Keep Calm Will Make You Smarter Essays Example

Patience has become a rare commodity in today’s time and so has its by product calm. How often do we find ourselves in difficult situations , how we present ourselves in crisis makes our personality. We all admire confidence and deftness , but we don’t realise from where these attributes come from. We try to imitate our role-models and think we can be like them, charismatic, smart and witty. What we all should know is you can look confident by aping someone but you cannot feel confident doing that. This is what really matters, to feel confident and smart. This feeling comes when you lift yourself in your own eyes, by being calm and focussed in crisis, by holding your nerves at the time when it is needed and by making important decisions at crucial junctures of life, that is how you get smart and feel smart. Our existence on earth is closely related to nature. Not only are we related to nature but also we can learn a lot just by seeing it. Nature gives us inklings of how calmness reflects on character. All great things and living are calm, the sight of calm ocean makes us feel timid, a sight of calm horse enchants us, calmness of mountains only reflects there gigantic stature. If we spare a moment to think about all this we can convince ourselves with a phrase “Calmness indeed is cradle of power”. Protagonist Mary Maloney, in Lamb to the Slaughter is dark symbol of calmness, the story goes on to show how this composure led her to take smart steps to evade her conviction. She indeed was the killer but not a foolish one. If she would have panicked and acted in haste, no doubt she would have been caught. She was smart enough to outmanoeuvre a team of detectives, they were sure that murder
weapon was right under their nose yet they never smelled the conspiracy. Such is the power of calmness.
Composure and calmness can take you places, with a peaceful mind one can see things more objectively. If you can break a puzzle into smaller parts naturally the solving the whole puzzle will now become less tedious for you. The task which is taxing for others will become less abrasive for you. This surely will help to improve your confidence. If you are generous enough you can explain your methodology to others. This confident and cohesive approach will transform your personality into someone better. It will further lead you to become a person who is not afraid of situations and emerge victorious most of the times in crisis. Hence your peers will call you a smart person more important than that you yourself will feel good about the way you tackle things. The better you get in maintaining your calm smarter you will become by the day. It is obvious that change in one’s personality cannot be observed overnight, so one has to keep faith and keep practicing this mental exercise. It can however be said that in some situations we are ought to take prompt decisions and acting calmly can delay our actions. Nevertheless it can I say a person can act calmly and promptly at the same time, a tiger aiming for his prey get to the hunted calmly, he remains calm until the moment he has to charge. Some might argue that keeping calm cannot always be useful and how it might help in every situation. A peaceful mind is fearless mind, it is sans paranoia. One can foresee contingencies if you think soothingly about the decision you are about to make. A decision that has backups for contingencies, everyone knows such decisions are best decisions. Such was the plan of Mary Maloney, a plan in which every detail was chalked out till the end, every contingency had been thought off, chances of getting caught were rounded off to null.
This would not have been the case if she would have been erratic. Our behaviour tells a lot about our character, an easily exasperating person is easily denounced by people rather than a cool-headed person. A calm human is bound to radiate vibrancies and positivity. His mind will embrace new ideas more clearly than a clouded mind. He will be organized in his routine and particular about his promises. Such a person is appreciated at workplace, among peers and everywhere he or she goes. People now-a-days have so much fuss in their lives that they run towards positivity, hence you will be valued and respected and acknowledged and rewarded for your calmness. A composed person is looked as an asset, he or she is considered mature and his or her advices are valued by everyone. Time we live in is highly competitive people at workplace want to befriend you only if you bring something on the table. People don’t want a Hulk with them they rather want a Captain America. I quote here Woodrow Wilson to justify my points, he said; “One cool judgement is worth a thousand counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”People want to be in company of smart people who can have positive influence on their overall persona. A calm attitude gives you a leverage of at least looking wise and mature. How you take yourself from there on is up to you. If we go back again to our frame of reference story, we can observe and highlight the fact that Mary Maloney was acting smartly when she was calmly insinuating her polite gestures to detective Jack Noonan. It can be thought that she was trying to manipulate the detective by showing that despite in the event of her husband’s death she had not forgotten the basic domestic courtesy of offering drinks to guests. This shows a calm and balanced nature to detective Noonan, who like any other person must have appreciated it hence Mary Maloney got herself spared from any suspicion from the side of detective. Gestures are half of what a person is, warm gestures signify an amicable personality, a calm gesture gives an impression of
confidence it shows that a person is at balance with his or her inner self or not. Old Physicians used to tell by gestures, by breathing rate that whether a person is at peace or not.
Calm certainly is not the only step involved in getting smarter, you need to have intelligence, aptitude and skill for implementing your course of action. Calm alone can also become a bane, if it is not mixed in right proportions with other characteristics. It is to be realised and understood that smartness requires calmness, this means a part of being smart is being calm when it requires. A person with only calm nature and nothing to back it up would surely end up a deadbeat. You can be quiet only if you know when you will speak others will listen to that, only such a being can put up some show. Banter without parade is not appreciated by crowds. You have to be amicable and the same time you need to be sharp and on your toes. You just cannot pass off talking calmly and wisely and then delivering nothing. A person blended with calmness and apt implementation of skills will be a showstopper. While making a presentation in a board room the content and context of your presentation matters as much as your style and your body language. Your calmness onstage is required, your confidence is required and so is your technical or subject knowledge.Both are important yet you can’t let go one for another.
Throughout this discussion we have developed a thought, that being, to get smart you need to feel smart, to feel smart you need to act smart, to act smart you will have to keep your calm while at crucial junctures in life. The thought is backed by the idea of implementing your skills when time requires you to do so, this goes on to show that the thought alone is not suffice for one’s development. This is a slow process which bears fruit by keeping a tap on one’s instinct. This process is easily understood than it is implemented. So, we have to
practice and make it our habit that we will remain composed at least in small crisis. Small hiccups like a flat tyre, a lost report, an heated argument in such situations we should try and be patient. The best way to enact it is by putting a brave smile forward in a difficult situation. This eases pressure and tension from you as well as those around you. As Thomas Jefferson puts it “Nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled by circumstance.” Small things will lead to big things and big things to still bigger ones. So we need to go from strength to strength, never giving up on trying overcoming our aggressiveness. There would be no need to raise your voice if people start to respect your composure, there would be no need to press on your points if you already had chalked out every contingency, your point would never be overlooked. Of course are people you do not advocate calmness, but one should tell them that, if a person behaves angrily or erratically in a scenario it goes further to show that, that man has a weak mind. Again I refer to the character of Mary Maloney for justifying my point. She acted quiet so that when she speaks detectives believe her story. She supported her act by convincing theatrical skills and impeccable mind game. If she would not have supported her calmness with her skills, she would never have outsmarted the detectives rather she would have been pulled in the eternal calm of abyss, which in her case might have been prison.