I've been loving this slogan for the past few days, as it pertains to recovery. There's a fascinating story behind it. You can read all about it at the Wikipedia entry.
Moving beyond the "britishness" of the phrase, it seems to carry a certain mindfulness to it in both the simplicity and the power of two short phases.
Keep calm - What does it mean to keep calm? To me, it means not getting too high or too low, whatever the circumstances. When something unexpected happens, good or bad, you don't blow it out of proportion.
I don't see this "calm" as avoiding emotions entirely, but keeping a perspective and an emotional state that is optimal for maintaining recovery. When I lose my composure, my "calm," I do stupid things, usually. Calm is the realization that emotions and circumstances are fluid things that change, and adjusts expectations accordingly.
Carry on - One thing that often happens when I lose my "calm" is I get paralyzed with fear or inaction. I literally avoid doing things that I need to do. The simplest path through that paralysis is persistence - keep on keepin' on, as the saying goes.
On the other hand, if I get too excited, I do stupid things as well, like splurge spending money or eating or worse. That is not "carrying on" either. It is an abnormal state of activity - hyper-activity, if you will.
The key thing for me, then, is to maintain steady progress forward. Carry on with the normal state while circumstances and emotions ebb and flow.
Is this easy? No. Easy is letting go of calm and doing whatever my emotional state dictates. But things worth having don't come easy. As someone wise has said, Simple doesn't mean easy.
Keep calm and carry on.
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