How To keep Disruptive Emotions And Impulses in?check

Control yourself or someone else will control you

Ryan Holiday in his book, Stillness is the key shares the historic story of John Kennedy and his handling of a global crisis:

The entire world changed in the few short hours between when John F. Kennedy went to bed on October 15, 1962, and when he woke up the following morning. While he slept, the CIA identified the ongoing construction of medium and long-range Soviet ballistic nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba, just ninety miles from American Shores.

Kennedy would tell a stunned American public days later, “Each of these missiles is capable of striking Washington DC or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, Central America or the Caribbean”. This incident is what we now know as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The stakes were high, experts predicted that as many as seventy million people were expected to die if nuclear missiles were launched. But that was just a guess, no one knew how terrible a nuclear war would be.

Self-control is the ultimate act of taking charge of your state of mind.

The advice from Kennedy’s advisors was immediate and emphatic. The missile sites had to be destroyed with the full might of the country’s military arsenal. After the surprise attack on the missiles, a full-scale invasion of Cuba by American troops would need to follow. Their logic was both primal and satisfying: Aggression must be met with aggression. An eye for an eye.

The only problem was that if their logic turned out to be wrong, no one would be around to account for their mistake because everyone would be dead. Kennedy had to ensure he made the right decisions, he could not just follow his primal instincts to act strong.

Kennedy who already allowed the CIA to pressure him into supporting the Bay of Pigs debacle knew he had to approach this situation differently. Kennedy wanted everyone to slow down so that they could think about the problem in front of them without being impulsive. Kennedy needed to exhibit self-control to solve the problem politically without starting a nuclear war.

Self-control is the ultimate act of taking charge of your state of mind. It is the ability to manage your impulses, emotions and behaviour to achieve long-term goals. Moods and emotions can exert a powerful influence on your thought, memory and perception of reality, and it is easy to erupt and do or say things that you later regret when you are not in control. When you are in this state, you can’t rely on learned habits or make logical decisions that are in line with your long-term goals.

Self-control is a skill that is in a sense invisible. It manifests largely in the absence of more obvious emotional fireworks (e.g. throwing a tantrum, cursing in a fit of rage etc.). Competency in self-control means that you can manage your impulsive feelings and distressing emotions and stay composed, remain positive and level headed in difficult moments. Willpower helps you to exert self-control and resist short-term gratification in pursuit of long-term objectives.

Self-control manifests largely in the absence of more obvious emotional fireworks.

Being able to exhibit self-control despite provocation is a vital skill for anyone who works with other people. For example among counsellors or therapists, superior performers respond calmly to personal attacks by patients. Among managers and executives, superior performers can balance their drive, ambition, and assertiveness with self-control. They can harness their personal needs in the service of the organization’s goals.

One of the most remarkable things about the Cuban missile crisis was how calmly Kennedy handled the situation. Despite the enormous stress of the situation and all of the recommendations from his advisers to be aggressive with the Soviets, he chose a different strategy that was less aggressive because it gave him options.

As Kennedy would explain after the crisis, he “used time as a tool”. Instead of launching missiles and invading Cuba, he stalled and engaged in back-channel diplomatic conversations with the Soviets. This gave both sides a chance to examine the stakes of the crisis and offered the Soviets the opportunity to reevaluate their impression of Kennedy’s supposed weakness and come to the negotiation table.

How can you begin?

1. Become more self-aware: The first step to self-control is to understand how your emotions and thought patterns affect your actions. If you lack self-awareness, you are vulnerable to being sidetracked by emotions run amok. Self-awareness helps you to adjust and continually make improvements to improve performance. Try and understand if you are feeling anger, joy, frustration, jealousy, fear, trust etc. The benefits of achieving competence in this skill include the capacity to manage your impulsive feelings, stay motivated and have an understanding of how people around you are feeling. You can improve your awareness by keeping a journal and practising labelling your emotions.
2. Practise mindfulness: Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and your surrounding environment through a gentle, nurturing lens. Mindfulness also means that you pay attention to your thoughts and feelings without judging them — without believing, for instance, that there is a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When you practice mindfulness, your thoughts tune into what you are sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. Meditation is a good strategy for practicing mindfulness, I find it easier to practice mindfulness on long walks. Find out what works best for you.
3. Slow Down: When you experience emotions, particularly strong ones like fear or anger due to any number of reasons, slow down to examine why. Taking that pause and trying to listen to what your body and mind are telling you is key to finding the balance to identify toxic emotions. This is important in ensuring you are not impulsive. You can practise slowing down by giving yourself 15 seconds before engaging during an emotionally charged situation or walking away if you feel like you don’t have a handle on your emotions.
4. Reframing your thoughts: This involves changing your thought patterns and staying open to other possibilities about a situation. If you are in the middle of a situation that is likely to make you lose your cool, tune in to your negative thoughts. Ask yourself whether your emotions at that moment are reasonable and stand up to fair scrutiny. For example, if you are upset because you didn’t get a promotion; was it because you weren’t good enough? or was it because your colleague had more experience in that specific area? Consider using affirmations and visualization to manage your negative thoughts and control how you react to similar situations in the future. By rationally assessing the facts, you can undo the damage that negative thinking may have done.