CALMING DOWN AFTER TELLING OTHERS TO CALM DOWN

Calming down is hard when usually calm people start twitching.

You know it’s going off the tracks when you have to tell the calm ones to calm down.

Sensitive people have it worse because their radar picks up problems before they become problems.

Ever try telling a sensitive person to calm down? How did that go?

Before going out on that limb, here are a few ideas for calming down:

Tense your muscles, starting with your feet. Flex your feet, hold, and release. Then add calves. Tense those feet and calves, hold, and release.

Work your way up to thighs, butt, abs, chest, shoulders, arms, and neck, adding each new muscle group to the last.

I talked to a doctor about this routine, and they approved.

Do you know who else approves? Steph Curry, the man who reinvented basketball. He’s a little guy at 6’3″ going against some of the biggest, most talented, athletes in the world.

Who wouldn’t be nervous?

If you don’t think anyone over 6′ is small, consider the rest of the NBA.

One sports blog claims the average NBA height is 6’7″. It’s confirmed by other sources, though the average height of an American male ranges between 5’7″ and 5’9″.

The calm Curry puts everyone else on edge when he drains thirty foot shots like free throws.

Calming Down In Real Life

Let’s agree that everyday situations are not the same as an NBA game 7 in the finals with the game tied and three seconds on the clock.

Real life is nothing like the end of a play-in game when you’ve got the ball right after a poke in the eye and you heave up a long ball seeing three rims.

Take LeBron’s advice and aim for the middle basket.

Who’s advice do we take when the smoke detector is screaming, the phone is ringing, and there’s someone pounding on the front door?

We need some calm when we’re late to an important meeting but stuck in traffic instead. Tensing already tense muscles seems like a bad idea?

Maybe.

What Would Michael Jordan Do?

From the best small man to play ‘man’s game’ basketball at the top levels to the Greatest Of All Time, it’s the same deal: Self control.

From ESPN:

“If you have doubt or concern about a shot, or feel the ‘pressure’ of that shot, it’s because you haven’t practiced it enough,” Jordan says. “The only way to relieve that pressure is to build your fundamentals, practice them over and over, so when game breaks down, you can handle anything that transpires.

Does this sound familiar? Drill, drill, and drill some more. Do the drills over and over and over, then a hit the door.

“People didn’t believe me when I told them I practiced harder than I played, but it was true. That’s where my comfort zone was created. By the time the game came, all I had to do was react to what my body was already accustomed to doing.”

One school of thought urges athletes to practice like they play, how they’d like to play. If you want to Be Like Mike, practice like Mike.

“I believed every time out I was the best. And the more shots I hit, the more it reinforced that,” Jordan says. “So, when you miss — because no matter how great you are, you will miss — you don’t waver, because you’ve built yourself a nice little cushion of confidence.

“Now, we’ve seen plenty of guys go the other way. They miss one shot and they can’t seem to ever make one. That’s the kind of negative reinforcement that ruins guys.”

What Ruins The Rest Of Us

Anxiety, depression, and chronic fatigue may not ruin us, but it’s not making a better day, either.

What is the best approach with people under stress? Tell them to calm down? Go ahead and throw that gas on the fire.

Or listen to Curry’s coach Steve Kerr:

Kerr, who played alongside Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Tim Duncan, says that after short-arming big shots with the Bulls, and having to absorb Jordan’s ire, he took coach Phil Jackson’s advice and turned to meditation to allow his natural shooting motion to dominate his mind, instead of all the apprehensive “what ifs.”

“I finally concluded, Fuck It. If I get this ball, it’s going up,'” Kerr says. “I went to an ‘I don’t care’ approach instead of dwelling on all the repercussions.”

I read it like this: Calming down is mental. A calm mind is more useful than an over-thinking, over-doubting, failure mindset.

If we think we can do something, and do the prerequisites, then we’ll get better results when we try. I’ll ride that bike all day.

You may not know when you’re ready for a big day, but if you prepare and train and learn ways of calming down, that day will be your day.

Think of it like this, dear reader: That day is today. It’s either a BIG DAY, or the day you start getting ready.

Now tense your feet, then let it go. You know what to do next.

Or follow LeBron’s lead for calming down after a big loss:

To quiet his mind, James eschewed social media, nightclubs, the spotlight. He began reading more, devouring the entire Hunger Games series on road trips. He sat down for a candid conversation with his friend Wade and informed him he was done deferring.

He found solace in the gym, and like so many before him — Magic in the mid-’80s, Jordan years later — began building scar tissue to protect himself from the mental scars of 2011.

How that transpires is fascinating. There is a fatty substance formed in the central nervous system called myelin that enables nerve cells to transmit information faster and allow for more complex brain functions.

Are you complex?

Yes, you are. Take a deep breath.