INFECTION TO PRICKLY EMOTIONS FROM OTHERS

Something I have experienced many times though didn’t realise then though later observed to realise a super common problem that holds an individual from performing to their potentials, keeping many of us from executing our best. It is the ability to regulate our emotions, depending on how allowing we are to a principle called Emotional Corruption.

Emotional Corruption

It is the pace at which we can influence the emotions of other people and make them as our own. The problem is most of us are highly sensitive to other people's emotions. Task completion or work performance either at work, leisure activity or at home will impact even with the smallest external factor. Although, we can learn how to avoid other people's emotions by becoming better at regulating our own.

The best possible and common experience is the pandemic due to the Novel Coronavirus outbreak. It evolved from Wuhan city in China and soon caused a state of a pandemic, now has a lasting impression figuratively and literally. So much that the method to regulate our emotions and avoid catching the emotions of other people, I will name it the “Viral Effect.” I have summarised that the coronavirus is just like us humans. They can be contagious, and if we are not careful, they can infect us and also claim others around us.

To understand how this processes in real life, it is essential to know what emotions actually are. There's two popular theories about where emotions come from, first theory being the Cognitive Appraisal.

Definition: It is the experience of an emotion we judge where our current situation aligns with our expectations.

Example: Let's consider you are on your way home to disclose your exam results and that you have topped the batch with your mother. You walk through the door, you find her sitting on the couch, but instead of “wha’s the result like?” She leave the room without saying a word. Now, that's not how you expected leading to the emotion of feeling annoyed. This defines Cognitive Appraisal.

The other theory is called Physiological Perception

Definition: The emotions we subconsciously assign to the physical changes in our body.

Example: Public speaking is the perfect example. Most of us usually have a weird feeling right before the talk or speech. Sweaty palms, confusion and moment of panic imagining what if you forget. Considering the last time you spoke you had the same feeling and the speech went well, you may define that sensation as the emotion of excitement. On the other hand say you messed up last time, you may now define that feeling as anxiety or fear. Basically, we overlay our physiological perception from our past experiences onto our current situation.

Moreover, the interesting part in both the theories is how we assess the emotions of other people. A section in the brain that processes emotion and memory called the limbic system is considered to be a non feedback system as it can be influenced by any external factor.

Think about this as passing by someone and without communicating or greeting, you could feel how annoyed or excited that person is? And then maybe you too felt annoyed or excited. It's an interesting concept to think about, because our brain is capable to pick up these subtle cues in our environment, which makes it possible for the other person's emotions to infect your emotional state.

Many people don't realise that every human being is affected by our non feedback system. Many people at work or on the same team inevitably catch feelings from one another. They share everything from jealousy to envy and worry to joy. The more connected they are, the stronger is the sharing of emotions.

Positive Consideration: If the team has a larger target to achieve but the captain regulates his or her emotions by staying grounded and calm, which increases the likelihood that the rest of the team will stay grounded and calm as well.

Negative Consideration: All it takes is for one person on that team to express a negative emotion for the whole thing to fall apart.

Now take a moment and think about how long you have held onto an emotion say irritation, especially after an encounter from a person who is agitated. Was it days? Weeks? Months?

The ideal situation, which improves team and group dynamics as well as individual happiness, is for everyone to control their emotional state by sending back the other person's emotions to them. And research prove that there's two common emotion regulation strategies that can be the best solution.

SOLUTION

The first method to regulate emotions is called Cognitive Reappraisal, where you work to reframe how you interpret the situation in order to regulate your emotions. Countering the first theory of Cognitive Appraisal explained above, you assign definitions to a situation based on your goals and expectations on the outcome. For instance, taking active steps like following social distancing, regularly sanitising hands and wearing a face mask to re-evaluate your outdoor activity in order to avoid being a victim in on-going the pandemic.

