Day Twenty Five: Tranquility

TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

As my month of discipline comes to a close, I want to finish writings about the rest of Ben Franklin's impressive areas of self-improvment. There are only two more after this one, so my goal is within reach. After Halloween, as November starts, this blog will fall into disrepair for a month as I concentrate on my marathon and writing a novel in only thirty days!

A reinterpretation of Ben Franklin's idea of tranquility is "don't fret the small stuff, and it's all small stuff." The idea is to simply take things in stride, to keep one's cool. How easy it is to find oneself incredibly aggrevated by a simple traffic jam or upset at oneself for making a trivial mistake. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, what initially seems to be a massive hindrence is soon forgotton.

The benefit of practicing tranquility is lower bloodpressure and overall contentment. People will notice that you are not purely reactive, that you have an inner calm most don't possess. When things don't go your way, you do not explode, you are not moved, you are unaffected.

At the risk of contributing even more to my overcomittedness, I think five minutes of quiet meditation a day would do wonders for my tranquility; this meditation can take place while I am stuck in traffic or perhaps as I start my morning. Meditation can ground oneself, prepare oneself for the hectic day ahead, allow time to slow for a moment to a crawl.

Tranquility is related to self-discipline and self-control because it is fundamentally about controlling our reactions to outside events. Someone who is tranquil domainates their intial reaction to an unpleasent event such that they appear unaffected. To practice tranquility is thus by proxy an excercise in self-discipline, as is the case with most of the other areas of self-improvement.

The first step to being tranquil is to recognize what events are most likely to annoy or otherwise elicit a negative reactive response from you. For me, I often become aggravated when driving or when I feel I have been slighted or ignored. In these cases, I cede control of my happiness to external events instead of maintaining at all times control; I should be happy not for external reasons, but by the nature of my self.

Once one recognizes the areas in which they demonstrate weakness to tranquility, it is merely a steady exercise in actively reducing the reaction over time by being actively aware of it. This sounds simple, but obviously it is hard to accomplish as it is basically a raw exercise in willpower. But, over time, as awareness of overreaction to an external stimuli rises, it becomes easier to reduce the reaction. The ultimate goal (which is slightly unrealistic) is to be completely unaffected by this external stimuli.

So, in my day to day life, I will try to be aware of when I am full of reactionary anger, and reverse-engineer its source. Then, I will actively try to diminish over time my reaction to this source. Meditation will also allow me to be more mellow. In time, with deliberate practice, I will be in control of my own contentment instead of being vulnerable to outside influences.