If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs….

This famous quote from Rudyard Kipling’s “If…” poses the question so many of us face on a daily basis in our work lives but also at home as the stresses and strains of domestic life pull us and push us sometimes to breaking point.

How do some people seem to remain calm so much of the time?

On our Presentation Skills courses and often on Personal Impact and Assertiveness courses people ask us for advice on how to handle nerves and anxiety when facing intimidating or downright scary situations.

Well here’s one practical thing you can do that you probably already exercise elsewhere in your life.

You can change your focus.

Picture this:

You are driving along a busy motorway on a wet Friday night. Everyone wants to get home quickly including you. You’re in the middle lane on the M25 going past Heathrow (there are 5 lanes there). On your inside is a huge lorry – it is spraying water and towers above you. As you glance in your wing mirror you see another vast behemoth coming up fast in the right hand lane. You are sandwiched in between.

Some people are completely cool with this. Great.

But for some people this can feel really uncomfortable.

If you start to feel stressed then your fight or flight instincts are telling you to move away from the threat. That starts to affect the way your body moves. Your hands grip the steering wheel…. you tense your shoulders. You feel a strong urge to veer away from the near side lorry as it seems to wobble and lurch too close. Of course that would be crazy because you’d be driving straight into the path of the HGV on the other side.

Where do you put your focus?

If you focus on yourself and the immediate perimeters of your little car you are lost. It’s hard to stay balanced and calm. Anxiety increases and so do the symptoms associated with it.

So you focus on the road ahead. You focus on where you want to go – and you breathe.

Well I guess we kind of know the breathing bit is very important as a general tip for life.

But so is the focus.

When you give your brain a direction and purpose your body starts to take the necessary actions to get the result you want.

When your body has a specific aim to follow the anxiety subsides and so do the unwanted symptoms.

An experiment

Try standing on one leg.

If you’re a yoga fan you will be able to do this easily. Where do you need to put your focus?

It’s a hell of a lot easier to balance if you choose a specific point in the room ahead of you and focus on that. It also stills the brain and calms the body.

So in a presentation or an interview or an important meeting think about where to put your focus.

Give your brain a job to do – give it a mission.

A good place to start is to focus on the other people.

What do they need to know?

How will they best understand the message?

So what do you have to do to get your message across?

Here’s the rest of Kipling’s poem to remind us to keep calm and carry on…

If—

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Source: A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1943)