Daily Practice ·
Train your calm today for tomorrow's sales
A brief practice to recognize your reactions to collective fear and prepare yourself, with serenity, to act when others hide.
By Pedro J. Pérez
There are moments in life when everyone seems to be in a hurry about the same thing: buying, selling, fleeing, or hiding. In those moments, the crowd sets the pace and it is easy to confuse its noise with the truth. But the decisions that truly change our course are almost never made in the middle of the shouting, but in the stillness before it.
This exercise does not ask you to make any transaction or to make an important decision today. It asks something simpler and deeper: to observe how your body and mind react when your surroundings become agitated, and to rehearse in advance the serenity you will want to have when the moment comes to act with clarity.
The practice Duration: 15 minutes
Choose a recent episode of collective fear
Think for three or four minutes about a situation in the last few months in which you have seen many people alarmed by the same thing: an economic news story, a price drop, a rumor that spread quickly. It does not have to be something that affected you directly. Just bring to mind the atmosphere, the comments, the faces.
Write down what you felt in that moment
Spend five minutes writing on paper, without filtering, what your body and your head did while everyone was reacting. Did you feel urgency to do something? A desire to imitate others? Relief at not being inside? Fear of being left out? Write short sentences, without judging yourself. The important thing is to see yourself clearly, not to correct yourself.
Separate the noise from your own judgment
Read what you wrote and mark with a line the reactions that were born from the environment and with a circle those that were born from your own reflection. For three minutes, ask yourself which of those reactions would have led you to do something hasty and which would have brought you closer to a serene decision. Do not look for definitive conclusions; just distinguish the two voices.
Rehearse your serene response in writing
In the last three minutes, write two or three sentences describing how you would like to react the next time collective fear appears. Write them in the present tense, as if you were already that person: what you would do first, what you would not do, whom you would consult before moving. Keep that paper where you can see it in a week.
To reflect on today
In what part of your life are you reacting to other people's fear instead of listening to your own judgment?
To finish
Calm is not improvised in the critical moment: it is trained beforehand, in cold blood, with small exercises like this one. Those who know how they react under pressure can choose better when to move forward and when to wait. It is not about guessing the future, but about arriving at it with a clear head.