Some weeks back, a friend of mine said amidst our conversation: “You have tough skin. Nothing moves you. You’re always calm in the face of emergencies.”
I laughed and replied: “Ah my dear, mi o le pa ara mi o” (I can’t kill myself) and the conversation went on with her confessing that she’d been distraught about a program she’s about to launch.
After the conversation, I thought it over and over and admitted that truly, I can indeed be calm under pressure. In fact, I work most efficiently along deadlines.
Then I dug deep into myself to know how I have been able to manage this unruffled disposition despite my ‘electric’ nature. I mean one would think that being a dominant sanguine, I would be ordinarily scattered in the face of deadlines.
I dug deep and then I found it! It was the deep engineering my Literature teacher had done in me when I was in SS 1 when she made me to internalise a poem. As a matter of fact, till date, that is the only stanza of a poem I can read coherently and I don’t even remember that poet.
It says:
When remedies are past, the griefs are ended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
is another way to draw a new mischief on.
If you’re good literature student, the meaning between the above lines would have jumped out to you but if you’re not, let me try to explain it to you.
It is saying in other words: there is no point crying over spilled milk. When you do, it will give you a migraine that ordinary Panadol cannot cure. At the, your day will be ruined, thanks to the headache and guess what, your milk is still gone!
You see, knowing how irrational I can be sometimes, I make it a conscious effort never to allow my agitation get in the face of my common sense because it will only lead to one thing – more trouble!
This means, when people have paid for courses and they are hammering me for login details and I can’t reach my Assistant because her devices are dead, I calmly apologize and tell them to give me more time.
When courier service delays for three weeks in delivering products that people were supposed to have gotten within a week, I calmly send out another batch with another courier company if I can afford it or plead profusely with the customer to exercise more patience. In fact, I have refunded money paid for the delivery of my book (because I was giving the book for free) in one instance when I saw that she obviously values her money than the value she will get from my book.
This means, I still manage to eat and make love to my husband while having our baths in the morning even though I had missed the deadline to deliver on a course last night because of terrible network.
This means I decide to convert a training I was supposed to hold in my group into an online course all because my husband was in a foul mood the time I was supposed to go live. Rather than sulk, I looked for a better way.
This means when I lost N1.8 million naira on a business venture, I calmly told myself to be more careful next time and went ahead to put in double of that in a similar but more calculated investment.
This means I simply throw my head back and watch Jenifa when I feel the pressure of a lofty goal I had set for myself is beginning to make me lose the things I value most in my career – integrity.
Ah! The list is endless but I’m sure you get the picture now. 🙂
The point is: I have trained my mind a long time ago, that when my milk spills, rather than cry over it and get head and heart aches, I start looking for a way to get myself another milk as soon as possible. If possible, a richer and fuller milk plus cookies sef.
But one thing I NEVER ever allow myself do, one thing you will NEVER ever catch me do is wallow in self-pity. That is not a feeling you will catch on any winner or achiever. Ever.
So I don’t know what you may have been targeting and feeling anxious over. Trust me, worrying will do NOTHING to make things better or easier for you. It will only add more to the stress you are already in. Well, I’m sure you’ve heard this before but I’m not sure you know it because you don’t practice it.
You may have seen others do it, you may have read about it or even talk about it but until you practice it, you do not know it.
What you want to do right now is decide BEFORE any hypertensive situation even comes your way that you will always be calm and always focus on the possible solution.
This is what has helped me from high BP so far in life and business and sometimes I go a step further to drive it home by asking: What’s the worst that can happen abeg?
Then I allow peace to flood my heart.
Thank you coach