How to turn on your emotion controller button at workplace?

Mental health, resilience, emotional intelligence - these are very prevalent words in the popular press and trending topics in all corporate training programs. However, when it comes to majority of personnel, they still treat the usage of these words as very similar to commotion in the kindergarten classroom. It becomes critically important to keep reminding the corporate world and each one of us about the importance of self-awareness, self-management, motivation, social cues, social awareness, and relationship management.

Below are a few common mistakes to be mindful about while we are at the work environment. If most of them gets a tick when you do self-analysis, it's time to re-think and manage us better to improve our emotional intelligence scores.

• ????Letting small things to cause big reactions
• ????Emotional outburst and agitation
• ????Passive aggressive behaviour
• ????Failing to ask how others feel
• ????Lack of skills to understand and read social cues
• ????Self-centeredness
• ????Inability to feel empathy towards others
• ????Being stoic – unemotional
• ????Lack of self-awareness
• ????Blaming others for our own mistakes
• ????Inability to connect with others in general

Now, the question is what to do better? As Aristotle mentioned, “Happiness depends upon ourselves”. So, we should take some steps from our end to ensure that we achieve the life we want. Our brains are wired to react immediately in emergency situations. We won’t be able to take logical reasonings in those situations. Our amygdala is smart enough to take over the pre-frontal cortex of brain. Flight and fight modes are not easy to control and are present for a reason. However, our perceptions of treating situations are something that we can control. We should be better judge of the situations that we are going through in our day to day lives and treat them carefully. This needs careful awareness and attention.

Here are a few items that can be tried at the workplace to improve our emotional quotient and manage better.

• Give that chance for “Healthy Communication” – it might feel difficult but it’s totally possible
• Asking questions for clarity when receiving criticism ?
• Observe others and empathize - that shrug or round eyes or raised brows – connect to the context
• Listen 100%
• Let us apologize without that jabs or pointing fingers
• No bottling up of emotions – let’s show them in an appropriate manner
• Keep learning
• Let’s praise each other and provide constructive criticisms.
• Being assertive and not aggressive
• Admitting one's own mistakes
• Valuing team and organization goals
• Demonstrating empathy
• Try out Pomodoro technique of time management - work for 25 minutes followed by a short 3-5 minute break- this will help you de-stress and increase productivity and mental well being
• Hate it or not – let us reduce social media distractions – putting up that grayscale color filter on your phone / laptop, turning off the auto play option in Netflix, unfollowing the groups and profiles that make you feel bad… go ahead…do it... fill ourselves and our surroundings with positivity.
• Never escape from anything or be silent worrying about difficult conversations. Be the judge and mentor for your own life. Filter your needs and wants in life and choose what’s right and best for you.
• Trust yourself – as long as we are there for ourselves, backing and motivating to push ourselves from the comfort zones to the life that we need to achieve, life flows beautifully.

Remember these great words from Tara Meyer Robson:

“When awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life”?????????????