Five reasons to mind your emotions

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

This quote more often than not reflects my life as an entrepreneur, businesswoman, sales person, mother, partner and friend. On those days and nights when I feel overwhelmed and sometimes exhausted by all my responsibilities and commitments that little voice reminding me to ‘try again tomorrow’ keeps me focused on why I am doing what I am doing. It helps me to continue to cultivate my resilience, to continue to put one foot in front of the other, to make decisions and to keep on moving.

If I am ever in doubt, that little voice reminds me of all the other challenges I have mastered and that my track record speaks for itself. Over the years I have learnt to trust that little voice and I have learnt how to mind my emotions.

However, it wasn’t always that way. Beset with self-doubt earlier in my career and often searching outside myself for reassurance and validation, I eventually understood that listening to my little voice and working constructively with my emotions, feelings and thoughts were invaluable life skills.

Developing emotional resilience and a deeper self-awareness has supported me to better achieve my goals, communicate, work with and lead people more effectively, as well as spring back emotionally after suffering through difficult and stressful times in my life.

Through much searching, reading, listening, practice, and self-reflection I have come to understand that emotions are never right nor wrong, good nor bad, or correct or incorrect. Emotions are simply pieces of information telling us how we are currently experiencing our world. However, what we do with the emotions we experience can help or hinder us.

For instance, the Cognitive Model is a psychological model that looks at the role of our cognitions (our thinking) in influencing how we respond to situations in our lives. Oftentimes, we may feel a situation has caused our feelings. These feelings can be good or bad, positive or negative. However, the Cognitive Model says this is not right. Rather, it is the way we THINK about a situation and our interpretations of it that cause our feelings and responses. Therefore, it is our interpretation of a situation that triggers how we feel or respond, not the situation in and of itself.

Developing emotional resilience

The first step to becoming emotionally resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself. The following behaviours and attitudes are some ways in which emotional resilience can be demonstrated and measured:

• Have realistic and attainable expectations and goals.
• Show good judgment and problem solving skills.
• Be persistent and determined.
• Be responsible and thoughtful, rather than impulsive.
• Be effective communicators with good people skills.
• Learn from past experience so as to not repeat mistakes.
• Be empathetic toward other people (caring how others around them are feeling).
• Have a social conscience (caring about the welfare of others).
• Feel good about themselves as a person.
• Feel like they are in control of their lives.
• Be optimistic rather than pessimistic.

Some strategies to develop your emotional resilience

There are many strategies we can use to help us harness the positive power of our emotions. Here are a few for you to consider:

• The Big 4: 7-8 hours of sleep, healthy diet, regular exercise, doing fun activities.
• Relaxation: learning how to relax takes practice however two ways to start is to 1) use progressive muscle relaxation or 2) lying still in a warm safe environment and playing relaxing music and focusing on and experiencing pleasant sensory sensations.
• Thought stopping: as you notice yourself saying something negative in your mind, you can stop your thought mid-stream by saying to yourself “Stop”. Saying it aloud will be more powerful and make your more aware of your habit.
• Thought diary: keeping a daily diary or journal of your thoughts can be an effective tool for examining your inner process.
• Positive mantras & affirmations: An affirmation is a positive thought or statement that you repeat to yourself and implant into your unconscious mind. A positive affirmation can act as the source of direction and inspiration for your present and future actions. Once entrenched in your subconscious mind, a positive affirmation guides your thoughts and actions in a desired direction and can be used to overcome negative and habitual thought patterns in order to create shifts in your behaviour and actions at an unconscious level. Positive affirmations can subtly but pervasively change your self-talk from negative to positive.
• Change self-limiting statements to questions: Self-limiting statements like “I can’t handle this!” or “This is impossible!” are particularly damaging because they increase your stress in a given situation and they stop you from searching for solutions. The next time you find yourself thinking something that limits the possibilities of a given situation, turn it into a question. Doesn’t “How can I handle this?” or “How is this possible?” sound more hopeful and open up your imagination to new possibilities?
• Meditation & mindfulness: The purpose of meditation is to heal and transform. Because meditation is a skill you can practice meditation anywhere at any time. In every moment you can chose to meditate. The energy that crafts and guides the practice of meditation is mindfulness. It allows us to focus on an object with single pointed attention. When mindful we are focussed and not distracted.
• For ongoing emotional distress we suggest people consider seeing a professional in psychology, medicine or nutrition to get a correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Sadly most people have never been taught how to positively harness the power of their emotions, feelings, thoughts and behaviours. And for too long business has ignored the positive power of emotions, so here are some reasons why you should mind your emotions.

Five business reasons to Mind Your Emotions:
1. Healthier, more productive business relationships.
2. Better staff engagement, alignment and retention.
3. Healthy conflict management strategies which address the issues and don’t attack the person.
4. More effective leadership, team work, sales and service outcomes.
5. Less sick leave, stress claims.

Five personal reasons to Mind Your Emotions:
1. Greater self-awareness, insight and personal growth.
2. Ability to experience more positive emotions and less distress in our lives.
3. Ability to develop more productive attitudes, feelings and behaviours that help us achieve our goals.
4. Ability to be an effective leader, colleague, partner, parent, friend, team player, etc.
5. Ability to better manage the effect of our emotions on personal/team performance, workplace wellbeing and personal happiness.

Learning how to mind my emotions has allowed me to become more emotionally resilient and strengthened my resolve to achieve my goals and live the life I want to live.

If you want to discuss how to develop strategies to enhance your emotional resilience and make the most of your capabilities and the situations your find yourself in let me know and we will see if you can help you directly or refer you to best person for your situations.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett practices as a coach, advisor, speaker, facilitator, consultant and writer and works across all market segments with her skilful team at BARRETT. Sue and her team take the guess work out of selling and help people from many different careers become aware of their sales capabilities and enable them to take the steps to becoming effective and productive when it comes to selling, sales coaching or sales leadership.To hone your sales skills or learn how to sell go to www.barrett.com.au.