I have a friend who is a very smart and successful investor, and his basic advice for almost every situation is this: “Everyone calm down.”
There’s an old story about a man who walks into a jewelry store to buy his wife a gift. The salesman leads him through the shop, pointing out the various choices.
He points to a case filled with expensive bracelets. “Here is where we have the things that say, ‘Darling, I love you.’”
He points to a case filled with diamonds and pearls. “And this is where we keep the things that say, ‘Darling, I adore you.’”
He points to a case filled with a dazzling assortment of precious metals and gems. “And here is where we have the things that say, ‘Darling, I’m terribly sorry.’”
The husband ponders his choices for a moment.
“Do you have anything,” the husband asks, “that says, ‘Darling, will you please calm down?’”
Because as anyone who has ever been in a relationship with anyone else — of any kind, romantic, familial, business, whatever — knows, that’s mostly what you want to say: Please calm down.
That’s what you want to say — that’s what the other person often needs to hear — but as many of us have learned the hard way, it’s never a good idea to say those exact words. And yet, the truth remains: When faced with a disappointment or a setback or something larger, something like, say, a worldwide pandemic or an erratic president or an election that doesn’t seem to be going your way, the smartest course of action is, first, to calm down.
Hollywood, where I have worked for more than 30 years, is filled with excitable people, most of whom desperately need to calm down. Over time, the entertainment industry developed a solution to this problem.
They’re called “agents.”
Once, a friend of mine was involved in a nasty dispute with the studio where he was producing a hit television show.
As you might imagine, it’s awkward and complicated to interact with studio management while harboring the kind of seething and slightly irrational resentment in which Hollywood writers really specialize. So he did what everyone does in Hollywood: He called his agent to vent his frustration.
His agent listened.
What his agent wanted to say was, “Calm down.” What his agent actually said was, “Let me handle this.”
“I hear you,” his agent said soothingly. “You have every right to be furious. But this is my job. Let me handle it. You’re the artist. You just … do your thing. Smile and be happy. I’m going to handle this. I’m going to go ballistic. The minute we hang up the phone, I’m calling over there and getting into it.”
Which, as any wise person knows, is exactly what he didn’t do.
What he did was nothing. He hung up the phone. He had a cup of coffee. He made a few more calls unrelated to my friend. He surfed the web a bit. He answered some emails. He knew that the best way to get someone to calm down is to pretend to listen to them very intently and promise to handle it — because mostly, that’s what we want when we’re upset and furious: to be heard by someone else who nods and agrees with us.
It worked. The studio, which had noticed that my friend’s attitude had been difficult and antagonistic of late, reported back to the agent a few days later that the air had suddenly cleared. They noticed he was smiling more.
My friend reported to his agent that the studio seemed friendlier and more conciliatory, which soothed his ego and defused the resentments.
The actual work product of the agent, what he received 10% of the writer’s salary and a certain percentage of the adjusted gross profits for, was to listen to his client on the phone while playing the game Candy Crush Saga on his iPad, followed by doing nothing.
That is the best way to get someone to calm down without using the incendiary and triggering words “please calm down.”
It works in Hollywood, politics, and the bloodiest combat of all, marriage.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
