Master to emBRACE your emotions
Many of us will have a story where we were carried away by our emotions and acted in a manner, which later we repented. Embracing our own emotions is one of the key skills which will help us to deal with the situations in an appropriate manner, build up our character, help make more friends and will be an important pillar of success in whatever the goals we are pursuing.
Emotions are interpretations of feelings. The feelings arise in the brain because of stimulus which may be either external or internal. We need to understand human brain functions and its evolution to understand our emotions. The limbic system of the brain plays an important role in generating emotions. Our ancestors a few thousand years ago survived because of avoiding the dangers; so our limbic system evolved to see each and every stimulus from a safety point of view so it sees it predominantly as a negative one. The second aspect our brain does is to amplify emotions predominantly which are negative emotions.
So whenever you are emotional think of two basic things that my brain is evolved to think first negative and it amplifies the emotions much more in a negative way. So how to brace up whenever you feel emotional.
I suggest this acronym whenever we feel that we are becoming emotional.
B — breathe: at least one single conscious deep breath may sometimes break the spiral of negative thoughts that come to the brain.
R- refrain from acting : as you are aware the limbic system will create panic like situation and push you to react to your interpretation of the feelings.
A- Aware : once you took a deep breath and refrained from reacting either physically, verbally or in mannerisms; now it is the time to be aware of the brains amplification of emotions. One common pattern that amplifies negatively is when we ask multiple questions starting with why.
C- channelize your emotions to your benefit by asking your questions predominantly of what and how.
E- empathize to see the whole thing from the other persons point of view.
Let me give you an example.
A doctor in one of the wards pulled up( questioned )one of the nurses for not following protocols of reporting the adverse event of the patient. The nurse got the stimulus that this doctor is nagging me for a minor mistake. Her brain started thinking not only negatively but got it amplified when she started asking “why” questions. Why this doctor always scolds me, why this fellow does show partially as in the previous instance when another nurse did the mistake he didn’t say anything. This fellow has some grudge on me. This job is a waste and so much pressure. Why do I need to go through all this suffering to earn bread?In a fit of rage she yelled at the doctor and went to the administration office and resigned from the job.
What could our index nurse might have done differently by bracing up emotions
She might have taken a deep breath, refrain from reacting impulsively, become aware that her brain is thinking negatively and it gets amplified by asking ‘why’ questions . Instead if she channelize her thought process for better productivity by asking ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions. How could I avoid such types of mistakes? What should I do so that I don’t get the remark again? By just channelizing her thought process she might have got good answers and lastly by empathizing and seeing from doctors point of view that he wants best of the care to be delivered to his patients makes the things to be seen as crystal clear and might have helped her to take better decision.
This skill of bracing up the emotions can be learnt and mastered by practicing.