Training our brain to reframe is time consuming and needs dedication. This will not be easy as there are hints of truth within each of our thoughts. But if we work consistently on reframing, we shall be able to engage prickly people without being negatively affected by their mood.

The second method to regulate emotion is Acceptance. It is learning to accept a moment for what it actually is and not what you expect it to be. To explain this this, I will use a three-step framework: "OK; so what; now what." By saying "OK," you halt all additional judgment to the person or to the situation. You then allow yourself space to accept your physiological responses and your perception to what's happening. And once you've distanced yourself from your thoughts and your emotional state, then you can say, "so what" because this helps acknowledge what happened purely as an event. And as you transit to "now what" that adds that you have gathered enough information to be able to respond to the event.

Now most people can get to "OK " but struggle to get past "so what" because it can be difficult to detach our physiological perception from the situation. Now here's something essential to be kept in mind, acceptance does not mean that we are OKAY with what happened or that you even want it to continue. It means that we are able to take an aerial shot of the exchange and understand where the prickly spines are and if they're worth attaching to.

Now, both of these strategies are my favourites because they are powerful and effective, especially on the effects that they have on how we approach life and relationships. One study suggests that cognitive reappraisal tends to be associated with more immediate emotional relief in negative situations, whereas acceptance may be better suited for decreasing short-term physiological reactions in unpleasant situations. But the best part? Both of these strategies don't have to be separate practices. Acceptance and cognitive reappraisal can be used interchangeably in order to maintain emotional self-control. The key though to implementing them is to become self-aware when you become emotionally triggered by another person or event. And once you've consciously become aware of either your thoughts, emotions or physical sensations, well then you can practice either technique.

These may be common concepts, but they are definitely not commonly practiced. So by remembering the jumping Viral Effect, it will help you to be more self-aware and self-regulated. And in turn, well, you'll avoid getting pricked by ... a prick.

SELF LOVE

 

Have you ever asked yourself “what defines me as a person and makes me the person I am”? Most of us characterise ourselves through a physical image of our profession, bank balance and mostly on what are people's opinion about us. We initially determine ourselves through three things termed as people’s opinion about us, our personality and physical appearance (physique for boys | figure for girls) and our relationships. The very initial need of pleasing people ti make everyone to like us. The more likeable we are the chances of us being needed, important and popular. Shaping us to a person that everyone would like. Simply said a life on opinion of others. It goes relentlessly immoral when we indulge in attaining the perfect physique/figure by dieting and cutting down on our meals. Furthermore getting in a relationship where we believe happiness comes from that one person we are affectionate to and we manage to pressurise them to be everything to us in exchange of making us feel worthy. Resulting the relationship to end and leaving us devastating/heart broken. So, broken that we lose our sense of identity, the only reason being that we do not know ourselves at all. 

 

Going forward we heal ourselves listening to positive affirmations, reading motivational books and seeking methods to find our happiness for ourselves. Thus, realising our capabilities of being our own self. To rectify our earlier mistakes of letting these things to control and consume our lives we seek happiness around these things and never ever seem to find it. Overlooking the fact that happiness is something we create on our terms for ourselves. The world that we live in is something we create for ourselves regardless to worldly society we actually live in. It’s about an individual's world each and every one of us experiences. This is where we shape ourselves, our worlds and our lives too. There is only one part of the universe we can all be certain about changing and that’s ourselves. 

 

Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth. Self-love means having high regards to your own well-being and happiness, taking care of your own needs and not to sacrifice it to please others. Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.

I came across a wonderful book named Fifteen Invaluable Laws by John Maxwell. The writer summarising facts we often ignore quotes “As children our bodies grow automatically a year goes by we get taller we become stronger become capable of doing more things facing new challenges. But a lot of us carry a subconscious belief into adulthood. That spiritual, mental and emotional growth occurs automatically too”. Personal growth has to be intentional and we need to take ownership of our growth process because we do not simply improve by coincidence. It's only when we focus our energy on getting to know and spending more time by ourselves resulting in learning more about ourselves. We need to make ourselves a priority in our lives and self-discovery is the best gift we can present ourselves.

