Posts Tagged ‘emotions’

Eliminate Your Emotional Reactions

Monday, August 30th, 2010
Feeling a little frustrated?

Feeling a little frustrated?

How much EASIER would your life be if you did not have to constantly manage your emotional reactions?  Imagine having a positive impact on your relationships with others, without expending as much energy to do so. It is finally possible to resolve the emotional energy that causes emotional reactions.

What are Management Strategies?

Management strategies use your ability to think.   Almost all personal development, coaching and counselling are based on exploring and changing your thinking.  In the coaching and personal development work I’m most familiar with, our conversations explore the following areas:

  • Taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life and not being a victim or blaming others.
  • Habits – choosing things to positively serve your body and your life rather than doing things which suppress emotions and have negative impacts; such as too much sugar, alcohol, smoking, lack of sleep, too many hours in front of a TV or computer, to mention a few.
  • Attitudes – recognizing whether you experience things from a positive perspective or negative perspective.  Is the glass half full or half empty?
  • Beliefs – challenging what you believe to be true about the way the world works.
  • Control – attempting to redirect your emotional reactions; stopping yourself from being upset and having a negative impact.

Managing all of these areas takes focus and energy, and over time you will change some of your habits, attitudes and beliefs. This allows you to live a happier life, because you are more resourceful in the moment,  able to control your emotional reactions and you can take more responsibility for what is happening in your life.  Life will be better.  With practice and continuous work it certainly was for me.

And there is something even easier: resolving energy.

What is RESOLVING?

Resolving virtually eliminates the need to constantly be managing and controlling your emotions.  What you were previously managing becomes easy, and upsetting emotional reactions virtually disappear over time.  You get to experience more bliss in life.

Resolving the energy that causes emotional reactions is like draining old sludge out of your battery to make room for more vibrant energy to fuel your life.   It is the old sludge energy from past emotional conditioning that causes you to have emotional reactions such as frustration, anger, anxiety, worry and fear.  By resolving you are eliminating energy from your body rather than adding new thinking or learning.  It is like deleting a virus from your personal human hard drive.

I was recently doing this work with a friend of mine and his relatively new big flat panel TV stopped working one day.  His normal reaction would have been to get angry and upset.  Instead he very calmly dealt with the situation, finding someone to help him take the TV in to be serviced on warranty.  He didn’t have to expend any energy on being angry or on trying to control an emotional reaction.  He just took care of business.

When is it good to Manage?

Being able to manage your emotions is very useful in the moment when situations occur that push your emotional hot buttons (associated with unresolved underlying energy).  When you are resourceful in the moment your actions will have a positive impact on the people around you.  Having a positive impact is always a good thing in my books!

Then at a later point in time you can sit down and resolve the energy.

How do you Resolve the old energy?

We will show you how in the Emotional Hot Button Removal workshop.  Click Here for more information

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Feeling Connected to Others

Monday, April 19th, 2010
White Rock Beach

White Rock Beach

Last  Friday I was musing about a post that I read on face book about back stabbing.  It occurred to me that one of the reasons we don’t stop ourselves from back stabbing or even talking about others is that we feel like we are separate from others. Like I am me and they are them and we are not one and the same.  Yet I know this is not true, we are all connected.

I have been know to come up with spontaneous ideas in the past that I take action on, which cause me to stretch and grow.  Like setting a goal of hugging a 1001 people and then doing it. You can read about it here,  http://ow.ly/1zvvW Well Friday morning called for just such an idea.  I had just finished drafting the introduction and chapter 1 of my book, two emotionally traumatic pieces of writing for me that have pushed my emotional hot buttons.  I had been working through the emotions all week and was feeling a little alone.  A new idea came to me, what about if I said “Good Morning” to as many people as possible on my run today.

I started to run keeping my head up, rather than looking at the ground, and I focused my attention on the next person, or couple, that was approaching me and in a clear voice I said “good morning”.  Now the benefit for me of doing this is that it was like a meditation, I had a pretty quiet mind throughout the whole process.  I am not a very accomplished runner and my mind could only handle 3 things at once — putting my focus on the up coming person, keeping count and breathing.   I have found breathing to be a necessary part of running!

About a third of the way through the run I had accumulated 20 “good mornings”, so I set a goal of 60.  That would be at least 60 people that I connected with, even for just a fraction of a second. How would people respond?  Some people’s face lit up when they made eye contact with me and heard the warm “good morning”.  Some people broke their conversation for a moment, responded, and then went right back to where they were.  Others interrupted their cell phone call to respond.  And a very few kept looking at the ground and did not respond at all.

How rude you say?  No, the story that I wrote in my mind, it was for these people that I reached out to make contact.  For what ever reason they are not comfortable with contact and they keep themselves separate.  I think it is this sense of separateness that helps to keep us from feeling loved, that causes us to have negative thoughts about others and to speak about others in a negative way.  I think this is where back stabbing really comes from.  It comes from a place of insecurity and lacking love.

