BECOMING AN UNFLAPPABLE

I feel very tense. How does it happen, tension? It's as though my insides are being pulled tight with elastic bands or springs. Not physically, you understand, although I think maybe it does actually make my heart pulse faster.

Perhaps that's what it is - high blood pressure? When I'm tense I can feel it pounding round my system, coursing through my veins in a kind of automatic survival rerouting, so that every part of me can be prepared for the worst.

How do you get to be one of those ultra-chilled out people who just let go of everything? They get through it all, relaxed and casual, swatting away concerns and worries, eyeing the bigger picture and not the detail, and not being overly bothered about any of it, it seems.

I think I absorb tension from around me and then reflect it out. I'm a kind of tension-storage-heater. If everyone around me is worried and stressed and panicking and fumbling, I am too. I pick up the emotions of others a little too easily. Then I project those worries into the future and over-analyse it all.

If that's true, there's an obvious solution isn't there? Hang around with the Unflappables.

Where are they, those Unflappables? They can't all be playing ukulele with Jack Johnson on the beach.

I also think I can manage the tension a bit better from the outside. I think I can turn the input valve down and stop bottling up the energy. That's what an Unflappable would do.

So, inside my heart might be pumping with worry and anger (at least at first) like an old volcano, outside my body language would be laid-back, calm and confident.

If I can pull that off, it'll be the greatest performance! Generally speaking my face reveals my heart in the same way that a clock tells you what time it is. I am utterly readable.

Or, do I attempt to change myself from the inside-out? There ought to be some techniques, like not-replying-to-emails-straightaway or taking-yourself-into-a-different-room-when-you-get-asked-a-difficult-question.

I feel sure the answer is in there somewhere, and might be a combination of both - leading the way with a choice to be different while hoping the rest of me catches up, and changing my environment so that I can respond and react as calmly and coolly as an Unflappable would.

I'll be pleased if I can crack it and graduate as an Unflappable. And my hope is, that even if I don't, you won't be able to tell the difference.