 

Many people may think putting ourselves first is being selfish but it actually means taking a stand, looking at yourself saying “I will do everything in my power to see myself succeed and fulfil my dreams. I am going to make the best choices in my life, surround myself with self-chosen correct people that add value to me”. Once we decide to love who we are, we can take that self-love and spread it to other's. Without self-love, we are limiting our ability to add ourselves into lives of other people and add value to them. Living the best version of our self inspires other people to follow to live their best version as well. 

 

The relationship we have with ourselves is priority and important. It is how we see and treat ourselves reciprocating to how we treat other people. It is irrational to give love to other's when we don’t love our selves first. We must now think of every person that surrounds us asking ourselves “are these people adding value or helping me grow into the person I wish to become”. Then finally ask to ourselves “am I adding value to me?” These two questions are crucial since people we are alongside life has major impact and influence in our personality, growth and development. Nevertheless, we ourself are the biggest impact and influence dwellers in our lives. 

So, if the answer to these two questions is NO, then let's decide today that we go through a transformation. If you decide to take that transformation do not just place a small amount of value to yourself since it is guaranteed that the world will not raise your worth. KNOW YOUR OWN SELF-WORTH. Concluding on a positive note, let’s start focusing, developing and improving ourselves for good thing will surely come along. It is about time you notice the gap between where you are currently and where you see yourself can be achieved only with constant growth. This thing called life happening alongside is genuinely difficult yet worth living. Wishing you all a life where you have high regards for yourself, prioritise yourself and appreciate your gift called life. Love yourself and the world will love you back inevitably.

HEALTHY ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP !!

Intimacy, Security, Respect, Good Communication and a sense of being valued these undoubtedly are elements which most people would agree involves in a healthy relationship. Many researchers and scholars have worked and agree to these elements in their findings and articles on healthy relationships. They also mention that frequent arguments between couples, lack of support, contempt, criticism, hostility are a few negative elements that take place in the relationship causing a lot of unhappiness and discomfort to either partners and in most cases, includes both. This leads to an ending of a relationship or divorce, a decision taken to part ways as there is no substantial reason to continue. Break-ups or divorce is just not any course of action or judgement, it is by human psychology making people physically and emotionally confused. This is by far the only reason that people engage into unhealthy relationships. Majority of us are unaware of the elements, do’s and don’ts of a healthy relationship because we are never formally explained. We learn from our experiences, right from the first couple in our lives our parents adding to famous personalities thinking and forming an idol healthy relationship prototype or benchmark. The truth of the moment is we consider Couples Therapy or talking to elders when it’s almost unamendable. Here the couples realize either the elderly or therapist do not understand or are considered biased or they were never meant to be together. The true reason being we have become intolerant to change and cannot accept the fact went were wrong somewhere. Most of this knowledge based on personal experience is shared with us right before marriage be it talking to a groom or bride to be. Most of it are partners who feel trapped in their relationships and are sharing perspectives of their partners being incompetent feeding the misery making it even more difficult because the person has already selected and what if it’s a bad choice for a partner? Isn’t that a bit too late to even share experiences and perspectives? The bottom line is “NO EXPERIENCED OR THERAPIST GUIDANCE CAN MAKE UP FOR A BAD PARTNER CHOICE.”

We need to adapt and learn about having a healthy relationship because it has been limited as they fail to address three major concerns. 

1.     Knowing what you need in a relationship 

2.     Selecting the right person 

3.     Developing and using skills from the beginning. 

We need to learn about our future relationships at a very young age following a skill based approach to relationships functioning leads us to create a healthy relationship reducing the ones that may lead to unhealthy ones. It consists of INSIGHT, MUTUALITY AND EMOTIONAL REGULATION forming the base of Romantic Competence. It is the ability to function adaptively across all aspects of a relationship process right from understanding what you need in choosing the right partner to building a healthy relationship, maintaining and growing one also for times where you need to get out of a relationship. 

