Ready for Anything, Part 3: Keep Calm and Proceed On

A key to Lewis & Clark's success is a vital resource all of us should strive to develop: composure.

Long before all those T-shirts riffing off the line "Keep calm and carry on," the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were doing just that in an epic journey of some 8,000 miles across the American West and back. They even had their own, similar phrase, which they used again and again in their journals. Day after day, they persevered through trials that would have broken most of us and "proceeded on."

A key to their success is a vital resource all of us should strive to develop: composure.

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Panic: The Opposite of Composure

Have you ever been around someone who panicked at a stressful moment? (Maybe you were that person.) Panic is the opposite of composure. It affects not only the person feeling it, but also others around this person. The panicker feels unnecessary anxiety, which may interfere with rational thought, while also losing credibility among other members of the team. Meanwhile, the people around the panicker may be infected, now feeling their own unnecessary anxiety, and they may suffer as a result of bad decisions made by the panicker.

The Lewis and Clark expedition gives us a splendid — laughable, really — example of a panicker in the person of Toussaint Charbonneau, the husband of Sacagawea. When a squall struck and threatened a boat in which he was riding, Charbonneau — well, let's let Lewis tell the story in this unusually lively portion of his journal:

Charbono still crying to his god for mercy, had not yet recollected the rudder, nor could the repeated orders of the Bowsman, Cruzat, bring him to his recollection untill he threatened to shoot him instantly if he did not take hold of the rudder and do his duty.

(Spelling, by the way, apparently was not one of the subjects that Lewis studied in his crash courses before the expedition. If you think Lewis is bad, though, you ought to read some of the journal entries from poor Clark. I love William Clark — he's one of my heroes, in fact — and I would like to think that I would have passed him in my English courses, but I would have had to squint pretty hard at his sentences.)

In panicking, Charbonneau certainly didn't win any credibility points with Lewis. More importantly, his actions — or failure to act appropriately — endangered the precious contents of his boat. Charbonneau needed more composure. He needed, in short, what his wife had in spades.

Composure: A Secret to Success

Sacagawea was a model of composure. In a previous column here, I openly admired her impressive ability to endure this epic journey while caring for her infant son, Jean Baptiste. During this same squall, when Charbonneau nearly got himself shot for failing to manage the boat, Sacagawea managed to retrieve crucial items before they could be lost to the river — all while holding her baby in her other arm. Thanks to her "fortitude and resolution," as Lewis put it, the corps did not lose "almost every article indispensibly necessary to further the views, or insure the success of the enterprize."

For composure, Lewis himself earned a B-. He did not panic at every turn, but did lose his cool a few times — as when a member of an indigenous tribe tried to pilfer an item from the corps's diminishing supply on their return journey. “I detected a fellow in stealing an iron socket of a canoe pole and gave him several severe blows and mad the men kick him out of camp,” Lewis wrote. “I now informed the indians that I would shoot the first of them that attempted to steal an article from us. that we were not affraid to fight them, that I had it in my power at that moment to kill them all and set fire to their houses, but it was not my wish to treat them with severity provided they would let my property alone.”

Yes, Lewis had grown tetchy, but then, by this time, he had endured hunger, disappointment, frigid temperatures, fleas, run-ins with men and beasts, and seemingly endless rain. At least he still had his dog — but then he didn't. At one point, three members of the Watlalas tribe tried to kidnap Seaman. Lewis became enraged, but the dog was returned before he resorted to violence. It might be interesting to see how Seaman himself coped with this traumatic experience, but, alas, he did not keep a journal.

Clark did, however, and, in the subject of composure, he gets an A+. I have read extensively about the expedition, and I cannot think of a single instance when he panicked. He certainly had plenty of opportunities. Take, for example, the day when Lewis and Clark were traveling separately in what is now Montana. In the days before texting and direct messaging, Lewis had to write a note and leave it on a pole for his co-captain. In what I am willing to bet was an innocent mistake — and not a twisted attempt at sabotage — a beaver chewed down the pole, leaving Clark without direction in unfamiliar territory. Clark also endured many of the same hardships that Lewis did, but, unlike Lewis, he was a rock. Through weather, conflict, insects, and that blasted beaver, Clark "proceeded on."

How can you develop composure and proceed on through your own journey of life? In a guest essay on the Mind Inclined Substack, Dr. Laurie Marbas offers some excellent advice. I hope you will read it and then check out her Habit Healers Mindset Substack for many more essays you can use to improve your life.

Read on for some helpful advice from Dr. Laurie Marbas from the Habit Healers Mindset.

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Proceed On: The Habit That Held the Expedition (and Still Holds Us Today)

By Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Most people think composure is something you either have or don’t. Like a personality trait or a mystical calm bestowed on those rare, zen-like humans who don’t yell at the Wi-Fi when it goes out. But as a physician and a student of behavioral neuroscience, I can tell you this: composure is not a gift, it’s a habit. A physical, trainable, repeatable habit.

And like Sacagawea calmly rescuing expedition supplies with one arm while holding a baby in the other, it’s one worth building.

When I read about her during that storm, cool-headed, focused, effective, I don’t just see a heroic moment. I see a perfectly executed nervous system response. While Charbonneau panicked and froze (a textbook fight-or-flight reaction), Sacagawea activated what we call the parasympathetic state, the body’s calm-response system. Her brain stayed online. Her breath and body worked together. That kind of presence doesn’t just happen. It’s cultivated through small, repeated patterns of emotional regulation, what I call micro-habits of calm.

And we need them just as much today. While most of us won’t be staring down rapids or mountain lions, we’re navigating inbox avalanches, unpredictable health diagnoses, and those 11 p.m. existential spirals. The terrain may look different, but the internal storms are no less real.

In medicine, we look to the vagus nerve as a key regulator of composure, it’s like the biological brake pedal that slows your heart rate, deepens your breath, and signals: You’re safe. You can think clearly. When you train that system through consistent habits, you build a nervous system that responds, not reacts, when things get hard.

So how do you build that kind of composure? Here are three habits that work:

The Pause Ritual: Before reacting, whether it’s a sharp word or a rash decision, pause for one full breath. That’s often enough to shift from instinct to intention.

Name It to Tame It: In a moment of stress, say what you feel. “I feel anxious.” “I feel pressure.” Research shows that labeling emotions helps reduce their intensity and brings the thinking brain back online.

Anchor to the Next Step: When you feel overwhelmed, ask: What’s the next wise step? Not the perfect one. Just the next one. Clark didn’t cross the continent in a day. He just kept moving forward. He proceeded on.

And that’s the point. Composure isn’t about being unshaken. It’s about learning how to steady yourself, again and again. Just like the great explorers did. Through weather, conflict, chaos, and even beaver sabotage, they didn’t freeze or flee. They kept going.

So can you.