‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling

Have you ever read the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling?
Starts out, “If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself…”

To read full poem, see below.

I love this poem because I constantly find the more I can ‘keep my calm” and find my ‘inner peace’, the better my decisions are.

I thought of this poem this morning, on my last day on the beach in Khoa Lak, Thailand. As I walked out to the beach at 7am, I saw someone had taken “our chairs”, the ones Jan and I had used each day. The way it works here, is you “protect” your chairs each night by leaving something on them and I had forgotten to do so last night when leaving the beach.

My initial reaction was “that sucks, and whoever had grabbed our chairs is low life scum. These are our chairs and I’m taking them back.”

I then allowed my wiser, inner wingman to join me, and decided not to allow this situation to ruin my last day on this island paradise. As I looked around though, I saw all the ‘good chairs’ were taken.

What’s a Wingman to do?

It was then I took a deep breath and had an “Ah Ha” moment.

Life is like chairs at the beach.

If you’re not happy with your “view”, decide where you want to be, and change it. Don’t focus on what you can’t have, like all the good chairs that were taken, focus on what you can have, and do.

I noticed the perfect spot, although there were no chairs. I decided to ask a man working if I could move some chairs there. He not only said yes, he moved them for me, even brought me 2 umbrellas for shade.

Suddenly, my “chairs at the beach” were better than before.

That’s the thing about deciding what you want and setting your intention. Once you do, the universe seems to bring you help in attaining it.

I now settled into my chair and, listened to Rita and Kelly on our Talk-n-Angels radio show (Khao Lak is 12 hours ahead of my normal eastern standard time). As I tuned in on my computer, she was mentioning someone she used to work with in the corporate world. Each morning Rita would greet him with, “How are you?”, he would answer, “I’m calm, peaceful and energized”.

I immediately recognized the similarities to Rudyard Kipling’s poem. “If I can keep my head…” is about keeping calm and peaceful despite circumstance. Rita’s story resonated with me and became my one-minute wingman emotional practice this morning.

Try it for yourself. Take one minute and say over and over to yourself, “I feel calm, I feel peaceful and I feel energized”.

And in time, you will.

Maybe this will help you shift your “chairs” and bring you a more “peaceful view.”

Keep calm and wingman on,

Michael

 ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!