Manage Your Response To Emotions
SUMMARY
Do you find yourself constantly reacting to the things that happen to you and around you? Or are you able to respond in a way that gives you the behavior that you want?
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer and today, I want to continue our conversation around all things Social and Emotional Intelligence by helping you to manage your response to your emotions.
Let's take a look at three key principles that you need to understand so that you can then have a healthy response.
Number one is that you need to Engage the Logical Brain.
Number two is to Recognise Triggers.
Number three is to Give Yourself Space To Change.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you find yourself constantly reacting to the things that happen to you and around you? Or are you able to respond in a way that gives you the behavior that you want?
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer and today, I want to continue our conversation around all things Social and Emotional Intelligence by helping you to manage your response to your emotions.
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of your emotions in the moment, and then to use that information, to manage your behaviour. What it's about is navigating those emotions and then managing the response that comes from that emotion.
An emotion is a physiological cue in your body that tells you that something is going on internally. How you interpret that, how you label that, how you think about that, will determine how you feel. How you continue to navigate that particular emotion will determine whether that feeling changes and escalates, or whether you're able to manage your responses to what you're feeling in that moment.
Every single one of us is responsible for our behaviour. You are responsible for the way that you respond to those things that are around you.
A lot of people will say, don't overreact. What I like to do is tweak that a little bit and only react to those things that are an emergency. However, in the regulation of what you do coming out of a feeling that came from an emotion, you always want that to be a response.
All data that comes into our brain comes in via the Thalamus, which is in the limbic brain or what they commonly call the emotional brain. And then, it distributes that information to various parts of the brain including the prefrontal cortex, which is the executive command center in the front of our brain, just behind your forehead. One of the purposes of your prefrontal cortex is emotional regulation.
What happens is when the amygdala senses, based on a previously highly charged emotional memory, that there's something to be concerned about, then what it will do is block all that slow thinking going to our prefrontal cortex. So, instead of getting a response that comes from your logical brain, you react emotionally.
Number one is that you need to Engage the Logical Brain.
When you respond, it's a logical response; you've processed and navigated the emotion. To do that, you need to make sure that you engage in language and processes that are logical. You've probably heard the old count to 10. What I've since found out is that counting is a logical process. By counting to 10, you are actually lighting up the neural pathways in the neocortex - in the logical brain.
Number two is to Recognise Triggers.
You all have things that trigger certain thinking patterns, certain behaviours. And the way that your brain is wired is by those synaptic connections and neural pathways being built. By recognising what buttons you have, that when pushed will take you from this thought to an unhealthy behaviour, is vital if you're able to tweak and adjust the way that you respond to those emotions.
Number three, is to Give Yourself Space To Change.
Our neural pathways have been developed over a period of time. So, the way that you behave now is based on the conditioning in your brain. To be able to change that, and get a different response now, is going to take incremental change on a day-to-day basis. Give yourself time to build these new neural pathways. Recognise the things that you want to change; reject those as being helpful and then replace them with new strategies. Then, repeat that new process over and over again until your brain is rewired with a new pattern.
When you learn to respond to what's going on around you, in a healthier way, you have more energy, you have more fun; it's good for us, it's good for the people around us, and it's good for the greater good.
Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week where we will look at the first competency of Self-Management, which is Behavioural Self-Control. I'll see you then.
