WHY YOU MUST BE CALM IF YOU WANT TO BE BOTH COMFORTABLE AND CAPABLE

Some years ago I was listening to an interview with a long distance mentor, and in it he was asked what is the single common characteristic he has observed in the successful people he has interacted with. He himself is a very prominent, well respected individual in his field, and given he has been able to interact with many high end athletes and members of the military and special forces… his opinion on the topic held some weight.

Well without hesitation he summed it up in a single word…

Calm.

Defined as the ability to both avoid expressing as well as experiencing any strong emotion, it is hard to argue that such a thing would be helpful in just about any situation that any one of us may be faced with.

After all, cooler heads tend to prevail.

Now a couple months back I wrote a bit about how there is a framework that any of us can work off of if we are looking to have a comfortable and capable life. If you missed it, you can read it HERE.

Essentially, there exists a clear level of strength, flexibility, endurance and steadiness that any of us need to have cold access to if we have any hope of having a comfortable and capable life.

That list of four characteristics and all that makes them up was formed over years of observing not only what tended to be necessary to successfully rehabilitate any given individual… but also ensure that the same old problem or something similar would not come screaming back. The folks that not only got better, but also stayed better… had all these things.

The folks that didn’t… did not.

Now, in recent years since I began sharing this concept of a there being some sort of capacity components that any of us deserve to have, I steadily observed there to be a fifth component… one that tended to make all the others possible to both pursue and express… and that is the ability to be calm.

Yes… it really should be no surprise that if you want a resilient body, you are going to also need a resilient mind. After all… your body is a garden. See HERE for more on that…

Now while it should be obvious how the ability to not be moved by the emotional storms that exists both within us as well as in others would be a crucial to our success in life, it would be understandable if you are wondering why a physical therapist would be writing you to about it.

Well, the thing is, the ability to be calm is by and large a physical practice… not a psychological one.

If you have any doubts about this, go ahead and think your self calm.

I will wait… and unfortunately I will also likely watch you suffer.

After all, the attempt at thinking ones way through anxiety tends to only produce neuroticism, insomnia, obsessions and compulsions.

Take it a step further, and it tends to get a bit worse…

So if your mind does not calm you… what does?

Typically, it is your breath… and your body.

When it comes to your breath, you must maintain a deep and slow pace of breathing… being sure to exhale fully, and pause after that exhale before breathing back in. By doing this, you literally keep your heart rate, blood pressure and general state of arousal equally low.

When it comes to your body, you must anchor it into the ground… and from there sense the world around you. By doing this, you maintain you relationship to your senses… and when doing that you will never need to return to them.

After all… they were never left.

Now, it is very hard to regulate your breathing if you have a stiff chest wall that you tend to breath shallowly through and around.

Alongside that, it is very hard to being in a grounded state if you are trapped up in your shoulders, pitched back on your heels or up onto your toes… in those cases you are more in a state of hydroplaning more than anything else.

You see, the ability to physical ground yourself when pursuing any level of strength, flexibility, endurance or steadiness is part and parcel with what is means to be proficient in all four of those components.

With that, the ability to resist becoming overly excited when engaging in a challenge is absolutely crucial for you or I to have any chance as success in the face of it.

Essentially, the ability to be calm is essentially the glue that holds all the other capacity components together… without it you will not be able to have access to any of them. Paradoxically, without enough access to strength, steadiness, flexibility and the ability to endure… we also do not have a very good chance at being calm when parked any where but in a chair.

It seems the body and the mind must work well together, and be in well working order if we have any chance at venturing and adventuring out in the world with any success.

Now while this is likely a very broad topic that could be discussed at length, I feel it best to keep an email like this fairly brief. After all, when one starts discussing emotions and their management… it can become a sensitive topic for some. That said, if you would like to view a short video both summarizing and expanding on the above, feel both free and encouraged to watch the video below.

Regardless, I hope you found the above helpful, and I hope you’re comfortable, able and well.