INSIGHT is about awareness, understanding and learning. With insight, you can understand who you are, what you need and why do you react the way you always do. For instance, you are being irritable to your partner, with insight you may realize it is not something related to your partner it can be your work stress where you need to calm down so that it doesn’t bleed on to your relationship. It will also let you understand your partner better making you to able to anticipate the positive and negative consequences of your behavior. With insight, you will learn from your mistakes in a way that will allow you to behave in the future. For instance, maybe you will be able to understand that you are the kind of person which jumps into romance early and then things don’t work out and then would realize for the next time would be slow and easy to not to repeat the same mistake.  

 

Mutuality, it is about understanding that both people have needs and both senses of needs matter is the second skill. With mutuality, you will be able to communicate your own needs clearly likely making it to be met. For instance, you are to attend an office function and are needed to deliver a speech. You will be able to communicate to your partner that its going to be quite stressful there your need of them to accompany you as they are a good support. Similarly, with mutuality you will even understand to meet your partners needs as well and also makes you make decisions which are best for the both of you. Switching roles in the previous case, consider your partner has asked you to accompany them to an office event you will be able to rationalize and fulfill their needs adjusting your schedule for that day in advance not to disturb your priorities as well.

 

The third skill is EMOTIONAL REGULATION, is the response to things that happen in your relationship. With emotional regulation, you will be able to keep your emotions calm in your relationship and keep things in a positive angle of approach. For instance, in tight situations you may consider it as a disaster, difficult for you to handle and things like it’s the end of it wherein with emotional regulation you will consider it something that is manageable and you will be able to handle it. With emotional regulation, you will be able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and not react impulsively making you to think yourself through the situation easily. It will make you maintain self-respect and commitment to your needs even if bad things happen in your relationships.

 

So, I believe insight, mutuality and emotional regulation when practiced on a day-to-day basis can help people with a healthy relationship. Being romantically competent at a young age is associated with more adaptive relationship functioning and greater individual wellbeing. We may know what a healthy relationship looks like but people have no idea how to have one and no one teaches us to do so. It is to know what an individual wants in a relationship and is able to choose the right partner. The decision made should be strong enough to deal with the challenges the relationships bring. Bringing to the conclusion that we need to learn and build skills right from the beginning. As this is the notion of Relationship Competence about. I strongly believe for sustaining a successful and motivated life the key is a good partner that we lack by making wrong choices and end up unhappy and lonely. I hope this adds value to your living and may you have a relationship you can depend and feel proud of. 

EMPATHY : Modern day most powerful Invention

 

Today I write about an experiential learning and realization. A word you came across somewhere although meaning and importance remains undetermined. Working with many organizations with various job functions and reporting to different characters called Managers/Superior/Leader. As I sit back working from home past eight months I started to identify my role and position in the team of every company I have worked in the past and I currently work and I started to all like the jobs I have ever done. All this because I was left with sometime with me during this pandemic. I learnt about EMPATHY.

 

Leaders/ Managers need to have both perspective and empathy. This is typically not practiced anymore because todays leaders/managers strongly believe holding a status and a designation comes with great power of controlling.

 

Theories say “LEADERS DO NOT REALLY NEED TO BE IN-CHARGE. THEY ARE ANTICIPATED FOR TAKING CARE OF THOSE ACTUALLY IN-CHARGE”. The functioning of this designation is really created for people which they do not realize. It begins with we getting our formal education from school, high school (senior secondary schooling) and a Bachelor’s Degree course. Most of us continue to complete a Master’s Degree to get further knowledge and skill set to procure superior job opportunity. As we complete our education that moves us to become an employee of our first job. There we are inducted and given a detailed tour of the office place and culture explaining us the job description. We implement theoretical knowledge we have gained. It is necessary for us to perform and genuinely WE WORK HARD. As we work from days to week, weeks to months, months to a year and we getting at our job we get promoted. Promoted to a designation where you have to direct the position where you began in the organization but no body shows us how to do that. That’s why we have managers or leaders who are really micro managers as they have already done that job are now supposed to lead. There is a literal transition here from learning how to do the job and being responsible for managing people doing that very job. Some people are slow towards accepting the transition where as some are pretty quick and some do not realize this transition. The origin for the designation requires the organization to communicate how to be a Manager/Leader. Leadership is a skill like any other, it is a learnable and a practicable skill. 

