Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 41 chapter 13 – make your nerves work for you

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

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How to Make Your “Nerves” Work for You

The word “crisis” comes from a Greek word that means, literally,decisiveness, or point of decision. A crisis is a fork in the road. One fork holds a promise of a better condition, the other of a worse condition. In medicine, the crisis is a turning point where the patient either gets worse and dies or gets better and lives.

Thus every crisis situation is two-pronged. The relief pitcher who goes into the game in the ninth inning with the score tied and three men on base can become a hero and gain in prestige, or he can become a villain who loses the game.

Hugh Casey, who was one of the most successful and the calmest relief pitchers of all time, was once asked what he thought of when he was sent in a game in the middle of a crisis situation.”I always think about what I am going to do, and what I want to happen,” he said, “instead of what the batter is going to do or what may happen to me.” He said he concentrated on what he wanted to happen,felt that he could make it happen, and that it usually did.

This same attitude is another important key to reacting well in any crisis situation. If we can maintain an aggressive attitude, react aggressively instead of negatively to threats and crises, the very situation itself can act as a stimulus to release untapped powers.

Keep Your Goal In Mind

The essence of all this is remaining goal-oriented. You keep your own positive goal in mind. You intend to go through the crisis experience to achieve your goal. If you can do this, the crisis situation itself acts as a stimulus that releases additional power to help you accomplish your goal.In fact, in many instances, what begins as a crisis ends as yet another opportunity for real progress toward the overriding objectives.

I once visited with a woman who had taken the reins of a very troubled inner city high school as its principal. At the time, she was most unusual, a woman in a “man’s job.” She was also hip-deep in problems, from teachers who had given up and were just going through the motions to inadequate resources, to kids completely uninvolved in learning, to actual crime and violence. She told me that each day was “crisis city.”

Two years after taking this position, for which, I might add, there was little competition, she had turned this school around dramatically. Attendance was up, grade averages were up, “bad apples” were plucked and extracted, real learning (not just warehousing)was taking place. The change was so remarkable that school administrators from distant cities came to observe this school and consult with this principal.

Again, this was all the more remarkable because it was a woman captaining the turnaround in the late 1960s. When I asked her how she’d been able to weather the relentless storminess of this environment day after day, she explained that she kept reminding herself that each crisis presented another different opportunity to accomplish something linked to her ultimate ·objective.

Her handling of each problem was an opportunity to gain the trust or grudging respect of a teacher or a student, and she told herself that she would use these as building blocks, constructing her influence and control over this unwieldy organism called a school one brick at a time.

At the end of a particularly bad day, she acknowledged to her self that a few bricks she thought had been properly laid had been knocked back out of place, but that it only meant she would need to put them back and get another one in place the next day. When some crisis exploded into her office, she not only asked herself how to solve it, but how to utilize solving it as a means of moving closer toward her vision of what this school was going to be like when it was made over.

“It was like a jigsaw puzzle in my mind,” she told me. “I had a picture from the box of what it would look like when it was done. Then I had all these loose, scrambled pieces in a pile. Most of the time, I didn’t get to methodically search for the next piece. I had one leap out of the pile and demand I try to fit it into the puzzle. Sometimes the piece was on fire and had to be saved before it could be used. Sometimes it was crumbling and had to be taped together. But piece by piece I was still completing a puzzle. The trick was to keep the box handy with the picture of the whole, and not lose sight of it.”

If you think about her experience and the words she used to explain her approach, you can clearly see that she was heavily relying on Psycho-Cybernetics for equilibrium in a pressure-cooker situation. Lecky has said that the purpose of emotion is “re-enforcement,”or additional strength, rather than to serve as a sign of weakness. He believed that there was only one basic emotion-excitement-and that excitement manifests itself as fear, anger, courage, etc. depending on our own inner goals at the time, whether we are inwardly organized to conquer a problem, run away from it, or destroy it. “The real problem is not to control emotion, but to control the choice of which tendency shall receive emotional reinforcement.” (Prescott Lecky, Self Consistency, A Theory of Personality, New York, Island Press)

If your intention or your attitude-goal is to go forward, if it is to make the most of the crisis situation and win out in spite of it, then the;:excitement of the occasion will reinforce this tendency. It will give you more courage, more strength to go forward. If you lose sight of your original goal, and your attitude-goal becomes one of running away from the crisis, of seeking to somehow get past it by evading it, this running-away tendency will also be reinforced, and you will experience fear and anxiety.

Don’t Mistake Excitement for Fear

Many people have made the mistake of habitually interpreting the feeling of excitement as fear and anxiety, and therefore interpreting it as a proof of inadequacy.

Any normal person who is intelligent enough to understand the situation becomes excited or nervous just before a crisis situation. Until you direct it toward a goal, this excitement is neither fear, anxiety,courage, confidence, nor anything else other than a stepped-up, reinforced supply of emotional steam in your boiler. It is not a sign of weakness.It is a sign of additional strength to be used in any way you choose.

PRESCRIPTION

Stop thinking in terms of fear, anxiety or nervousness, and think only in terms of excitement. It is fine to be a bit excited before you step into the spotlight in whatever you do.Experienced actors know that this feeling of excitement just before a performance is a good token. Many of them deliberately work themselves up emotionally just before going on stage.

I’ve been told by those who would know that even after many years hosting The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson was still so “hyper” backstage that he would sometimes feel nauseous right before the curtains parted and he walked out to deliver his opening monologue. A wonderful man and,for years, -one of America’s most beloved speakers to sales organizations, the founder of the National Speakers Association, Cavett Robert used to say “Don’t try to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.

