Understanding Your Emotions

SUMMARY

Do you find it really difficult to manage your emotions?

We are taught to leave our emotions at the door and to make sure that we don't allow our emotions to get involved.

That is a major challenge for most people.

We are emotional beings, so separating ourselves from our emotions is impossible.

Stick with me because this week, I want to unpack all that and help you have a lot easier time with your emotions.

Emotions are a physiological clue that something's going on in and around you. It's what you make that mean that then determines the feeling. And the feeling is what you always talk about.

I want to help you recognise that your emotions are there for a reason. Let's unlearn all those things that you've been taught before. Managing your emotions is not what you want to do. Discarding your emotions, ignoring them, and leaving them at the door will not work. What I'm going to help you do is navigate your emotions, embrace their power, and utilise them for their purpose.

How do you do this?

Firstly, you need to make sure you understand which emotion you’re actually experiencing.

The second thing to do is to give it a name. You need to make sure that you label that emotion in the correct way.

The third thing to do is to navigate that emotion using the strategy that will give you the desired results.

Emotions are there to serve you, not the other way around. Emotions are something that you harness and navigate rather than manage, ignore, and suppress.

This is a key element of you being able to go through your life in a way that is much more fulfilling and fun. Being able to express yourself emotionally appropriately will definitely help you in your professional career and leadership.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you find it really difficult to manage your emotions?

We are taught to leave our emotions at the door and to make sure that we don't allow our emotions to get involved.

That is a major challenge for most people.

We are emotional beings, so separating ourselves from our emotions is impossible.

Stick with me because this week, I want to unpack all that and help you have a lot easier time with your emotions.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around our identity, building who we are and creating the best version of ourselves at any particular time, by helping you to understand your emotions.

You are an emotional being.

Human beings are wired with physiological cues and clues called emotions so that we know what's going on around us in our world, and we can respond accordingly.

Unfortunately, emotions in the professional setting have been cast aside as useless where they go: “Let’s make sure we keep the emotion out of it and stick to the logic.”

However, that's where the problems come in.

We've been told to manage our emotions, which is the worst thing we can try to do.

Your emotions are there for a reason. They're there as a sign and a signal to let you know that something is going on in your world so that you can take the appropriate action to work through that.

Unfortunately, if the mindset is that“you're going to ‘manage’ your emotions, what you do is suppress, ignore, put them aside, control, and coral them. And that’s where the problems can come in.

Emotions are a physiological clue that something's going on in and around you. It's what you make that mean that then determines the feeling. And the feeling is what you always talk about. That psychological of what you make it mean, what beliefs are coming out, and what you're ruminating on, what thoughts go through your mind at that particular time, and where that dialogue goes, determines how you utilise that emotion.

For example, if I have physical pain in my chest and I make that mean that I'm having a heart attack, I'm going to respond differently than if I thought it was a bit of a heartburn.

What I want you to do first this week is recognise that your emotions are there for a reason. Let's unlearn all those things that you've been taught before. Managing your emotions is not what you want to do. Discarding your emotions, ignoring them, and leaving them at the door will not work. What I'm going to help you do is navigate your emotions, embrace their power, and utilise them for their purpose.

How do we do this? Over the next few weeks, I will help you with this.

Firstly, you need to make sure you understand which emotion you’re actually experiencing.

Over the years, there's been some teaching that a human being is hardwired with six common emotions and everybody expresses them the same way. However, these things have been debunked.

Understanding that you do your emotions differently from how others do their emotions is very important.

It's particularly important when you’re working with others, you look at the way they are responding and reacting around you, and if you think that they're going through a certain emotion, that's going to create a problem and a misunderstanding, which is going to be a breakdown in communication and end up in conflict.

The first thing is making sure that you understand which emotion you're actually going through. So, to do that, the first thing that I always want to do is help you to notice the emotion.

In the hustle and bustle of this busy VUCA world, we go through the day ignoring what's going on in our emotions, and we just work flat out, head down and tail up and whatever it else we're doing.

However, if we're not attuned to what is physiologically happening in our body, we don't see the cue. It's just like driving down the road and not recognising that there are signs; signs to tell us when to slow down, when there's a possibility of danger or when we have to respond in a certain way. If we miss those signs, we end up with a ticket, and in the worst-case scenario, people get hurt.

So, with your emotions, it's being able to check-in and to be attuned and open to the fact that you are going to experience physiological cues during your day that are an alert to you that something is going on.

So that's the first thing: Notice the emotion.

The second thing to do is to gvie it a name. You need to make sure that you label that emotion in the correct way. Once you've named the emotion, you know which emotion you are experiencing; therefore, you can employ strategies to work with that emotion healthily.

As I have said: Not everyone does emotions the same way.

As a coach, I love to ask these questions when people say that they are experiencing a certain emotion:

“Explain that to me.”

“Tell me, how do you do angry?”

“Tell me, how do you do sad?”

“Tell me, how do you do happy?”

I ask these questions so that I get an understanding of what that means to the individual.

So, being your own coach, in that moment, you need to make sure that you know which emotion it is so that you can then employ the right strategy.

Then, the third thing to do is to navigate that emotion using the strategy that will give you the desired results.

To do that, you first need to understand that the word ‘navigate’ is about a journey. So, it's about going with the emotion. It's about unpacking it. It's about controlling, not the emotion itself, but the inner dialogue.

You see, that initial meaning that you put on that physiological cue will trigger an internal dialogue that will then tell you certain things and remind you of your beliefs and uncertainties. Because of that frame of reference, you'll have a thought pattern that will lead you to feel a certain way.

Nobody else makes you feel anything; that power is in your hands.

By working through that gap and that link between the physiological and the psychological, you are then able to navigate that emotion in a healthy way.

If I'm working with someone and it looks like they do not understand what I'm saying, I could get frustrated, cranky, or angry.

However, I could do something a lot more resourceful. To do that, I need to harness those initial thoughts.

For example, if someone's not picking up what I'm putting down, if I make that mean that they're not listening or they don't care or they don't respect me, then I'm going to have a thought pattern, which is going to lead to an unhealthy feeling and behaviour.

Understanding your emotions is about giving yourself time to notice them. It's about giving them a name and navigating them in a healthy way.

Emotions are there to serve you, not the other way around. Emotions are something that you harness and navigate rather than manage, ignore, and suppress.

This is a key element of you being able to go through your life in a way that is much more fulfilling and fun. Being able to express yourself emotionally appropriately will definitely help you in your professional career and leadership.

Last week, we talked about identity. We talked about those limiting and false beliefs which are linked to what we're talking about today.

So, the foundation of who you believe you are and who you believe you're not will definitely come into the equation — in that psychological understanding of the emotion you're going through.

There are 13 competencies in Emotional Intelligence that I work through with an individual.

Emotional Intelligence is about you working with you.

I also work in Social Intelligence, which is about working with others.

However, firstly, these foundational competencies of Emotional Self-Awareness, Accurate Self-assessment, and Personal Power, having that Self-Awareness around what's going on in you is where we want to start.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation when I go deeper into one of the most important competencies, the foundational competency of all others in Emotional Intelligence, which is your Personal Power.

I'll see you then.