Former Navy SEAL commander Rorke Denver described the best lesson he had learned from a master chief in the Navy – that when you’re a leader, at a minimum everyone is going to mimic you. So simply: “Calm is contagious.”
Staying calm even everyone around you is losing their composure and running around like headless chickens, means that you can stay detached enough from the situation that you can still think clearly and objectively.
But, as a byproduct it keeps everyone else a little calmer too. Nelson Mandela was once on a flight where he noticed that one of the plane’s propellers had stopped working. He notified a friend on the plane, who then relayed the message to the pilot. The pilot already knew about it and had already called the airport to make an emergency landing. And while the friend feared for his life, Mandela was just seen reading his newspaper, just like he had been before he noticed the engine fault. When the plane made the emergency landing and Mandela was on the tarmac, he leaned over to his friend, “Man, I was scared up there.” Mandela was just as frightened as his friend, but he showed the courage to stay calm. If he had displayed his fear and panic, he would have likely made everyone around him panic even more.
In life there will be times when you are a role model to others – whether to a younger sibling, friend, new hires at work, to your child, to your community. And so, it’s not only calm that is contagious. Compassion is contagious. Kindness is contagious. Joy is contagious. On the other hand, anger is contagious. Envy is contagious. Deception is contagious. However you act, there will be someone out there that will use that as a template for their own life. So act accordingly.
Thought Canvas 