How to make your emotions work for you

According to Daniel Goleman, author of the ground-breaking book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, many people with an IQ of 160 work for people with an IQ of 100 if the former has poor intrapersonal intelligence and the latter has a high one. It’s a fact that our emotions directly affect our responses and decision-making. So, it means, it is quite obvious that if we are unable to manage our emotions, we cannot manage our responses and decisions, which determine our success at work.?

It is an established fact that we can be more successful if we can enhance our emotional intelligence. However, before you think of increasing your EQ, you must know your current status with respect to your self-awareness, and this is not possible without self-awareness. Perhaps that’s why Daniel Goleman considers self-awareness as the keystone of emotional intelligence.

Lack of self-awareness can make your emotions work against you. Emotional intelligence is rooted in self-awareness, yet developing it takes a lifetime. If you think that you have a higher IQ than people around you yet they are doing better than you in the workplace or in personal sphere, then most probably the reason is that your emotions are working against you, be it in your professional space or in your personal space. Generally, people don't make decisions with their minds; they make decisions from their hearts . And, if you want to make the right decisions and make your emotions work for you, the first thing that you must be doing is to assess your self-awareness and then begin to work on improving it.

“To have greater self-awareness or understanding means to have a better grasp of reality." - Dalai Lama

Here are five steps that can help you have a better grasp of reality and enhance your self-awareness to make your emotions work for you.

Create a journal of your emotions.

Writing down what happened to you that day, what emotions did it trigger in you, how did you feel, where and who you were with, how did you express those feelings, how did others respond to your actions or behaviour, what made it worse or brought comfort to you. If possible, identify the level of your emotions. e.g. the emotion LOVE has many levels – wishful thinking, longing, affection, liking, caring, admiration etc. Writing a detailed journal will help you analyze your thinking and behavioral patterns and prevent you from falling prey to your memory fallacy.

Identify triggers

Triggers are something or someone that causes emotions to surface. A trigger can be a resurfaced memory by an encounter with a photograph, a place, a person, a name, or a situation originally associated with your first encounter with the emotion or similar to that one. This can be as old as your childhood and, hence, going back as far as possible can help you understand where you encountered the emotion and how you felt the very first time.

Pay attention to how you talk to yourself when you get a trigger.

The triggers may bring up memories that might have made you feel ashamed, embarrassed, mocked, belittled, or like a failure. The emotional brain can’t differentiate between an old event and a memory, so your reaction to the trigger/memory can be as strong as or stronger than before. It is important to consciously understand your emotions rather than be judgemental. Observe how you talk to yourself. Judging can make you indulge in negative self-talk, which can be damaging. Instead of judging yourself, try to understand what it is trying to tell you.

Be comfortable being uncomfortable.

Face and accept your emotions and your responses and their consequences. Whatever happened is history. Whatever you did, the way you responded was according to what you felt was right at that moment. The more you try to resist, the more you will sink. Recognize the feeling of discomfort and congratulate yourself for managing to sail through the difficult situation. Leave the feelings there, pick up the lesson and move on.

Check your body language and verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and reflect.

Whenever a trigger arouses a negative emotion, pay attention to your body language. Your facial expression, the tension in your muscles, the choice of words, the change in your tone and pitch. Think if you are OK with how you are feeling or if you want to change the way you are feeling. What is the one thing that you can do to feel the way you want to feel. With constant observation of your body language and reflection, you will be able to notice the trigger and onset of an emotion that you would want to avoid.

“If you can work on your emotions, you can make them work for you”

- Usha Rajesh Sharma

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