Go against the grain, check your emotions and win

 

Have you ever been outside, at a picnic or barbecue, and had a bee buzz into the group of people you were hanging out with?  What happened? Some of the people jump and scream, some run away, others swat at the fly and yet somehow, in all the chaos and panic some people calmly stand there and continue to eat their lunch and drink their drinks. They don't panic, they don't scream, they don't run. Instead they act as if they are there to do something specific and the bee just happens to be there too. No big deal.

The person that is calm and relaxed has control of their emotions. They are in a situation that is stressful for many, but have steadied their emotions and identified a clear path through. Being able to keep yourself from panicking and control your emotions is a key to being able to successfully navigate stressful situations and take advantage of situations where other people are panicking.

When NASA begin training astronauts for the Apollo missions that would put the first men on the moon, they threw everything at them. They would subject the astronauts to tremendous stress by making every alarm go off in the capsules, putting them through simulation after simulation and causing everything that could go wrong to go wrong. This made the astronauts familiar with all of the sights, sounds and situations that might occur during flight. Nothing would send them into a panic because they had seen it before. In space, panic would be death for the astronauts and this rigorous practice ensured they would not panic. We saw this during the unfortunate events of Apollo XIII, but the training and calm response of the Commander, Jim Lovell, and his crew brought the capsule around the moon and back to earth even though it had been crippled.

Those are not the only examples of calm under pressure. The Walt Disney Company and Hewlett Packard were founded during the Great Depression. Google, Netflix and Salesforce were started and then immediately impacted during the Dot Com Bubble of the early twenty first century. During the housing collapse both Airbnb and Warby Parker were founded.  While those around them panicked they stayed true to their mission. They looked at the environment around themselves and identified opportunities that existed and took advantage of them. Even while everyone else was panicking they found a way to move forward. 

In all of these examples people were impacted by stressful situations but instead of panicking they stopped and observed the landscape around them and took action. You can do the same. When you are confronted with a stressful situation, first recognize it, acknowledge your emotions and then check them. Take a moment to breath. Now look objectively at the situation and everything that is going on. Ask yourself, if I was outside of this situation looking in what advice would I give to someone in this situation. Take your own advice and move forward without regret.  

Lastly let me leave you with a quote from a famous author that applies to this article. It's a quote that talks about gong with the crowd, which is what most people do in a panic. He instead advocates to stop and think first and potentially go against the grain. Here's the quote, from author Mark Twain:

He later was quoted in an unset letter saying the following:

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)."

 He later was quoted in an unset letter saying the following:

"When you set aside mere names & come down to realities, you find that you are ruled by a King just as other absolute monarchies are. His name is The Majority. He is mighty in bulk & strength...He rules by the right of possessing less money & less brains & more ignorance than the other competitor for the throne. The Minority. Ours is an absolute Monarchy."

 In these two quotes Twain perfectly sums up that when faced with a situation in which you find yourself on the side of the majority you should stop and reflect. In the picnic example above, while the majority is panicking, you should stop and reflect. Recognize that the majority is often wrong. It is more often those that stop and look at a situation objectively and run toward the fire instead of away that are able to take advantage of a situation and make a difference.