Millenia ago, in Greece, Aristotle wrote and preached about the virtuosity of being unruffled.

“For if you make a man too fearless, so as not even to fear the gods, he is not brave but mad, but if you make him afraid of everything, he is a coward. To be brave then, a man must either fear everything or nothing.”

A couple of years ago, in Baltimore, Maryland, former United States Navy SEAL and standout Syracuse University lacrosse defenseman Rorke T. Denver too, spoke publicly about the virtuosity of being unflustered.

Only, with far less words.

“Calm is contagious.”

While it’s unclear to historians how Aristotle arrived to his aforementioned wisdom (some attribute the host of the text, Magna Moralia, to be his work — others don’t) it’s very clear where Denver received his extremely concise sagacity.

The U.S. military.

One of his officers, to be exact.

This from Business Insider:

He recounts how his ranking officer (also a student in training) was “screaming his head off like the Tasmanian devil,” and added, “The fevered pitch level of everyone’s behavior was just unsustainable.”

Amidst the chaos, the master chief petty officer, the senior ranking enlisted man in the United States Navy — who Denver said is a basic training “god” — came over and told all the officers to gather.

He told them:

“As officers, at a minimum, the boys are going to mimic your behavior. In our line of work, based on our personalities, they’re probably going to amplify your behavior, and athletes are the exact same way. As leaders, as captains, as officers, if you keep your head, they’ll keep their head. If you keep it together, they’ll keep it together. And if you lose it, they’ll lose it.

So I’m going to share with you the best thing I learned as a master chief when I was a new guy from a master chief in Vietnam: Calm is contagious.”

And as he walked away, Commander Denver heard him say, “Because if you keep your head in our line of work, you keep your head!”

Because your head, you want to keep. Who said all mantras were figurative?