Managing The Response To Your Emotions
SUMMARY
Emotions are needed; they're there. Emotions are a part of every single human being. You cannot park them at the door, leave them there, and then go in and be this unemotional person. You need to have skills to experience them and healthily navigate them.
Self-management gives you the ability to be able to navigate emotions (whether they're intense or not) so that you can then come out the other side with behaviour and strategies so that you can get the results that you want.
This week, I will be talking about emotional intelligence, by looking at the second area in that four-quadrant model - Self-Management and the 5 things you need to go through to develop Behavioural Self-Control.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you find that managing your response to emotions goes off the rails? Do you find it difficult to stay in control under pressure, and therefore your behaviour doesn't give you the desired results?
Well, I know all too well what that means, and what I want to do this week is to continue our conversation around emotional intelligence, by looking at the second area in that four-quadrant model - Self-Management.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Master Coach Trainer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to talk to you about Managing the Response to Your Emotions.
Over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about emotional intelligence. We came out of the back of my ten commandments for enjoying your life, and those commandments are all based around competencies in the area of Emotional and Social Intelligence.
Last week, we looked at the first area, which is self-awareness, the ability to know what's going on internally and get the information that you need and build a foundational set of skills to be able to then move into the competencies in the second quadrant of self-management.
You now understand that it's not about managing the emotion; it's about managing the response to the emotion and navigating it in a healthier way so that you have different results for yourself, those around you, and the greater good.
Self-management gives you the ability to be able to navigate emotions (whether they're intense or not) so that you can then come out the other side with behaviour and strategies so that you can get the results that you want.
There are ten competencies in this area, and these are the management skills you need to keep your emotions from controlling your life.
Emotions are needed; they're there. Emotions are a part of every single human being. You cannot park them at the door, leave them there, and then go in and be this unemotional person. You need to have skills to experience them and healthily navigate them.
Self-management starts with behavioural self-control. It's about managing the thoughts and the internal dialogue that goes on when that initial emotion (that physiological sensation) is felt in the body, and we get that level of self-awareness around what it is so that the feeling that we choose to feel is empowering.
No emotion is positive or negative.
However, the behaviour that comes out of the emotion can be. So, what you want to have is positive and empowering behaviour. A behaviour that will move you towards what it is that you want to do, and become who it is that you need to be to get there.
Behavioural Self-Control is about keeping disruptive emotions in check, a process you go through. Of all the ten competencies under self-management, behavioural self-control is the foundation for all the others. It’s great to have personal agility, stress management, resilience, and all the other competencies. However, being able to control your behaviour in the moment, as you experience the emotion, will allow you to do those things in a more empowering way.
There's a five-step process that you need to go through.
Step 1. Name the emotion.
The awareness of your emotion allows you to know which emotion you're experiencing, so you give it a name. You give it a name because you then know which emotion it is that you are navigating. Therefore you can use the strategy you need to use for that emotion.
Step 2. Audit your thoughts.
It’s from that initial physiological sensation, the emotion that you experience, that you then move to give that meaning and have a certain internal dialogue based on your experiences and the beliefs that you have about yourself and the world that then determines where that goes.
So, you've named the emotion; you’ve also asked yourself: “What is the emotion I’m experiencing right now?”
Ask yourself, “what am I thinking?”
When you ask yourself that question, you are doing two things:
You’re taking space, and you’re getting clear on whether any of your thinking can be challenged.
If the thinking is disempowering, you can take it captive there. You can shift and change it so that the feeling you move into empowers you rather than holds you back. You can interrupt that pattern of your conditioned mind that when “this” happens, we normally go “there” in 1,250 thousand a second (in some cases).
Step 3: Decide the outcome.
Ask yourself:
“Where do I want to go as I navigate this emotion?”
By asking the question "what do you want to happen?” (Once again, you are working in the logical systems within your brain because you are using a what question rather than a why question, which is going to go down into the emotion) can set an objective of where you need to go. And it's only then that you can move towards that. Left without that to your own devices,
you can spiral, run around and end up anywhere as you navigate that emotion.
Step 4. Control the sabotage.
This is a really important step.
Ask yourself: “What could I do or say right now that will stop me from getting that outcome?”
It's in those moments that you do things to sabotage your results -- whether that's based on your past experiences and it's just an automated response or whether it's a subconscious self-sabotage strategy that's going to stop you from having a result that you don't believe you deserve.
So, controlling that sabotage is what you want to do rather than control the emotion.
Step 5. Choose a strategy.
Choose the strategy for that emotion to get the outcome you want.
That's the basis of all self-management, and it starts with behavioural self-control.
Well, that's it from me for another week.
I hope that as we finish Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month, you've taken some things away that you can work on.
By the way, connect with me -- whatever medium you are listening to or watching this on, drop me a comment or go to my website, https://grantherbert.com and join the conversation there.
If you'd like a worksheet that lists out all the competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence so that you can then look at that and go, “yeah, these are the things that I'm strong in, and these are the things that I need to work on", then please connect, ask for that. I'd love to get it to you.
Next week I'm going to start a conversation around leadership, and we'll look at the three facets of a leader.
I'll see you then.
