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Hacks for Emotional Stability

A Crucial Leadership and Life Skill

By Anthony FargeotPublished 4 years ago 8 min read
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“When your emotions are in motion, take a break and ponder!“ - Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Welcoming the monsters

When we are looking at a leader, we want them to be empathetic and passionate. We also want them to be our rock in times of doubts and troubles. This is a core attribute leaders must take on, and it implies a heightened need to develop an ability to process and use our emotions in ways that will serve us and the people around us.

I will be honest that only a few years ago, I was a bit of a hothead. It was really easy for my emotions to take over and wreak havoc. In some ways, this was what kept me obsessing and invested, making me very efficient at complex problem solving and good at my job. But I knew this was also having a negative impact on my life and when my first child came around, it was something I was dead set on changing. If it was not for me, it would be for them. I was not the reckless child anymore, I was becoming the responsible parent. As my personal life was changing, so did my leadership style.

But controlling your emotions isn’t an easy feat. Telling yourself to calm down is pretty much as effective as pouring fuel on the fire.

Controlling your emotions is not about being positive all the time. If anything, I have always had an issue with being overly positive. Anger, sadness and fear exist for a reason.

There are no bad emotions. Emotions are data informing you of how you are processing your surroundings and how it contrasts with your deep core values and expectations.

The norm sometimes feels like bottling up negativity and showing a strong and steady face. But repressing our so-called “bad emotions” will likely lead them back to the surface in a more malicious and amplified way. Instead of being the leader you are meant to be, you may become the authority figure who lashes out at unrelated trivial triggers, blows things out of proportion, unnecessarily nitpicks and ultimately disempowers.

You may not be the leader your people need or want, just the one they get and have to deal with.

Repressing our emotions is very different from developing mechanisms to handle and process all of them, including the ones that are painful to experience and go through.

I call this “Welcoming my monsters”. We don’t want to shut the door on our monsters in the hope that they will eventually go away. Because they won’t… We want to invite them in and learn to be comfortable in their presence.

Susan David, Ph.D says this best in her Ted Talk:

So... We mentioned that emotions are data, that we need to analyse them and develop processes to deal with them in a healthy way. Well, that sounds like a perfect gig for my over-analytical brains!

Over the years, I have developed a few hacks to help me live in better harmony with my emotions and use them to fuel who I am as a leader, a peer, a spouse and a father.

Short-circuit your sympathetic nervous system

Starting with a bit of neurobiology, your sympathetic nervous system is one of the deepest structures in your brain. It has been entirely designed to keep you safe when a perceived threat arises. It is responsible for the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response.

This response is extremely fast, much faster than any intellectual response that will weigh out the pros and cons of a situation to act pragmatically. It is a 100% emotional and instinctive response.

The question is, how can you stop such an innate, uncontrollable and fast response in its tracks? The answer is you don’t, but you can slow it down and tame it. The most efficient way I have found is by combining different breathing techniques.

  1. Slow down your breathing. When confronted by strong emotions, our breath becomes rapid and shallow, getting more oxygen pumping for us to act swiftly. Consciously elongating your in and out breaths helps temper down this initial response.
  2. Lower your centre of gravity. When angry, we are holding it all in our chest and shoulders, rendering our centre of gravity high up. Relaxing your shoulders and breathing through your belly helps alleviate the tension
  3. Equalise your breath. Try and count how long it takes for you for a full inhale and then for a full exhale. Try and rectify your breathing so inhales and exhales are of the same length. This helps with balance and the counting helps distancing yourself from your physical body experiencing a rush of hormones.
  4. In/Hold/Out method. Try a full inhale, hold your breath while you are counting to 4 then release by an exhale as long as your inhale. This helps with slowing things down. For example; 6 second in, hold for 4, 6 second out. Repeat until things settle down.

What is absolutely great with breathing is that it can be done in the presence of other people without it being too obvious or noticeable. This is ideal if a boss or colleague of yours really winds you up in a meeting so you can calm yourself down on the spot. You are more than welcome to excuse yourself to the bathroom to compose yourself though if you need the privacy!

Emotional literacy, accuracy and labelling

Off the top of your head, how many emotions could you name? 5? Maybe 10 if you were really looking for nuances?

What if I told you we can distinguish and express over 80 emotions?

Despite such richness in the English language, our emotional vocabulary is usually under-developed.

This is unfortunate as when we gain a greater repertoire to express how we feel, we start in turn to get better at identifying and labelling our feelings.

Labelling, and accuracy in such labelling of emotions, is key to get this process under control.

When you do notice an emotion, you also want to distance yourself from it. Saying “I am angry” is reducing you to being the emotion, like they own you in some ways. But you are much more than that, aren’t you?

Try to reformulate this to “I'm noticing that I'm experiencing anger”. This helps create distance between you and the strong emotion you are experiencing.

In for the long haul

The above tricks and tips are great and they become easier and easier as you practice them. The goal is being able to put you back in a productive state of mind.

Don’t be too hard on yourself though if you don’t get it right every time. There will be mishaps and situations where you wish you would have acted or reacted better. Emotional stability is like a muscle you need to regularly exercise to strengthen it. Start small and work your way up.

I will add that this can only be confidently developed on a lifestyle that favours a healthy and growth mindset. This may be different for everyone. Mine is based on a daily yoga and meditation routine, regular exercise and a somewhat healthy diet and sleep. Having such pockets of time dedicated to myself helps me recharge and enable me to practice what I preach.

Last but not least of my tricks. When I am encountering a very challenging set of emotions that lingers past the short-term hacks above, it informs me that there is something deeper to unravel because I haven’t come to a resolution just yet. In such cases, I like to use journaling.

Journaling is taking a piece of paper (or a journal if you want to go this way) and write down your thoughts. Let the thoughts free flow until you can let everything down on paper. It usually extends what is going on in your mind and helps you unravel it as uncomfortable feelings may pour onto the paper in the shape of words. It is a fantastic tool to help you understand your own emotions, their roots and what actions you may want to take next, including letting go.

You can choose to show the journal to someone or keep it to yourself. You can even choose to keep it or discard it. For me, it usually varies from cases to cases but I make sure that I always come up with an insight or action item to implement or integrate in my life or thought process. This helps me deal better with such an emotion when/if I encounter it again.

In Conclusion

It is clear that empathy leads to genuine appreciation and powerful leadership.

Understanding and dealing with your own emotions in a healthy way is the key to empathy. How would you understand how someone else is feeling if you are not even self-aware of your own emotional world?

Now imagine that, as a leader, after getting a verbal agreement from a client for a big contract, the client is now back-pedalling and eventually backs out of the contract. When the unfortunate news comes through, you may experience strong emotions coming over you really quickly.

After taking some deep controlling breaths, unravelling such feelings may look as below:

  • I am angry > I am experiencing Anger > Let down > Betrayal for them backing out of the contract after verbally agreeing
  • I am scared > I am experiencing Fear > Anxiety > Worry as this contract was critical to meet the company quarterly targets
  • I am sad > I am experiencing Sadness > Hurt > Embarrassment that I trusted their words, let my guards down and allowed myself to relax before the deal was officially signed

This should help you gain perspective and a more balanced mind rapidly so as to handle the situation and move forward. People in your team may also have worked very hard on this now fallen deal and will experience similar feelings as you are. In such times, they will need an empathetic leader who can understand their state of mind, acknowledge it but also lead them effectively towards moving past this hurdle.

psychology
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