Managing Things that Mess with Your Mind

Perhaps one of the most important skills you can learn as a leader is self-regulation. If you don't know how to regulate your emotions you won't know how to make good decisions. You'll shoot from the hip, get triggered, tell someone off, let someone go, end a relationship, and do things to spite the other person. You'll take everything personally, be defensive, and wonder why others call you "hard to work with."

When something "messes with your mind" your primal brain kicks in, triggering an emotional response. If you don't know how to self-regulate, your interpretations will be run by your triggers. The story you create about the situation will seem "true" to you. You'll believe everything you think and your primal brain will go into overdrive while justifying your ineffective or irrational behavior. Or maybe you'll just avoid the situation by distracting yourself. Either way, as a leader, you're avoiding your own growth and contributing to a culture of avoidance instead of leading by example.

Under stress, or rapid change, it's easy to lose the capabilities of your executive function in the prefrontal cortex, but you're not at the mercy of your emotions. You can learn how to manage the things that mess with your mind. It's called self-regulation.

How to Start the Process of Self Regulation

1. Become acquainted with the petty things that distract you.
2. See the situation differently.
3. Take a pregnant pause.
4. Seek support.

1. Become acquainted with the petty things that distract you

Make a list now, and include even the minor petty things that gets you off track. Here's a short list to get you started.

• A promising prospect doesn't take your call.
• Someone important to you is giving you the silent treatment.
• You got a poor evaluation on a project.
• You didn't get the deal.
• You were ghosted after a job interview.
• Your contribution wasn't acknowledged.
• Your pitch wasn't accepted.
• Your nemesis got credit for your ideas.
• Your spouse says, "We need to talk."
• Someone tells you to take them off of your follow up list.

It's easy to feel stable on a winning streak, and interesting how little disappointments can throw you off on a bad day. Not all is lost is you are able to see the pattern and shift your interpretation.

2. See the situation differently

Come from the attitude of "bring it!" Recognize this feeling (and the thought patterns behind it) as an invitation to practice. Instead of seeing the person or situation as your enemy or something to avoid, get curious and see an opportunity to practice interpreting the situation differently. Calm your brain down so that you aren't seeing a threat, and instead you see opportunity. When you change the interpretation you change the experience. Be willing to face the issue head on, whether it's stepping on the scales, getting ghosted, or losing a contract.

3. Take a pregnant pause

The weird thing about emotions, is that they make you want to respond immediately to eliminate the discomfort. Instead of distracting yourself or shooting from the hip, decide that you don't need to do anything right now. It's not urgent, even if it feels like it.

Here's what to do: Welcome the physical sensations that normally cause a great deal of discomfort; the emotions that make you want to lash out, or make you want to distract yourself. Instead, sit with the sensations and breathe, breathe, breathe. I swear you'll feel like a BEAST if you can do withstand it for twenty minutes. If you can do this three times in a row, you start to build conflict capacity and you'll find that you aren't so easily distracted or triggered by the same situations. Things that used to take you down, don't actually "mess with your mind"much more.

4. Seek support

Sometimes it helps to get support. Support can be in many forms: a coach, therapist, counselor, or mentor. Even in a group of like-minded people it's so much easier to gain the skills because as in all methods of accountability, it's not just you being a lone ranger. There are others watching and in some form witnessing and measuring your effectiveness.

Conclusion

As life and leadership become more complex, and as change happens at the speed of light, it's easy to lose focus, lose direction and become emotionally dysregulated. A reminder from Narrative Coaching that I continue to live by is this: Your story is the source of your suffering. While we may not be able to slow down the world, put a halt to AI, or control complexities, the counterbalance to the external changes is to change internally.

Marlene Chism is a consultant, speaker, and the author of?? From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading (Berrett-Koehler 2022). She is a recognized expert on the LinkedIn Global Learning platform. Connect with Chism via?LinkedIn ,?or at MarleneChism.com

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