(Great questions lead to great answers; weak questions, weak ones.)


“What has to happen for me to experience equanimity?”


Coaching Point: First, what is equanimity and why should you care?

Dictionaries variously define equanimity as a sense of peace, calmness, emotional stability, evenness of mind, and a state of maintained composure. They usually speak of it as being a quality of mind during times of high stress. All true enough.

From a Coaching perspective – at least in my practice – it is a foundational component of a life well-lived. The waves of life come and go and a person who experiences equanimity easily rides them rather than gets inundated by them. This applies to the good times as well as the stressful. Each moment has a “we’ll see” nature to it.

A person who knows equanimity experiences life fully, ups and downs, without taking it personally. They are engaged without wasting energy trying to give meaning to every little thing. (They don’t throw things at the TV news broadcast!) Nor do they think they finally matter when something wonderful happens in their life. They take life in stride.

Equanimity is a grounding in what really matters (matters to each person individually, their journey, their values) rather than the transient energies of flood and drought, feast and famine, abundance and lack.

It is so worthwhile to do the inner work to achieve the experience of equanimity regularly and deeply. And achieving equanimity is about doing individual inner work, discovering and resolving the deep-seated conditioning in the mind which judges, grades, ranks, and scores. It’s not about trying to change the world ‘out there,’ it’s the world ‘in here.’

When did you last have a moment of equanimity? Do you want to expand the experience? Do you believe it’s possible?


Copyright 2021 Steve Straus. All rights reserved.