By reaching out with our eyes, our hearts and kind words we can touch people even if it is just for a moment.  We can have empathy.

And in the process we might meet a new friend who also likes to touch people.  There were no more people on the boardwalk at the end of my run.  I had 98 “good mornings”. My ego wanted a 100.  So I walked back and called over to Ruth who was walking on the grass, “excuse me I just wanted to say good morning.”  She asked what was I up to and I told her.  I still needed one more person to make my stretch goal.  She said, I have been watching  that person down on the log , he looks like someone who needs a “good morning”.  So I walked down to the beach and said “good morning” and wished him a good day.

Happiness and joy filled my heart as I walked to the parking lot to get into my car.

Who can you connect with and touch today?  Who can you have empathy for when they speak negatively about someone?  And maybe by not repeating the story and giving it energy, it will quietly disappear.

Jacque

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Why does back stabbing occur at work?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This statement was posted on face book:

‘There are days when I hear my friends’ stories of corporate politics and backstabbing … I wonder… why do people have to play that way?”

In this month’s news letter from Catalyst Business Coaching I will talk about this from the corporate perspective and how to respond appropriately.  Here I would like to talk about this from my personal perspective.

People who responded to the post indicated that people behave this way due to watching reality TV and drama magazines.  This is the social conditioning argument, they are taught this in family life, school, team sports, dating, and the list goes on.  ”This is a sickness that pervades more than just the work place.”   I agree it is everywhere, because we as people are everywhere, and we have different kinds of insecurities.

From my own experience as I look back on who I was in the corporate world 10 years ago, the back stabbing seemed to come from a place of fear, lack of abundance, wanting to be better than someone else and looking for approval. Essentially I wanted to be loved and was afraid that I might not be. I felt separate from others and hence entered into competition with them. Unfortunately it was a game that was all about ME rather than a game that was about US.

Don’t get me wrong.  At the time I believed that I was acting in the best interest of the WE. I thought that my solution was the best solution and the right way to go.  So I excluded other’s opinions and when they didn’t agree with me I would talk about it with my “friends at work”. I would speak about how the other person was wrong and I would use great logical arguments as to why I was right.  Was this backstabbing?

Do we promote back stabbing even more when one person’s perspective is fueled by gossip and a dash of embellishment?  How many of us tell stories about other’s?  Even after all the work I have done, my ego still wants to be right and I have to catch myself when I speak about others.  My ego continues to behave as if I am separate from others and yet I know that I am connected to everyone.  It is a constant practice to be impeccable with the words I speak.

Jacque

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Why changes you want to make don’t last.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Congratulations to those of you who have actually started to make the changes you’ve intended for 2010.  You are part way there!  You may already be feeling the pressure to slip back to old habits.  If you haven’t started yet , maybe it’s because you want to be really sure you’re going to stick to your intentions.  Or, knowing how hard it is to change you decided not to change anything.  Making changes successfully has to do with taking charge of your emotions.

 According to Chip and Dan Heath, in their Jan. 3 article in Parade magazine “Make Changes That Last” the reason it is so hard is because the two independent systems of our brain are not in agreement.  “The emotional side is instinctive, the part that feels pain and pleasure and the rationale side is analytical, the part that deliberates and plans.”  They draw on psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s analogy, “of the Elephant (the emotional side) and the Rider (the rationale side). 

Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be in charge. But because he is small he’ll lose to the elephant whenever they are in conflict. You experience this whenever you act against your better judgment and hit the alarm clock snooze button, have one drink to many, or procrastinate.  The Elephant likes instant gratification and most changes require making short-term sacrifices for long-term pay-off.”  Chip and Dan go on to identify some very helpful and effective tactics to get the Elephant and Rider going in the same direction, such as giving yourself crystal clear directions, keeping yourself motivated with micro-milestones, and making your environment support your change.

 Read the article at:

http://www.parade.com/health/2010/01/03-make-changes-that-last.html

 What they don’t talk about is what to do when we habitually feel intense overwhelm, anger, frustration and anxiety. These emotions can really get in the way of making the changes we want.  Feeling this way for a prolonged period or when it’s inappropriate to the situation is often caused from unresolved or unprocessed emotion. We like to refer to it as having our buttons pushed. Step by step behavioral change strategies don’t work so well with this, and it takes a really long time.

 A better option is to make transformational change, whereby unwanted emotional habits and conditioning are resolved to the point where your buttons no longer get pushed.  Our awareness shifts to an expanded state of consciousness from which we are attuned to both the elephant and the rider and can make new choices beyond habituated patterns and triggered reactions.  

Once you know how to resolve triggered emotions and access this expanded state of awareness you’ll experience a different relationship with the emotional and rational parts of your brain.  Your emotions won’t run away on you, and you won’t be ‘driven’ by the need to over-analyze, judge and control.  Making lasting changes becomes much, much easier.

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