“Many people place their bets at racetracks on the basis of which horse appears to be the most nervous just before going to the post.Trainers also know that a horse that becomes nervous or spirited just before a race will perform better than usual. The term “spirited” is a good one. The excitement that you feel just before a crisis situation is an infusion of spirit and should be so interpreted by you. You do not need to get rid of this; you need to marshall it as a force for your own benefit. In fact, the absence of this excitement can pose its own problems.

Not long ago I met a man on a plane whom I had not seen for several years. In the course of conversation, r asked if he still made as many public speeches as he had in the past. Yes, he said, as a matter of fact he had changed jobs so that he would be able to speak more and now made at least one public speech every day. Knowing his love for public speaking,I commented that it was good he had this type of work. “Yes,” he said, “in one way it is good. But in another way it is not so good. I don’t make as many good speeches now as I used to. I speak so often that it has become old-hat to me, and I no longer feel that little tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach, which tells me that I am going to do well.”

Some people become so excited during an important written examination that they are unable to think clearly or even hold a pencil steadily in their hands. Other people become so aroused under the same circumstances that they perform over their heads; their minds work better and clearer than usual. Memory is sharpened. It is not the excitement per se that makes the difference, but how it is used.

What Is the Worst That Can Possibly Happen?

Many people have a tendency to magnify out of all proportion the potential penalty or failure that the crisis situation holds. We use our imaginations against ourselves and make mountains out of molehills. Or else we do not use our imaginations at all to see what the situation really holds, but habitually and unthinkingly react as if every simple opportunity or threat were a life-or-death matter.

If you have ever watched daytime TV soap operas, and I confess I have, you can quickly see a common thread stitching these programs together: crisis after crisis after crisis. But in these dramas, every event represents crisis, and everyone reacts with grossly exaggerated emotions.The perfect home for a ham actor is one of these daytime dramas.

You do not want to turn your life into one of these soap operas,where every incident, small or large, is greeted with the same gigantic excitement.  After all, a traffic accident that is a mere fender-bender and only inconveniences you a bit does not warrant the same level or range of excitement as one that sends you or others to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. In a soap opera, one is the same as the other. You can be more discerning.

I once counseled a woman who was terribly unhappy with her life and everyone in it. Not a day passed without some provocation sparking a bitter argument with spouse, sibling, or neighbor. Her descriptions of these disputes were as dramatic as any soap opera script writer could imagine. She perceived the slightest problem as an epic crisis,the most trivial slight a mammoth assault on her dignity; she even took inclement weather  personally. A simple spill of beverage on the carpet was the same to her as a five alarm fire. She had become a drama queen.

Such people exist everywhere-in marriages, in the workplace,in political circles-and they are toxic to themselves and to everyone around them. With an inappropriate level of excited response to events and other peoples’ behavior, such a person is a stick of TNT tossed into each situation. But remember, to her, her over excitement is a perfectly appropriate response, and altering that will involve fundamental work with her self-image.If you face a real crisis, you need a lot of excitement. The excitement can be used to good advantage in the crisis situation.

However,if you overestimate the danger or the difficulty, if you react to information that is faulty, distorted, or unrealistic, you are likely to call up much more excitement than the occasion calls for. Because the real threat is much less than you have estimated, all this excitement cannot be used appropriately. It cannot be gotten rid of through creative action. Therefore it remains inside you, bottled up, as the jitters. A big excess of emotional excitement can harm rather than help performance,simply because it is inappropriate.

Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell tells of a technique which he used on himself to good advantage in toning down excessive excitement:When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen. Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such very terrible disaster.

Such reasons always exist, since at the worst nothing that happens to oneself has any cosmic importance. When you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction, “Well,after all, that would not matter so very much,” you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent. It may be necessary to repeat the process a few times, but in the end, if you have shirked nothing in facing the worse possible issue, you will find that your worry disappears altogether and is replaced by a kind of exhilaration. (Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness)

I believe it is also important to have the self-image of someone who responds well to crisis, and is frequently successful at finding opportunity in adversity. The person who sees himself as “no good in an emergency” cannot do much with Bertrand Russell’s advice.Life Is Long Many people allow themselves to be thrown off course by minor or even imaginary threats, which they insist on interpreting as life-or death or do-or-die situations.

To the teenage girl, just spotting her boyfriend or even her hoped-for-boyfriend sitting and talking amiably with another attractive girl is of life or death importance. “I just want to die!” she exclaims. We all know that a few years from that moment, she won’t even remember it or him. Life is long. But many adults keep on behaving like teenagers their entire lives. Many people allow themselves to be thrown “off course” by very minor or even imaginary threats, which they insist upon interpreting as life-or-death, or do-or-die situations.

A sales professional calling on an important prospect may act asif it were a matter of life or death. If I don’t close thi~ account, she tells herself, I will have wasted months of effort. I’ll miss quota. I won’t make bonus, and how will I tell my husband we can’t take our planned vacation? My sales manager may cut my territory. And so on. The single appointment takes on earthshaking importance. Yet over a year’s time, such a muffed opportunity will be offset by solid successes, even by lucky breaks that seemingly deliver new accounts or larger orders from unexpected sources. If this life-or-death sales call occurs in March, it will be part of a blur of past activity by Christmas and, over an entire selling career, of no importance whatsoever. Life is long.

Perhaps this life-or-death feeling that many people experience in any sort of crisis situation, is a heritage from our dim and distant past,when failure to primitive man usually was synonymous with death.Regardless of its origin, however, the experience of numerous patients has shown that it can be cured by calmly and rationally analyzing the situation. Rather than responding automatically, blindly,and irrationally, ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I fail?” Remind yourself that “Life is long” and seek the perspective of 20/20 hindsight in advance.

And with that, we will meet again next time with chapter 14,
The Curtain Will Rise on a Second Act

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And, always keep smiling with love and light,

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Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 41 chapter 13 – make your nerves work for you