You're the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Your chief policy is on education, and on one of your various trips to schools, you sit down with young children to tell stories. Some minutes in, your officials come to give you one of the biggest news in your nation's history. Within a span of a few minutes, more than 2000 of your citizens had been killed by one of your worst enemies.
Moreso, your military headquarters had been attacked, your biggest financial hub razed down into ashes, and for the effort of brave citizens, either your country's parliament or your presidential building would have been razed down as well.
In an unprecedented fashion, your nation had been met with the biggest shock it would ever face. This was a horrible nightmare. Your nation, the most powerful on earth, had been sent on its bended knees. Your nation is in grief and anger. Motivation is scattered, and there is fear all around. This is a crisis of catastrophic scale!
What do you do?
As fictional as this may sound, America's President George Bush was faced with this exact situation during the 9/11 attacks. His response? Calm. Extreme calm. Upon hearing this news for the first time, George's reaction was to continue telling the stories with the kids. It would have been a terrible move to react by rushing out of the classroom. He would have scared the kids and planted fear into them. In his own words, “I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm”.
It is good to note that George Bush is not the only one to express calm in catastrophic situations. On 9th August 1965, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew announced Singapore’s independence from Malaysia. With this independence, Prime Minister Lee Kuan was now responsible for every area of Singapore's administration.
However, not everything was progressing smoothly for the newly founded Singapore after its independence. It faced lots of challenges such as battles with its internal and external security, its economic survival and extreme racial tensions. The country was a ripe mess of chaos. How did he respond? Calm! Look at how Singapore turned out, and we can argue that the sense of calm worked!
In Randel's words, Peace Under Pressure! George Bush and Lee Kuan Yew’s calm response to challenges teach us a lesson on handling challenges and the fear that come with them. Scientifically, the brain is more likely to produce sound reasoning in calm situations.
The world is in crisis mode now. Nothing seems to be working out. Things seem to be getting tough by the day, and everything seems to worsen. Your response? Peace under pressure. Calm in all this trouble. Ego bee! Efor bee! It must to bee!
I'm Joshua Eyram Wordey and today, I'm instructing you - Be Calm!
