is your goal
  • Don’t pay too much attention to the crowd. Whether they are for you or against you, they are usually not as calm as you should be. You can react however you want once you see the net ripple

ps: Calm doesn’t mean comatose. Don’t confuse avoidance with peace. Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand, and neither should we.

By PE • Posted in Attitude = Altitude, P.I.M.P • No Comment
July 5th, 2008

Keeping a still hand: part one

He's not joking
Creative Commons License 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.

By PE • Posted in P.I.M.P • No Comment