What ever you are doing, what ever your age, the following rules will help you. It works absolutely everywhere for one simple reason, it gets your most powerful resources activated. This system is created and tested in the most challenging environments. When unbelievable winners or achievers are studied, these 4 elements are always found. Army, church, sport, science and family, those 4 elements will help you. Facing chaos, turmoil or frightening events, they work there. You sure know already that the answer is not physical condition or even your IQ.
It is amazing, but these for steps we all can learn to take. And what is best, you probably are using them already. Most of us do it without realizing it and hence only occasionally. So, what are the elements; 1. Calm down your system 2. Keep on looking for option 3. See what is to come and 4. Look where you a stepping in to. In the following, I’ll cover how you can do those things. All you need to do, is to start to apply them. In the order given.
1. Calm down your system is about understanding and taking control over your nervous system. Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are connected. Science has found out the dialog between our bodily activities and nervous systems. Nervous systems create actions, but what is more exiting is, that we can impact our nervous systems with our bodily activities. And to be successful, the first thing to do is to ensure that your nervous systems are not misleading you. To do that you need to control one thing. That is your breathing. 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 * 4 is what it takes as you master it. Inhale for 4 seconds, stop for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds and stop for 4 seconds. Repeat at least 4 times, and your nervous system starts to calm down. Remember, this great system was build for a totally different system, so the solutions your nervous systems are often not adequate today!
2. Keeping on looking for options is the key to survival. It is also known as positivity, but more it is about the absence of limiting fears and beliefs. As you calm down through your breathing, you mitigate your stress level. Then it is up to your choice, to look for options. Options create new solutions. Positivity and trust that every failure includes a valuable learning is how problems, even the wicked ones, get solved. Use the momentum created through your breathing to lead your mind to be positive.
3. See what is to come is having a vision and goal. Where do you want to go? What do you want to accomplish? When you know where you are going, what are the benefits achieving that goal will give you and the people important to you? Be it the turnaround of a business a day from bankruptcy, an underdog sports team winning a championship or a David over Goliath battle, the goal is needed. A team, which sees themselves as winning the championship, can do it. You only reach the goal you can imagine, not more!
4. Look where you a stepping in to is perhaps the second most important element, just after breathing. Goal and positive thinking are not helping you, unless you make things happen. And that means, taking the next step. Not just any step, but the one that your calm mind tells you to take, in order to get you to your goal. Make every step count, try not to take as many steps as possible. Smart steps are much more powerful, than steps running around.
We get by our every day life fairly well even we don’t master those 4 steps. What makes all the difference between exceptional and mediocre results, is your ability to use those 4 steps. And when chaos and turmoil hit you, then the difference is between success and losing everything. This is the lesson learned from the utmost extreme situations, from the best of the best. To get the most out of the 4 steps, you want to learn to master them, when you are not under stress.
Taking those 4 steps is about using your emotional intelligence, moreso of one special area of it. Resilience which takes one through the tough times and gives tools to recover faster and with less severe damage, what ever the reason for the chaos and turmoil. 21st century seems to be giving us more and more of turmoil and even chaos. Those are taking place because of virus, politics or economics. The answer is always the same, which makes it possible for you to succeed!
Making you success reality, sooner than you’d believe, Kari I. Mattila, emotional intelligence advisor!
