The first time I fired a 9mm Browning pistol was at Mussoorie’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy. The instructor lined up five of us, 10 yards from the target, and told us to shoot.
After five carefully aimed shots, we excitedly went to check the target and found it untouched — not one bullet had hit my target! And the fate of my fellow marksmen wasn’t much better.
Clearly, the pistols were defective. So we loudly protested. The instructor then picked up a pistol and slowly fired 5 rounds, all of them hitting the target.
Over time, I figured out the trick. You never pull the trigger — you squeeze it, gently increasing the pressure, until the bullet goes off — and you will hit the target.
Pulling the trigger disturbs the aim. But if you don’t rush and take your time, 9 out of 10 times, you will not miss.
And this applies just as much to the crises and urgencies in our daily lives.
When facing any crisis, we panic that we don’t have the time, and rush to ‘do something.’
But in most cases, we do have some time. And if we took that time to step back, think clearly, and then act, we would usually achieve our goals.
What kills us is not the lack of time, but the panic and the brain freeze. So take a deep breath. Organize your thoughts. And then do one task at a time.
Do that, and you can handle almost any crisis.
– Rajan