Emotional Regulation: Your Inner Power for Success

I was playing with my nephew’s little 1-year-old daughter. When I showed her a stuffed Mickey Mouse, she was so happy and there was a big broad smile on her face and then after a few mins when it fell from her hands and she could not see it, she was sad and started crying. She was happy again when I lifted it and gave it back to her.

I saw a range of emotions in a short span of time, happy to sad and back to happy, smiling to crying and back to smiling. While this simple experience reinforces the fact that it is very normal for each one of us to experience a range of positive and negative emotions during the day, it is more important is for us to decide whether we want to make these emotions our friends or our enemies!

Our Emotions – Friends or Enemies

When we experience positive emotions, they become our friends as they lead to an upward spiral, making us feel good, happy, energetic & motivated to continue doing what we are doing more enthusiastically.

These emotions may be due to something very small as maybe having your favorite ice cream OR something big like getting promoted. Whatever may be the reason, they influence our actions and our relationships too. ?

As against that, when we experience negative emotions, they may become our enemies, leading to a downward spiral, making feel angry, frustrated, fearful or sad, demotivating us, making us behave differently, not allowing us to continue to do what we are doing and eventually becoming a deterrent to our progress towards our goals.

These emotions may be due to something small like missing your bus OR something big like being involved in a car accident. You must have heard of road rage cases where people have got into physical fights and landed up in hospitals. These emotions also adversely influence our actions and our relationships too.

We need to understand the consequences of our negative emotions so that we can appreciate the importance of Emotional Regulation.

Anger can harm us as well as others. It can spoil our relationships also???????

Fear may become a road block to our growth as it may stop us from stepping out of our comfort zone or taking any risk?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Feeling sad does not allow us to take action as it reduces our ability to think. This is mainly due to a freeze state which we experience due to fear. ??????????

Insecurity makes us suspicious of others which does not allow us trust others and inhibits us from performing at our optimum level ????????????????????

When we experience relationship issues, it leads to anxiety & Stress ????

Jealousy and Envy leads to a negative attitude towards other people which eventually brings about a change in our behavior with them. ????????????????????????????????

Being overwhelmed does not allow us to process information, halts the thinking process and we are at a loss to understand how to progress further

Our reactive brain is responsible for our emotions. We experience an emotional response because of the release of Adrenaline and Cortisol during stressful situations. In addition, we also experience physical responses like an increase in our heart rate, increase in blood pressure, increase in muscle tension and increase in acid production in our stomach

Emotional Regulation is developing the ability to recognize our emotions, downregulate and shift from the reactive brain to the smart brain so that the hormonal as well as the physical responses in our body settle down thereby enabling us to regulate our emotions and achieve desirable outcomes.

Given below is a micro practice for emotional regulation.

S.T.O.P.

Stop.

Stop whatever you are doing at that moment

Pause.

Take a deep breath, a glass of water, relax a little and pause for a moment.

Observe.

Observe yourself and your body. Has your heart rate come back to normal? Are you feeling relaxed? Once you are back to normal, recognize and label the emotion you are experiencing, accept the fact that the unpleasant situation has already occurred and now be open to what has happened ( Do not try to avoid it or be judgmental about it)

Proceed.?

Make an attempt to correct the unpleasant situation and if that is not possible, reframe and reinterpret the situation so that you are able to alter its meaning and to see it in a neutral or positive light (e.g., viewing something not as a problem but as a challenge which you need to overcome or opportunity to grow).

Make your emotions your friends by practicing S.T.O.P. regularly. Learning the art of emotional regulation will help you manage stressful situations better and foster better relationships.

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I am a Resilience & Well-Being Coach with over 3 decades of L&D experience. As the founder of Resilient Leadership, my mission is to enable leaders be proactive about mental health and wellbeing, choose mental fitness & emotional strength over stress and struggle and grow through what they go through.

Should you wish to conduct key note addresses, workshops or short introductory session on Building Personal Resilience please get in touch with me on [email protected] or on 9820177998.

You can also visit my website www.resilientleadership.in?

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