“Pull It Together”
Are you able to quickly find a locus of control when swirling in chaos?
Knowing that the only certain thing about entrepreneurship is the uncertainty. And the heavy amount of destabilizing moments that uncertainty can bring that may rock your center…it’s important to go back to first-thing’s-first: finding your locus of control. From there will you be able to think and act clearly.
I remember having this thought when helping out a colleague going through a very real and serious panic attack. I don’t even remember the circumstances now — only that it wasn’t a life or death situation — but her reaction to the perceived threats were a very real emergency. And I think she gravitated towards me in this moment as we had shared that I experienced similar panic attacks in my past.
We found a quiet space where she could regulate her breathing through a brown paper bag. See the very real control and impact she was having on a defined amount of space that would fill and collapse as she steadied her state. In witnessing her transformation towards steadiness, I noticed her wandering eyes land into a soft gaze on the bag. Her rigid posture relax without collapsing in an upright position. Her breathing slow down to equal inhales and exhales. And eventually her mind able to communicate in sequential facts about what was happening…rather than the all-or-nothing spiraling of catastrophic contexts that seemed to jumble together.
For the record, this colleague of mine was, is, whip smart. For the most part, always together and on top of things in her life. Until this moment. Perhaps even more destabilizing because it’s unrecognizable to those who identify with a sense of regular composure.
To my surprise, over the years I’ve met people who seemingly have their sh*t together share their episodes of spiraling from overwhelm. Even when, from the outside, they seem steady to others.
This notion of “pulling yourself together” is an interesting one. As somatically, we are literally gathering our faculties to bring integrity back to our system. Steadying our eyes. Stilling our movements. Regulating our breath. And letting that frazzle of the nerves come to rest. As if fragments of ourselves were being pulled away from our sense of center from a perceived threat, needing to be ‘collected’ back.
This is a muscle that can be practice. Just as one doesn’t have to wait for a real world fight to throw a jab — you can practice your form on the bag.
The same goes for bringing that sporadic attention that gets pulled away by something — be it a threat or just a momentary distraction. The more you practice pulling yourself back to this locus of steadiness, the stronger that whole mechanism becomes.
Then when you're feeling through a situation where things feel a little more out of control, you can quickly toggle your joystick back to center 🕹.
