Following a previous piece I wrote about the circles of control, influence and concern in our lives, a number of you have been reflecting on which aspects of life fall most naturally into which of those circles, and how much time you’re spending in each circle. That’s important work - good job.
One key question which arises from that work is this: How much influence or control do I have over my emotions?
Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived a Nazi death camp and went on to write Man's Search for Meaning, believed the following:
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
When it comes to our emotions, many of us struggle to find this space between stimulus and response. We feel angry, we react. We feel fear, we become tense and alert. We feel sad, we become miserable. We feel shame, we withdraw.
Anger, fear, sadness, shame and numerous other difficult emotions are swirling around us like a storm in the current circumstances. And yet, there is an increasing body of research into human emotions which concludes:
How we choose to respond to the emotions we feel is within our circle of control.
Often our emotions can hook us, and leave us dangling, like a fish on a line… (Photo by thomaslenne/iStock / Getty Images)
In her excellent book Emotional Agility, Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David suggests that often our emotions can hook us, and leave us dangling, like a fish on a line. She goes on to lay out an incredibly helpful framework for learning to control our emotions, thoughts and feelings.
A very brief outline of her framework is as follows:
Show Up to your emotions - all of them. Face towards them. Recognise that they are there. Accept them. And be kind to yourself as you do this.
Step Out of your emotions. Realise that our emotions are DATA not DIRECTIVES. What is the purpose or function of the emotion? What is it telling me? A simple practice for this is to say to ourselves something like, "I'm noticing that I am feeling ..." or "I'm noticing that I'm thinking..."
Walk Your Why. How are these emotions or thoughts connected to your core values, to what is truly important to you? How can you respond to your thoughts and emotions in ways which are deeply aligned to your core values? How might you step towards your values, rather than away from them?
Move On. How could you develop and implement values-aligned habits and strategies which will help you to build resilience and manage difficult emotions more effectively in the future? How will you step up and embrace challenging situations (rather than seek to avoid them) and so have real-world practice in building emotional resilience?
As a result of working through David’s material again recently, I offer the follow reflection questions for you to ponder:
How are you feeling - really? What emotions, thoughts and feelings are present? Try and name them, all of them. And be kind to yourself.
What are those emotions and thoughts indicating?
What are they telling you about what is important to you?
And how will you choose to respond?
If you want to engage more with this topic:
Susan David’s Book - Emotional Agility - is well worth reading.
Her popular TED talk is well worth watching.
If you want to work with us, lifeincolour coaching could really help you get unstuck and move forward.
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