How to Be Calm, Cool & Collected | Retrain the Brain
Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success & Happiness
The Living Hour
4.0 • 805 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2016
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Listen to episode 30 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Be Calm, Cool & Collected. Adapted from a Harvard lecture by Dr. George Lincoln Walton.
Podcast Excerpt: We live in an age where discretion is the better part of valor. The person who exercises this discretion is less at risk for harm, but does not see so much of life as the more forceful individual. It is true that the hypochondriac is prone to live longer, but what a life! The time has past when the young child can say, "And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Now the prayer is more like this: "Don't even mention death to me or I shall lie awake all night!"
Today’s parents are raising children in ways that bring into prominence the little worries; that cause the tempest in the teapot; that bring about the worship of the intangible, and the magnification of the unessential. If we had lived in another age, we might have dreamt of the eternal happiness of saving our neck, but in this one we fret because someone said something that offended us....
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to in part by Book of Zen, |
| 0:18.0 | makers of wearable inspiration for a better world. |
| 0:21.7 | Today's podcast has been edited and adapted from a lecture by Dr. George Lincoln-Walton, |
| 0:28.3 | delivered to the Harvard Medical School in 1913. |
| 0:44.3 | To stay calm in our stressful age means to achieve poise. And what I mean by poise is equanimity. |
| 0:49.3 | The type of equanimity I have in mind is a purely practical one, such as the kind that |
| 0:57.1 | will enable us to drive to work during rush hours without losing our temper. |
| 1:03.0 | Not that I expect anyone permanently to attain this degree of equanimity, but I nevertheless |
| 1:09.5 | will offer suggestions that cultivate such poise, to the extent |
| 1:14.6 | at least of lessening our fears, of taking the edge off our acute resentments against things |
| 1:21.6 | and persons, of modifying somewhat our impatience and materially curbing our worry. |
| 1:30.5 | As a neurologist, it is my belief that nervousness would be rare if we simply could get rid of |
| 1:36.2 | our needless fears and worries. Avoid swearing or even feeling like swearing. If we could |
| 1:43.5 | argue without acrimony, |
| 1:45.8 | could stifle our reversions, |
| 1:48.2 | could resist the temptation to play the martyr, |
| 1:51.5 | and could listen to criticism and ridicule |
| 1:53.8 | without getting hot under the collar. |
| 1:57.1 | Furthermore, I believe that if such an equilibrium could be attained, |
| 2:02.3 | the actual amount of effective work in the world would be easily doubled. |
| 2:06.4 | Not that people wouldn't get tired, but it would be a healthy tired. |
| 2:11.2 | The kind a normal child has after a long day's play. |
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