A while back a recently divorced friend of mine was getting back into the dating game.
After having a horrendous experience for several months, he finally found a girl that he liked and that seemed to like him. But then a new problem started.
The age-old issue of “When do I call?” “I haven’t heard back from her in two days, should I text her again?” and “Why isn’t she responding to me?” took him by storm. He turned to me for advice.
“First of all, you gotta give her the benefit of the doubt. She deserves that.” I said.
“Then… just be cool.”
“Be cool?” he asked.
“Just play it cool.” I said. “And that goes for anything. Just play it cool.”
It’s something I’ve never forgotten because 1) it might’ve been my simplest and most profound statement ever and 2) since I was saying that from lessons I learned the hard way, I was basically saying it to myself.
But I still struggle to heed that self-advice.
Adding extra and unneeded stress to situations finds its way into our relationships, our work, and our personal lives. And if we aren’t careful, it will quickly take a toll on our mental health.
Just this week, I was stressing about a deposit check arriving for one of the biggest speaking gigs of my career. I was worried it would affect the job, even though I had a signed contract.
I checked the mail every day and, if I’m being totally honest, sometimes two and three times a day even after I saw the mail truck come.
It came yesterday and it was just USPS taking forever as it does. I spent a lot of time and even more mental energy on something that wasn’t a problem and was out of my control.
A few weeks ago, it even manifested itself in my leisure life.
I play in a competitive adult soccer league and on the night of my birthday, I had a game. Because it was my birthday, I really wanted to play well and have a great outcome — I guess to put the cherry on top of my celebratory day.
But I played like crap.
And even though my team won, I spent the rest of the night by myself brooding instead of having beers with the boys after the game.
I spent the next day or so questioning why I did that to myself. Why did I put that much pressure on myself for something so arbitrary? All it did was add extra stress to the situation and made it worse for myself when I didn’t live up to my expectations.
It was self-sabotage!
The next week, I played much better. I still missed multiple scoring opportunities which was frustrating but I just laughed it off and made a note that I needed to go practice finishing goals.
And I bet tonight, I’ll find the back of the net. But even if I don’t, it doesn’t really matter.
Of course I want to get better, and of course I want to play well. But at the end of the day, it’s not going to impact my life in a major way and my goal was never to have flawless games and rack up my stats. It was to get exercise and spend time playing a game I love.
The bottom line is, we perform best when we are confident.
But when we stress about things that don’t matter, or things that we can’t control, or bad things that might happen, we psych ourselves out!
It’s the fastest way to ensure that bad things do happen.
Confidence is the key to success and staying stress free. And when we can act from a play of confidence, things tend to work out. Or, perhaps we just don’t freak out as much when they don’t work out. That kind of confidence is hard to obtain, but it starts with just being calm.
And just playing it cool.
Rain Bennett is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, and competitive storyteller with over a decade of experience producing documentary films that focus on health and wellness. His mission is simple: to make the world happier and healthier by sharing stories of change.
You can read the rest of “Right as Rain” here, and check back every Wednesday on Chapelboro for a new column!
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