How to Keep Your Cool in Any Situation

Have you ever wondered how some people manage to stay cool and calm in almost any situation? While you are blowing your top, they just sit back and let the world slide by without sweating, steaming, screaming, or even batting an eyelash. Do you ever wish you had the ability to keep your composure?

In truth, cool is just a state of mind. With a bit of practice anyone can stay cool in most situations.

First, realize that your actions are the result of feelings, and those feelings are created as the result of thoughts that are running through your head at a given point in time. To maintain a calm exterior, you need to gain some insight into your habitual thoughts.

When a crisis arises, what thoughts run through your head?

Imagine that you are sitting in a cafe with friends and someone at the next table starts giving you a hard time. Perhaps you think about how foolish the other person is making you look in front of your friends. Maybe you think it would be cowardly to avoid a confrontation. Such thoughts are likely to result in actions you will regret.

To keep your cool, you need to learn to stop such negative thoughts and replace them with constructive thoughts that will lead to a more positive outcome. Cognitive psychologists call this technique "reframing." You take a negative situation and reframe it in a more positive perspective. People who have a cool and calm demeanor do this habitually.

In the situation presented above, a cool and composed individual would likely have very different thoughts about the situation. Instead of thinking about how foolish he looked because of the jerk at the next table, he'd likely think about how the other person was just trying to bolster his own self-esteem by showing off in front of everyone. Additionally, the cool person would know that playing into the situation by getting upset and acting insecure would only make the situation worse.

Most situations can be handled with poise if you pay attention to the significance you attribute to them. Is it really the end of the world if someone gives you a hard time? Will your whole life fall apart if you don't get a promotion, or if your car breaks down in the rain? As long as you attribute a great deal of meaning to such situations, you will have a difficult time keeping your cool.

Instead, try to remain indifferent. So what if your car breaks down? A week from now it will be fixed and you will forget all about it. Don't worry about the promotion. If don't get it, chances are something better will come along anyway, especially if you work hard enough to deserve promotion.

To keep your cool, you have to remain indifferent and understand that life isn't going to end when things don't go your way. You need to re-interpret situations so they don't seem so negative. If you practice doing so, you will find yourself able to handle any situation with greater composure, and others will wonder how you are able to stay so cool in a crisis.