Latest / Impact Ready / 181. The Art of Self-Regulation

Transcript

181. The Art of Self-Regulation · Impact Ready

• 0:02
  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
• 0:06
  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
• 0:09
  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
• 0:12
  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
• 0:15
  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
• 0:22
  Hello team, welcome to the Impact Ready podcast.
• 0:25
  I hope you had an awesome weekend.
• 0:27
  In this conversation today, I want to talk about emotional
• 0:30
  intelligence and get a little bit specific about what aspect
• 0:35
  of EQ we're actually digging into.
• 0:39
  There's a woman that I work with.
• 0:41
  She's deep in the coaching process with me and we were
• 0:43
  having a conversation the other day about this very idea of
• 0:46
  emotional intelligence and we were talking about how
• 0:49
  self-awareness is one of the greatest tools that a leader can
• 0:53
  possess. There's really nothing that can
• 0:55
  substitute for this skill specifically, though.
• 0:59
  We were talking about self-awareness as it relates to
• 1:02
  being able to name feelings or emotions as they come up.
• 1:08
  The ability to name a feeling in the moment is actually a really
• 1:11
  powerful skill, and a lot of people think that they can do it
• 1:15
  no problem. But most of the time when they
• 1:18
  get down to the nitty gritty, they're not naming a feeling.
• 1:21
  They get into telling you a story of what happened or why it
• 1:25
  happened or the patterns behind it, etcetera.
• 1:30
  For example, if somebody is in an argument with a colleague at
• 1:34
  work, perhaps over a deadline, and you ask them how they feel,
• 1:39
  if they can name the emotion, they will end up telling you
• 1:43
  about the whole damn situation. They'll say something like,
• 1:46
  well, this person was late getting that proposal to me, and
• 1:50
  then that made me late for the vendor.
• 1:53
  And it's just so unfair that I have to deal with all this crap
• 1:56
  every single week because it makes me look like the bad guy
• 1:59
  and it's impacting my ability to get promoted and on and on.
• 2:03
  You end up getting the whole story and why they're feeling
• 2:06
  that way, but not actually the named emotion.
• 2:10
  And then when you come back to them and say OK wait, but name
• 2:13
  the feeling, then they might be able to say oh, I felt angry or
• 2:19
  I felt annoyed, frustrated, resentful, whatever it might be.
• 2:24
  This is really common. People will give you all the
• 2:27
  context but not actually the emotions involved.
• 2:32
  And when I was in conversation with my client and we were
• 2:34
  talking about these types of examples, she asked me, but
• 2:37
  isn't it important to know the why?
• 2:40
  And I paused, and I thought about it for a moment.
• 2:43
  OK, fair. Yeah.
• 2:44
  Oftentimes it is important to understand the why behind our
• 2:48
  thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors.
• 2:52
  Clearly, it's really useful to be able to see the patterns and
• 2:55
  to be made aware of the blind spots.
• 2:57
  That's something we need. But if we're talking about the
• 3:01
  heat of the moment when a leader's in a meeting or a
• 3:05
  parent is in front of a teenager, is it really important
• 3:08
  to understand the why in that specific moment?
• 3:12
  And I asked my client that exact question and she stopped for a
• 3:16
  minute. And then she said, ain't nobody
• 3:19
  time to get into the why when you're face to face with
• 3:22
  someone. And I thought, God, that's so
• 3:24
  true. That's exactly right.
• 3:27
  You don't really have time to get into the why or the context
• 3:31
  of the situation when you're in the heat of the moment.
• 3:34
  And that's OK because the why isn't going anywhere.
• 3:39
  And there's a beauty in this. I feel like there's actually
• 3:42
  kind of freedom in this idea. You can absolutely bring
• 3:46
  awareness to your feelings or your emotions so that you can
• 3:49
  quickly name them and regulate yourself.
• 3:52
  Then after the heat of the moment has passed, you can go
• 3:56
  back and have a talk about the why.
• 3:59
  As Alex Hormozi would say, a sign of maturity is separating
• 4:04
  how you feel from how you act. And what he's talking about is
• 4:07
  self regulation. Self regulation is so crucial.
• 4:12
  It is absolutely a sign of maturity.
• 4:14
  When you become a wizard at self regulation, you become the most
• 4:18
  powerful person in the room in the heat of the moment.
• 4:22
  The goal is to become aware of your feelings and then regulate
• 4:26
  yourself as quickly as possible. This is why the patterns and
• 4:30
  understanding the why is not as crucial in that specific moment.
• 4:35
  As I said, the why isn't going anywhere.
• 4:37
  You always have time to go back and address that in a
