POISE: How to keep calm! (week2)

Hello everyone, hope you’ve had a great week so far! Here is something I thought you might be interested in. It’s a great virtue that helped me get through the craziest scenarios. Ok, here we go…

What is Poise?

Poise is simply the ability to keep your cool under stress. It’s a special virtue that you will need when you are tempted to freak out or get mad at someone.

On a daily basis, you can be faced with situations that can ‘test your patience’. It may be a group member in your class that refuses to do any work or show up to any group meeting that frustrates you, your roommate that turns up the volume of their, music so high that you can hear through his/her earphones or a coworker who’s always on her phone and loves to take credit for all the work you do when your boss comes around.

 5 ways to keep calm

1.     Keep your bubble calm

Imagine everyone walks in a bubble. No matter what kind of situation you find yourself in, the calmness in your bubble is enough for you to express poise. Make up your mind that your bubble is your space and you decide what happens in your bubble.

2 .     Never react immediately

You are human and part of that means that you react to your emotions. When you’re angry, you might want to curse someone out. Try to take a moment before you react. You can count to 10 or more depending on how long you need to overcome your emotions. A friend told me a while ago that the best thing is to sleepover it and confront the situation the next day.

3.     Talk about it

After you have counted to 10 or slept on it, it’s time to confront the matter. Whether it’s a friend, roommate, coworker, boss, professor or whoever. Go up to the person and ask to speak with them. Let them know how you felt about what happened. You might find out that they never meant to make you feel that way and that will help you clear the air between you two.

4.     Think of the bigger picture

Try to maintain a good relationship with the people around you, no matter how much you care less about them. You don’t have to be everybody’s friend but you shouldn’t consciously make enemies either. You never know what might become of your connection with them.

5.     Choose your battles.

Most times, especially after you sleep over a crazy situation that you should have reacted to, you will find that it isn’t even as hurtful as it seemed when at the time it happened.

Thank you for reading, I hope this post helps you to use POISE as a virtue more often. You have nothing to loose and a lot of peace and respect to gain.