I have been working on “being calm.” 

I consider this to be a great attribute–to be calm in the face of the storm. Besides it being healthier–blood pressure stays low, less wrinkles scowling– I believe that there is a power in being calm, that you can help everyone around you who is starting to melt down, just by being the one calm person.

Sometimes, it is almost a game for me, to see if I can remain calm when one of my kids or husband is beginning to “lose his cool.”

One night, I dropped my husband off at the airport for one of many flights that had been part of his work. It was a late night flight. He arrived and I had reserved him a room in a new town, a new place. He had to take a shuttle, get a rental car, the whole deal. I called him about 12:30 am and sure enough he was lost.

We have these iphones that are perfect for everything–you can map your destination and have it locate where you are. I was trying to talk him through the “how to use the map function” and he was getting frustrated. I tried to remain calm, as I could see he was tired, and could not get the map application to work, so I pulled out my laptop, got his location on google map–

“Are you on I-70? you need to find the 60, also called highway 60, go east…”

He informed me that he was driving out in the dark of the mountains..wrong way, long turn around, in an unfamiliar place.

Eventually he made it.

One of my favorite “be calm” moments is helping my mom over the phone with an IT computer issue–even as she is getting annoyed, “it’s not working, it’s not working!”

Or when one of my sons cannot find something, usually shoes, because of course I wear his size 10 shoes–I calmly ask him to think back to when he wore them last , “where were you when you took them off?” And of course we are in a hurry to go somewhere, and he needs his stylish Converse.

I do consciously have to work on the “be calm” in the face of the storm. 

It is like a hurricane, and you have to remain in the calm zone— in the eye–where you can see better to help solve the problem when you stay calm.

I have not always remained in the calm zone, and sometimes I may have started a storm or two. But I do feel better, have more power, and often resolve the conflict quicker when I can calmly say,

“…hmmmm, do you see the little blue icon shaped like a book at the top, right hand corner of your computer screen?”