Loosen Your Grip
I recently took up knitting again after a multi-year hiatus, so I returned to some first principles of the craft. One of these is to make what’s called a tension swatch before beginning your project. The purpose of a tension swatch is to assess the natural tautness of your knitting, which affects the gauge, which will affect the overall fit of the final garment.
For me, it was telling. I struggled to get into the quiet rhythm of moving yarn over needle over fingers...the yarn started to fray; the stiches were too tight. My Mom, a highly-accomplished knitter, swears that knitting a great way to relax. Guess the joke’s on me. I’m as wound up as the ball of yarn by my side.
Clearly, I needed to loosen my grip. And when I did, the process gradually became easier and the outcome was much better.
You can probably see where this metaphor is going.
The not-so-secret to success in everything from executive presence, to managing conflict, to navigating everyday life is equanimity – a state of mental calmness and composure, especially in difficult situations.
But equanimity can be hard to achieve and maintain when we are besieged by an extraordinarily high level of uncertainty. It’s hard to loosen our grip when the world seems to be devolving into chaos.
But the chaos is by design and so our response needs to be equally calculating.
Without getting political here, it’s safe to characterize the current leadership of our country as somewhere on the ‘directive’ to ‘authoritarian’ scale of leadership types. That’s not a judgment; that’s a fact based on observable behaviors. It’s also a choice. With self-awareness all leaders can deliberately choose how they want to show up to effectively address a specific situation – much like choosing the appropriate golf club or kitchen knife from the many options available. The authoritarian-style leader’s strategy (in the government, your place of work, your home or you community), sadly, is to produce a feeling of overwhelm so that they can step into the role of savior.
Which leaves many of us wondering on a daily basis, what can I do?
I don’t know the answer. But I do know the first step to discovering it - loosen your grip. Research (and common sense) has shown that feeling calm enables clear thinking, and clear thinking enables good decision-making. Breath work is a particularly effective form of self-regulation, as is any sensory practice that shifts our focus away from the thoughts that keep us wound up.
In a world where many things are out of our control, the one thing we can control is how we respond -and how we respond will inform how we engage. If you’d like to explore, I’m here for you.
Note: Stress is a normal and healthy occurrence when it is not our default state – for that, appropriate medical attention may be warranted.