Day 59 – Transition – Working with Emotions Part 1

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I have written a bunch in my blog about the emotions of being laid off.  And I haven’t written much about the process of working with these emotions.  Noticing your emotions is a step in the right direction, and to make this step meaningful we need to be able to work with our emotions as a way to make our lives better.  This subject is relevant whether dealing with a job loss or some other major change that  causes emotional upheaval. 

While these practices can help in times of crisis and big change, the real power of these techniques is what it does for your normal day to day life the 80% of life between the big occurrences.  The power is in improving your ability to know yourself and to relate to others.    Daniel Goleman believes that IQ plays only 20% role in your success while 80% is played by other factors including emotional intelligence.  IQ is a measure of how you work with things and concepts, EQ is how you work with your emotions and the emotions of others, it is the basis for fitting in and getting along with others in this world.

There is an old Chinese saying, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The second best time is now.  It is the same with these practices, it is best if you would have started them before a crisis, like 20 years ago.  If you didn’t then starting now will work just fine.  In either case, there is no end to the journey, there is always room for improvement in our ability to work ours and others emotions.

I’m pulling on three areas of study in presenting these practices.  The emotional intelligence field which is most notably associated with Daniel Goleman and his book Emotional Intelligence.   The Field of Systems Thinking, where I touch a little bit on mental model, Systems dynamics and  personal mastery.  And finally on Buddhist practices or the ideas of right thinking and right effort of the 8 fold path.  Other spiritual traditions include these similar concepts though they be explained differently.

This will take 4 to 6 parts to do this topic justice with enough detail to make it useful and at a high enough level that it can be covered in small chunks.  This first part being an introduction.  The second part getting into observing patterns. The third part in interrupting the patterns.  Part four would concentrate on other actions, external stimuli  and acting.  And part five would be a conclusion and reference section.   As I get into this it may expand or contract.

This subject of working with moods and emotions is especially relevant to me after being laid off a few months ago and now going through the effort to find a new position in this terrible economy.  Being laid off was a surprise and this thoroughly stirred the emotional pot as I came to grips with losing my job after 22 years with the same company.  Now that my day has changed to searching for work mostly from home, mostly by myself, and mostly without much feedback—keeping my spirits up has become extra important.

Moods and emotions have a direct and definite affect on the outcomes a person experiences in life.  If you are dealing with negative emotions you will get less accomplished, you will come across to others as lacking enthusiasm, and come across as someone that others just won’t want to work with or be around. It will be reflected in your conversations and in your writing.  It is part of that 80% non-verbal part of communications that people talk about.

Moods are to emotions like tone is to a note in music.  Moods are the longer term tone of a foundational emotional state.  You can be in a bad mood and still experience the full range of possible emotions.  Emotions are fleeting; they come and past quickly.   A mood is longer than an emotion and can last for days or months or years.  After the emotion has past you reset to the undertone of your mood.

We can not directly work with our moods, but we can indirectly effect our moods.  The very first step is to start to pay attention. While this may not seem like much, this is a huge first step if you haven’t already started down this path.  There are several areas pay attention to:

• Brain chatter
• Emotions
• Moods
• Repeating Patterns
• Triggers 

Once we get good at observing what is going on, and this can take while, the next step would be to start experimenting with changing some of these patterns.  Again Coming at this like a scientist is important, you are the only true expert alive on you.  The process to try stuff, observe, if it works great, if not try something else.

Diet and exercise can have a large effect on your emotional states.  These can both enhance you more positive emotions and works to level out emotional swings between high and lows.  Some studies have put regular exercise as more effective against clinical depression than the most popular drugs on the market prescibed for this.  And the side effects are much more desirable.

Ok, that’s the introduction.  I hope this is enough to get you to read further.  Everything I will talk about is easy and doesn’t cost a thing to do.  The part that hangs most of us up is that this is a journey that takes a life time.  But its a journey that is far better to take fully conscious.

Related articles

• Day 59 - Transition - Working with Emotions Part 1 (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Day 60-Transition-Working with Emotions Part 2 (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Day 61 - Transition - Working with Emotions Part III (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Working with Emotions Part IV (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Working with Emotions Part V (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• Working with Emotions part VI - References (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)

• Emotional Intelligence for Leaders (slideshare.net)
• Emotional Intelligence by Phyllis Van Hemert (speedofcreativity.org)
• Emotional Intelligence Could Predict Employee Happiness (livescience.com)
• Why Do Managers Need Emotional Intelligence? (brighthub.com)