Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, believes this to be true – and so do I. We all have different ways of dealing with stressful situations, and whether you are hot- or cool-headed by nature, Outcalm can become your unique competitive advantage in life.
Outcalm is the foundation of skills building, a space of you can witness and learn.
Another way of seeing this space is worded well by Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The first step to Outcalm is to create this space for yourself the second step is to encapsulate others in it.
When Alex and I just met, we became nomadic as the pandemic started. We never planned to become digital nomads, but I was evacuated by my company in Manila and wanted to return after this “flu” blew over. Over the next two years, we lived and moved between 6 countries, navigating lockdowns and trying to figure out how to stay in one place. While this happened, my father became terminally ill, and my family looked to me for support. Suddenly I was juggling my master’s degree, career, newfound relationship and the circumstances of a world in a pandemic.
My story is not special. If you get the chance to live life long enough, I believe everyone will experience a story of suffering. When they arrive, they are periods that will ask you to Outcalm yourself and the people in your life. You can simply not afford to panic; you must strive to be the calmest in the room.
The thing is, you don’t need things to get to the extreme. There are moments every day when you can choose to create a space for Outcalm. The world isn’t becoming any calmer in the future, and people want to work with reliably calm and resilient people. Whether you are a leader, an entrepreneur, a parent, a partner or just a person making your way through life, the cultivation of Outcalm can become your greatest competitive advantage. This is the true superpower of the 21st century.
Outcalm is more than a breath exercise
Outcalm is not just about taking a deep breath and counting to ten. It’s about the intentional pursuit of deliberate calmness in yourself and others. The beauty of Outcalm is that it is an evolving concept, like a baby ready to be nurtured. Outcalm is not something that can be narrowed down to a single definition. Instead, it is an ongoing practice that requires patience, awareness, and understanding. Alex always strives to define Outcalm, narrow it down, and have a clear-cut concept that can be built on.
I, on the other hand, want to appreciate that right now I don’t know what Outcalm is or what it can develop into. I want Outcalm to develop through conversations. I want you to choose to define it as whatever makes sense to you. I do not want to limit Outcalm by putting a premature label on it. So – Alex and I agree to disagree and find common ground in focusing how we relate to calmness.
What is your relationship to calmness?
We all have different relationships with calmness. Alex approached Outcalm from the experience of constant Outrage. He arrived at Outcalm due to working in a highly aggressive industry. An industry that did its best to create outrage in him because that would be equal to the upside for the other party. Alex, too, would instil outrage in others. He realised that outrage as a decision-making tool was faulty. It burned him out and burned others unbeknownst to him. There were no real gains in it besides capital.
The upside was always fleeting. “To Outcalm” was a piece of 2 am advice that I threw at Alex while he was half asleep. He was agitated about not having the correct arguments to outsmart the people on the other side of the negotiation table. They were aggressive, they were demanding, and they threw around threats. I told him he had already lost if his only strategy was outsmarting them. They weren’t listening for strong arguments anyway. He needed to Outcalm.
Two years later, we discuss what Outcalm should and should not be. Alex sees a decision-making tool as a skill that can be learnt. A skill that stabilises relationships and offsets panic. In this way, Outcalm has become a promise to proactively engage with other human beings, ensuring “net calmness.” It has already become his personal guarantee in any business encounter and phone call with mom: “I can guarantee you that during our interaction, I will leave you calmer than before. I will Outcalm you.”
While he does not say any of this outright, to Outcalm remains his intention. That, for sure, is a challenging statement to hold yourself accountable to when you are dealing with nagging mothers and demanding business partners alike.
You are leaving others worse off.
We have a responsibility to understand to what extent we are creating outrage. We need to ask ourselves not only how we can Outcalm but also how we create outrage.
So if you made it this far in the article, you are likely not one of those who create outrage in others. Right?
I bet your mother would disagree. Because honestly, how the heck do you know? Feedback? Self-reflection? Right. Have you ever actually observed yourself? Why are you even reading this if there is no need for an antidote to your outrage?
You are reading this because you are curious to start living differently. You’ve already taken the first step in the journey of coming to terms with how you create outrage in others. Intentionally and unintentionally. Consciously and unconsciously.
You need to know
What is your relationship to calmness?
How do you create calmness in yourself and others?
What is your relationship to fostering outrage?
How do you create outrage in yourself and others?
These are some really important questions. And most people come to calmness by experiencing outrage and seeking the antidote.
Be the advocate
Now while all of this sounds good, it is by far not the easiest road to take through life. It is much more rewarding to embrace outrage, and plenty of reasons exist. Things are really bad out there, and people are stupid right? Also, expressing outrage feels good; it feels good to be right, to win and see others lose. Also, outrage can be incredibly rewarding just look at the news, the behaviour of people in high-pressure industries and the social media comment section.
Outrage is a fire, and it burns brighter as our society becomes more and more technologically advanced. Outcalm does not yet exist as a word (seriously, Google it), but at the same time, we can all relate to it as we put it next to outrage. At its stage today, it is formless like water and shares the same purpose: giving life.
When you really want to act on your anxiety or outrage but choose to Outcalm, it can feel as if you are giving up on life by being passive. What you really are doing is an act not to feed the fire of outrage.
Instead, you water what matters in life, you choose to listen to understand rather than listen to reply, you avoid being right in this moment to share more right moments with the person in the future, and you stand up from sitting in misery to take a step towards your decisions.
Here is how to do it.
In your next interaction, ask yourself, as you leave it, did I act in a manner that left that person in a state of calmness? That is the way of Outcalm.
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