Behavioural Self Control

SUMMARY

Every emotion is positive because it is designed to give you a cue (a clue) of what's going on for you physiologically and, therefore, enabling you to navigate your emotions.

Unfortunately, some situations trigger behaviour based on what happens between that initial physiological sensation of the emotion to that initial feeling that you choose to feel. It's a combination of what you think and believe and what you make it mean. Therefore, it can go outside the bounds of logic and, in a lot of cases, it can actually be counterintuitive to what you want to achieve.

This week, let me teach you a five-step strategy that will (when those triggers are pushed) help you determine the behaviour you want and do things differently from what you might have been doing until now.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you sometimes find your behaviour gets overtaken in emotionally charged situations where you start behaving in a way that's not good for you, others, and the greater good?

Well, that's because you're human and we all have a challenge with this, until we learn what I'm going to teach you this week, and that's how to keep those disruptive emotions in check.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around self-management by helping you to learn the strategies of behavioural self-control.

Over the past few weeks, I have talked to you about the fact that there is no such thing as a negative emotion. Every emotion is positive because it is designed to give you a cue (a clue) of what's going on for you physiologically and, therefore, enabling you to navigate your emotions.

Unfortunately, some situations trigger behaviour based on what happens between that initial physiological sensation of the emotion to that initial feeling that you choose to feel. It's a combination of what you think and believe and what you make it mean. Therefore, it can go outside the bounds of logic and, in a lot of cases, it can actually be counterintuitive to what you want to achieve.

We have this attribute because we are emotional human beings. What I've had to learn to do is to shift that psychology so that I can go down the path of a healthy response to the initial emotion.

That’s what I want to teach you this week.

Last week, I talked about traffic being a big trigger for me. Whenever I got stuck in traffic, I would start ruminating on those negative thoughts of:

“I'm going to be late."

"They're not going to like me.”

"They're going to think bad about me.”

Whatever I made this mean determined what I would do next.

I usually would honk the horn or say things out loud to people who were four cars in front of me that didn't go when the lights turned green. Although they couldn’t hear what I was saying, it's what was going on for me internally that I expressed externally.

And that's what you do too.

Let me teach you a five-step strategy that will (when those triggers are pushed) help you determine the behaviour you want and do things differently from what you might have been doing until now.

Behavioural conditioning is all about building a pattern in your neural pathways that says:

“When this happens, this is how you respond or react.”

This strategy is going to work over a period of time to rewire your brain through neuroplasticity.

The first thing you need to do is recognise that the behaviour that you are using in those situations is not good — it is not helping you and others. Then, you need to reject them and not do them anymore. You need to do something different and replace that behaviour with a new one.

Then, you repeat doing this just like what you did to form the neural pathways (the pattern that you’ve currently got) that have formed your conditioning.

You need to repeat this new strategy until it becomes stronger than the old one.

Let’s break it down into five steps so that when you feel that initial urge to behave and think in a certain way based on the trigger that’s being pushed, you will be able to change that behaviour into a different one so that you will feel a different way and get a much different response.

Step 1. Name the emotion.

You're not able to manage the response to an emotion if you don’t know which one it is. You need to get an understanding of the trigger, name the emotion you are experiencing, and know what’s physically going on for you.

A lot of times, you might be confused as to which actual emotion it is that you are experiencing, and therefore, you can employ the wrong strategy.

To accurately name the emotion you are experiencing, you need to notice it and be aware of what’s going on physiologically for you and recognise that cue. Then by harnessing what it is, you can now shift to the second step.

Step 2. Audit your thoughts.

The initial emotion is physiological, and the feeling comes from the psychological. In between those two is what you make it mean. What you believe, think, and ruminate about creates a shift in your feeling.

“Feeling” is something that you choose — it's not something that's pushed on you. Where you have control and where managing comes in is in this gap.

By auditing your thoughts, you'll be able to understand what you're making it mean and what it is doing to your internal dialogue.

Step 3. Decide on the outcome.

Using the logical processes in your brain to be able to go:

“Where do I want to go here?”

“What do I really want to happen?”

“If this was within my control that I could get the actual outcome that I want (not the one that I normally get by having disruptive behaviour), what would it be?”

Asking those questions sets you a target and a goal.

Step 4. Control the sabotage.

You and I do things all the time to sabotage the results that we're going to get. It happens subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) because what you've done is you've decided that if you do this, it's going to give you the outcome you want.

Unfortunately, most of the time when this happens, you feed unhealthy beliefs about yourself and the world, and even the thought patterns that say, “If I do that, this is what it will mean….”

By making sure that you do whatever you need to do to control that sabotage — by calling it out, resisting, and rejecting — you are able to use what you’ve already done in the first three steps to move forward into the next one.

Step 5. Choose a strategy.

Now that you've got your brain in a state that's able to make good and logical decisions, rather than emotionally making decisions based on the false information that your inner dialogue has been giving you, you're now able to make a logical decision on which strategy you're going to use.

That strategy is about:

“What's the next step?”

“What do I need to do right now to move towards the desired result?"

By doing that and taking a single step without being overwhelmed by being all wound up in the emotion (being trapped by those triggers and those normal thoughts and behaviour that we're leaving behind), what you're able to do is navigate from that initial emotion through to a behaviour that's going to give you the result that you want without all the conflict, strife and stress, and without feeling bad about yourself because you've gone off with this normal negative behaviour again.

Since you are slowing down and acting out of logic, you are able to get a different result.

By using this five-step process, that starts with that initial emotion and ends up with that positive behaviour, you are going to enjoy your days way more. You will be able to go through emotionally charged situations, remain a lot calmer, and get the behaviour you want so you can get the results that you want.

We are emotional beings with a brain that enables us to make good logical choices on how to navigate our emotions.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we look at how we can maintain our own self-care and ask questions of ourselves and others to make sure that they are travelling the best they possibly could be in terms of their own mental health. We can shift some thinking and some behaviour for the next part of our journey so that we can get where we want a lot faster.

I'll see you then.