The only way out is through. – Robert Frost
Emotions, sensations like fear, anxiety, joy, exhilaration, are a neurological systems that evolved to help us navigate life’s complexity. Emotions are body’s immediate, physical responses to signals from the external environment. These physical responses keep our inner state and outward behaviour in sync with the situation at hand, helping us to not only survive but also thrive (David, 2017).
They act as an internal guidance giving you insight into what is really going on – gut feelings. But the problem is, emotions are not always reliable. Sometimes, you can confuse what is happening in the moment with old, past time experiences, overreacting, even losing it.
Calm and poise, as well as being composed under stress are essential for executive presence. It’s not about achieving perfection, never doing or saying the wrong thing. It’s also not about controlling your thoughts and relentless positivism.
The main idea is to increase the awareness about the space between stimuli and response, and realise that you have a choice. Further, it is about getting unhooked by thoughts, feelings and behaviours that don’t serve you, and becoming more flexible in each of these areas so you can respond optimally.
Approach to getting difficult emotions into greater focus and dedication is part of a skills set called emotional flexibility. The more you use it, the happier, healthier and higher performing you will be (Boyes, 2022).
Instead of suppressing your inner experiences, try to approach them in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way— namingly becoming more emotionally agile (David, Congleton, 2013). Instead of getting overwhelmed, try opening up the space between how you feel and what you want to do about those feelings.
Steps to improving emotional flexibility (David, Congleton, 2013):
1. Recognise your patterns
What thoughts are you playing in your mind, on repeat? How far back to these patterns go? If you notice yourself having strong reactions to every day events, pause and examine whether they are related to your childhood, early career, or more recent work (Boyes, 2022).
2. Label your thoughts and emotions
Act of labelling you will help examine the situation more objectively and create some distance. For example: I am not working hard enough, say, I have a thought that I am not working hard enough. Or, I am so angry at my boss, I feel anger towards by boss.
This task of accurately identifying your emotions or disentangling emotions, is sometimes called emotional granularity (Boyes, 2002). After you identify and label your emotions, another helpful technique is to rate them on a scale of 1-10. For example you might find that talking to your boss about a promotion invokes anxiety at a level of 8 and resentment at 6. This will help you address the emotions individually and evaluate how effective you are you at minimising them (Boyes, 2022).
3. Acceptance
Accept the experience and look at it with compassion and curiosity. Notice what is happening with you internally and what makes this situation important to you. Accepting what is going on, also externally will help you detach, unhook from the situation, so you can act on what is actually important to you.
4. Act on what matters
What are your guiding principles at work and in life (Bridging the Gap Between Values and Actions)? Ask yourself, after going through first 3 steps, is your way or thinking and feeling, useful in a given situation? Again, this is not about suppressing what you feel but accepting it, and deciding how you want to act on it.
How do you start to recognise the patterns?
Precondition for starting to recognise your patterns is mindfulness (Mindfulness: The Essential Tool of High Performers). The practice of mindfulness and focused attention is fundamental to increasing awareness. Being mindful means knowing, in the moment, that you have the agency to redirect your energy. From incessant, often useless inner chatter to putting your cognitive resources to a productive use.
Further, feelings and thoughts go hand in hand. How you talk to yourself decides on how confident you feel. While not forcing yourself into thinking more positively, personally I have learned that changing thoughts from negative to positive can make a significant difference in how you feel. Another important aspect of dealing with emotions, especially difficult ones, is compassionate self-talk. Therefore, talk to yourself as if you were talking to a friend.
Additional, excellent technique for increasing awareness is writing. Writing will help you get through the emotions and face them. It will enable you to articulate what and how you feel, and move you into processing, rather than avoiding.
Emotions are your inner guide to what is happening in your environment. They are there to be recognised and accepted, but not always acted on. Start by noticing what thoughts and emotions are keeping you stuck, accept them, label them and know that you have a choice in how you respond. Meditation and writing can be very helpful in facing up to reality and redirecting your energy to what is important to you, thus disengaging from old patterns. Most big transformations happen from small, almost imperceptible steps you take on the way (Gottlieb, 2019), so start noticing right now and take it from there.
Image: Alamy, Rafael Nadal, Wimbledon 2019.
Sources:
Boyes A., How to Stop Procrastinating, May-June 2022, Vol. 100, Issue 3, Harvard Business Review.
David S., Congleton C, Emotional Agility, November 2013, Harvard Business Review.
David S., 2017, Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life, Penguin.
Gottlieb L., 2019, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, HarperCollins.