Perspectives That Serve # 5 - Cool, Calm, Collected

This is an attitude or mind set that is fairly easy for me to cultivate because I am naturally pretty even tempered. It’s also one that doesn’t work well in isolation. It must be blended with passion and enthusiasm for balance.

In a selling situation, one way to stay calm is to always have so much in the pipeline that you never need any single account too much. You want an account to feel important and desired without feeling like they are your last meal ticket. Any behavior that resembles begging or desperation is usually a turn off. If you are that desperate they may believe you won’t last or be around to service them. They may also believe you are not that good at what you do. Most people want to work with someone they believe is competent.

One path to calmness is through confidence and competence. That is, when you are competent, that leads to confidence which leads to calmness. In lieu of this, if you are new and still haven’t developed confidence you may have to “act calm”. You can behave your way into almost any mind set or attitude. Adopt the physiology of calm and you will become calmer.

How much does it take to upset you? The more you can do to raise the threshold the better off you’ll be. Most of us, myself included overreact to small stuff. I read somewhere that it’s critical to make distinctions between lumpy oatmeal, a lump in your throat, and a lump in your breast. Sometimes I react to things that are really in the category of lumpy oatmeal like I just got diagnosed with a lump in my breast or some other body part. The irony is, the more often we have those over reaction to lumpy oatmeal events, the more likely we are to get lumps showing up in our body somewhere.

I think becoming perturbed may have reached epidemic proportions in this country. Some of it may be related to compressed time, speed, and the false sense that everything must happen now. Some of us just need to slow it down. Or maybe we can do as basketball coaching legend John Wooden suggests, “Be quick but don’t hurry”.

I find my capacity to handle the little annoyances goes way up when I have a quiet time in the morning. For me this usually consists of spending 10 - 30 minutes reading a Bible passage. It slows me down and entrains me to God’s rhythms. Getting out in nature is good. I like the beach the best. Walking helps too. I think we are natural walkers. Enhance it even more by walking with your dog. Walking with your spouse or a friend is good too. Find a stride or pace that you can both live with. This may even be different than your exercise session which can become very goal oriented.