• 4:40
  conversation. Later, when you feel calm and
• 4:43
  you've thought things out, it puts you in a much better
• 4:45
  position to have a productive conversation.
• 4:49
  How many times have you gotten all fired up in a conversation
• 4:52
  and tried to dig into the context and the why and the
• 4:55
  patterns? How productive was that for you?
• 4:59
  I can think of so many examples in my own life and seen so many
• 5:03
  failures in that regard. The successes came when the heat
• 5:08
  of the moment passed. Everybody cooled down, and you
• 5:11
  could return to that conversation in that context and
• 5:14
  talk about the why. Then that's when you started to
• 5:16
  see real change in progress. If you haven't read Jefferson
• 5:21
  Fisher's book, The Next Conversation, please go out and
• 5:25
  get it and read it as quickly as you can.
• 5:28
  Jefferson talks about this same idea.
• 5:30
  He uses the language of the ignition phase and the cooling
• 5:33
  phase. When people are getting all
• 5:35
  ramped up in an in a conversation and they're
• 5:38
  escalated emotionally, that's the ignition phase and that's
• 5:42
  when rational thinking goes out the window.
• 5:44
  Your goal is to get to the cooling phase as quickly as
• 5:48
  possible when things are de escalating and your rational
• 5:52
  thought returns. If any of you have ever been in
• 5:55
  an argument with somebody and you felt yourself escalating,
• 5:58
  you can probably understand what I'm talking about here and you
• 6:00
  can understand why digging into the Y isn't going to get you to
• 6:04
  where you want to go in that moment.
• 6:07
  Your main goal is to self regulate, get into the cooling
• 6:10
  phase and come back to your own place of peace so that then you
• 6:15
  can show up in front of that person as the best version of
• 6:17
  yourself. It's a simple practice, but it's
• 6:21
  not always an easy practice, right?
• 6:24
  There's a difference there, but the more we can master this, the
• 6:28
  better we feel and the better our relationships are.
• 6:32
  Now clearly this takes repetition and I would be the
• 6:36
  first person to admit here that I have not mastered this and
• 6:40
  that self regulation is always something that I strive to get
• 6:43
  better at. There have been so many moments
• 6:45
  in my life where I wish that I could have handled myself
• 6:48
  differently. There have been moments with my
• 6:50
  kids where I wish that I hadn't raised my voice.
• 6:53
  There have been moments in my marriage when I wish that I
• 6:56
  could have been more receptive and gotten myself into the
• 6:59
  cooling phase much more quickly. There's been times with
• 7:02
  colleagues when I wish I could have named my feelings so that I
• 7:06
  could have had that awareness of what was happening inside for me
• 7:10
  and been able to regulate myself better.
• 7:14
  It's part of being human, but at least we can have something to
• 7:18
  shoot for. And if we can daily practice
• 7:21
  this, we can make some pretty exponential jumps forward and
• 7:25
  there can be a lot more ease in our conversations and in our
• 7:28
  relationships. So the challenge this week
• 7:32
  again, is simple, but yes, certainly a practice.
• 7:36
  Try to get better at naming your feelings this week as quickly as
• 7:40
  possible. When you are in different
• 7:41
  situations, whether it's positive or negative, whatever
• 7:45
  kind of situation you're in, just get in that practice of
• 7:48
  naming the feelings. That's step one.
• 7:50
  And then Step 2 would be self regulating, deciding how do I
• 7:56
  want to feel right now, how do I actually want to feel?
• 8:00
  And see if you can shorten the time between ignition and
• 8:03
  cooling, that ramping up and that de escalating.
• 8:08
  As Jefferson Fisher would say, that kind of self regulation
• 8:12
  makes you feel like a superhero. And that's the goal is to be
• 8:16
  self regulated and totally in control and in your power so
• 8:21
  that you can have that positive impact that you want to have in
• 8:24
  your life. So that's a challenge and that's
• 8:27
  the goal for this week. See how good you can get at
• 8:30
  this. See if you can get up to wizard
• 8:33
  level at self regulation and watch things shift in your life.
• 8:37
  I'm excited for you. I'm excited for you to take on
• 8:40
  this challenge. Thank you for being here and for
• 8:41
  listening. And as always, team, thank you
• 8:44
  for being ready to impact. Thanks for listening to.
• 8:47
  Impact ready. I hope today's episode inspired.
• 8:49
  You to. Own your.
• 8:50
  Impact and recognize that you are powerful by elevating our.
• 8:54
  Energy and awareness. We can.
• 8:56
  Create exponential change in. This life.
• 8:58
  If you enjoyed today's insights, share them with a friend and
• 9:01
  subscribe to the show for more. I truly appreciate you.
• 9:04
  Thanks again for being here.