“Keeping your cool”
What do you do when someone is in your office and they’re upset– maybe even yelling at you? Or what if you’re the one about to blow a gasket because of something said to you?
It’s hard to know exactly what to say in the heat of the moment. But sure enough, you’ll be driving home that night hashing it over in your head, and what you could have said becomes crystal clear.
People anticipating a meeting with someone who’s difficult ask me all the time what they should say to keep their cool. But it’s not so much the words you want to think about. It’s more about what’s going on inside of you that will help you stay calm and clear on what to do.
Sure you can practice what you’ll say if so-and-so throws you one of those barbs in your upcoming meeting. But what if it doesn’t happen that way? To be prepared for conflict, even when you’re not prepared, is to have the ability to exercise controlled relaxation.
Martial artists, yoga practitioners and others refer to this ability to relax mind and body together deliberately at a moment’s notice and without thought as centering, say Bill Withers and Keami Lewis, authors of The Conflict and Communication Activity Book.
You may be familiar with this feeling if you paint, draw, play a musical instrument, participate in a sport or seem to know what piece to move on a checkerboard, they say.
What you’re doing is forgetting about a strategy and allowing the appropriate choice of action or relationship with the other person to emerge. As odd and risky–as that might sound, here’s why it works.
When you’re stressed; which includes confronting someone–your brain and body react through fight or flight which can make things worse. This means you can either confront (fight) or walk away (flight). You can feel it in your body; your muscles might tense up or heart beats faster. When you’re centered you have the ability to send this energy toward a third choice, allowing you to calmly make a split-second adjustment to do the best thing for you and the other person.
To practice the skill of centering, they suggest you find your physical center about three inches below your navel. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, take a deep breath in, pulling your shoulders up towards your ears. Let the breath out and drop your shoulders as you breath out. Imagine muscular tension running like water from every part of your body.
Take the fingertips of one hand and lightly touch your center point, breathe in and out to help feel where your center point is and remember it. Relax and smile as you breathe. As you focus on your center, let yourself breathe as naturally as if you weren’t paying attention to it. As you breathe in, say quietly to yourself, “Breathe in and Breath out” as you breathe out.
There are hundreds of things that can pull you off your center in a single workday. With so much close interaction between you, customers, peers and bosses, emotions can run high. The key is to notice when you’ve been knocked off center.
The authors tell of the time students of the founder of Aikido asked him how he could be so centered, and he replied, “To you it looks as though I don’t lose my center. This is not so. I simply notice it sooner and return more quickly.”
As you learn to relax your mind and body together at a moments notice, you too can learn to trust yourself to do or say the best thing when you’re in the thick of it.
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This is “Keeping your cool”, a part of Personal Dilemmas At Work, an article on Andrea Kay's website.
