Weekly Words: "Capable of Becoming"

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.  I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized.  If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.  If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Weekly Words: "Moving Your Emotions in a Positive Direction"

"Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness." The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.

It is crucial to understand that these three senses of emotion are different and are not necessarily tightly linked. While it is desirable to be happy in all three senses, this does not always happen. It is possible to be proud and satisfied about the past, for example, but to be sour in the present and pessimistic about the future. Similarly, it is possible to have many pleasures in the present, but be bitter about the past and hopeless about the future. By learning about each of the three different kinds of happiness, you can move your emotions in a positive direction by changing how you feel about your past, how you think about the future, and how you experience the present."

- Martin E. P. Seligman

Effecting Change in Our Lives

Last week, I spoke to a peer about how she was doing after a particularly busy period in her life. Her energy was low - I could hear it in every syllable as she managed to share a few matter-of-fact details about having a chocked full schedule and wanting to make changes. Even though we weren't face to face, I could feel a dark cloud hanging over her, bearing weight on her mood, motivation, and happiness.

Change doesn't happen over night - this is a phrase that has been engrained in many of our minds. And in many cases, it's true. Good, sustainable change, for communities, companies and sports teams, comes after deep evaluation, a well-defined approach, careful measurement and iteration after iteration. For people, this can be true as well. In many circumstances, the framework for building strategies and goals that I shared with Financial Services companies could work extremely well for an individual desiring the type of change that I was an expert on. But the thing is - it wouldn't be their change.

Much like selling a product, or getting buy-in from a leader, someone will not own the act of making change until it's theirs. In fact, the core difference in coaching versus consulting someone on something is that rather than sharing a plan and an approach to effect change, you guide someone to find their own desired destination, and empower them to build the map to lead themselves there. Empowerment is the key word here. One can only send all their good juju to another person so much - cheerleaders aren't the ones generally playing the game.

As I listened to my friend last week, I knew I needed to employ some key coaching tactics to elevate her energy, shift her focus, and help her start building waves to sea change. Below are a few quick tactics for doing the same when you find yourself with low energy around a decision or change: 

Quick Tips to Empower Towards Change

• Validation brings the party to the present. You are allowed to feel. Full stop. Acknowledge your emotions when they're low. I would even encourage you to sit with them for long enough for you to determine that they are separate from you. Then you can take the power back from them. As Michael A. Singer shares in Untethered Soul, "To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them." 
• Talk about what's going well. If you're in a crunch, overwhelmed or stuck, you're likely resonating at a very low frequency, which is the exact place you don't want to be in order to actually take action. Re-living your success stories or conjuring up a good moment has the effect of a smile for your inner self. After doing it for a short period of time, you may actually feel a shift in energy powerful enough to bring you to the present and help you begin to build a plan.
•  Switch on the magical thinking. What would life be like once you're living that change you so desire? How would you feel? What would be doing once you are there? Even though the focus is on the present, the same tactic you would use to help an executive take ownership of a strategy can work in your personal life. Thinking about how it would feel to actually be living the change can help raise your energy to doing, and help you buy in to your own plan for getting there. Sometimes the best way to make something happen is to sell to the most important customer: yourself.    

Weekly Words: "A Circle of Trust"

"Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul.

Yet despite its toughness, the soul is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush, especially when other people are around. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently at the base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and fade into our surroundings, the wild creature we seek might put in an appearance. We may see it only briefly and only out of the corner of an eye - but the sight is a gift we will always treasure as an end in itself.

Unfortunately, community in our culture too often means a group of people who go crashing through the woods together, scaring the soul away. In spaces ranging from congregations to classrooms, we preach and teach, assert and argue, claim and proclaim, admonish and advise, and generally behave in ways that drive everything original and wild into hiding. Under these conditions, the intellect, emotions, will and ego may emerge, but not the soul: we scare off all the soulful things, like respectful relationships, goodwill, and hope.

A circle of trust is a group of people who know how to sit quietly "in the woods" with each other and wait for the shy soul to show up... In such a space, we are freed to hear our own truth, touch what brings us joy, become self critical about our faults, and take risky steps toward change - knowing that we will be accepted no matter what the outcome."

- Parker Palmer

Soul Soothing Emotional Management

Emotions.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how important, yet difficult it is to manage them, particularly when the timing isn't right ... which is generally when they tend to hit. But really, when was the last time you felt a strong emotion and took the time to stop, step back, and try to understand where it was coming from?

On a day to day basis, this is easier said than done. But studies show that emotional intelligence is just as important as work ethic and IQ when it comes to being successful in work and life.  On the flip side, a steady diet of emotional distress can wreak havoc on your health, your resilience, and your focus.

“The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”

— Daniel Goleman

Last year, I had the pleasure of attending a conference out west and hearing from The Energy Project, a firm that partners "with organizations to create workplaces that are healthier, happier, more focused and more purposeful." Part of our experience focused on discerning how adequately we each were currently meeting the four core needs they believe we all have in life: Physical, Spiritual, Mental and Emotional.

The Energy Project defines "emotional energy" as being "about learning to cultivate the specific emotions associated with high performance, because how people feel profoundly influences how they perform." In this light, if emotions affect the way we feel, and the way we feel affects the way we perform, then a good portion of our happiness lies within how well we can understand and manage emotions themselves.

People who mindfully manage their emotions tend to demonstrate self-awareness, motivation and empathy, which in turn can also help create a more balanced, and even longer, life. Compared to the alternative, that doesn't sound so bad. Below are a few key steps to take when your emotions hit the fan.

Quick Tips for Managing Emotions

Breathe. Next time you feel the urge to pour out your frustrations, instead try taking a few slow, deep breaths. Count to 3 as you inhale, and 6 as you exhale. Research shows that venting actually fuels your anger, rather than extinguishing it, as does quietly dwelling on your negative feelings.

Translate. Dr. Darlene Mininni, author of The Emotional Toolkit created the following formula to identify emotions: thoughts + body sensations = emotion. Once you've accepted the reality, bucket your emotion into one of the following categories - anxiety, sadness, anger and happiness - and identify how your thoughts and related physical reactions align. 

For example, if a deadline has you stressed, you might feel angry, causing your heart to race and your muscles to tighten. Pinpointing these details can help you ask yourself the right questions about what exactly you're feeling, and how it affects you, and better cope by moving forward.

Write, write, write. People who write, and re-write, have a better handle on their emotions, which can "lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness." Keeping a journal can also help you track emotions, take notice of patterns, and identify what habits or stimulants might be stirring your emotions.