 

Like parenting, everyone has the capacity to be a parent. That doesn’t mean everyone should be a parent. Leadership is the same, which means everyone has the capacity to be a leader. That doesn’t mean everyone should be a Leader. It urges you to act when leading and everything goes well you give away all the credit and reversing this if everything goes wrong you take the responsibility and assist mending it. This doesn’t mean you be harsh and pressurize the people who you manage, instead you simply ask them to try again and helping them. You as a manager/leader are also not responsible for the result too. Think of a CEO having business priority as “customers”. They won’t as they are not responsible for the customer they are responsible for the people under them who are again responsible for other people and so on. 

 

Some months back I had been to another city for a meeting and had to check in a hotel. The reason hotels are wonderful is not the fancy beds, any hotel can do that. The experience developed by guests rightly is. Every time I walked pass any hotel employee, they smiled and said “Hello sir, hope you’re stay is pleasurable”. You feel their delight genuinely and not because someone has instructed them. Continuing, I happened walking in their café for cup of coffee. Welcoming me the barista, Harold a friendly and engaging guy and apt for the job. I remember actually giving him a 100% tip for serving me. Talking to him curiously I asked him “so Harold do you like your Job?”, to which he instantly replied “Yes sir, I love my job”. Taking the conversation forward I asked him “what is this hotel company doing to you for you to tell me that you definitely love your job”. Again, promptly Harold replied to me that “not only my manage, anyother manager too coming in the café would ask me about my job, the experience working here and what could that manager can do for him to make it better”. Then he expressed something that got my attention, he added he works in this cafe in the second half of the day and the first half he is a barista at a nearby hotel. He said working there is different, the managers are too authoritarian. He is working there just for his paycheck. Same person working two cafes. 

 

We as leaders are always criticizing our people as we need the right people but the reality is it’s not the people it’s our leadership. It’s as simple as leader creating an environment where people perform that leader gets employees like Harold’s of the in-house cafe in whereas if leader creates a bad environment we will get employees like Harold working for the other hotel. We have become competitive were hiring and firing is natural. Like if some employee is not able to perform the first instinct of the manager is “You are OUT”. This is because we DO NOT PRACTICE EMPATHY.

 

Let’s begin with imagining Case One: Your manager informs you about the performance for the quarter cautioning you it will be difficult for you to continue being on the job. How inspired are to come to work the next day? 

 

Now let’s Imagine Case Two: Your manager informs you about the bad performance for the past quarter and asks about you or anything troubling you. Also asks you to open up as feels worried and would help you. Now how does that feel?

 

This is Empathy, it is about being concerned about the person and not just the output. We all have performance related issues and Mangers can only see performances. Our working flair has changed in the past decade, we are suffering from the business theories left over from 80’s and 90’s. They are bad for people and bad for business now. It worked then not necessarily works now. A decade ago people stood in long ques to make a call and now we have cellphones. That’s innovation and taking a step ahead. 

 

The directives followed currently is similar to a football coach training players making the fans as priority. Will that model make a winning team? We don’t consider the working directives followed from yesteryears outdated and consider them as mantras to success. The model used was appropriate then as they were short on resources and technology. The business environment was very peaceful, supportive and option proof. The world we live today is competitive, monopoly seeking and options are plenty.

Therefore, we work in an environment where our managers repeatedly reminding us that we can be replaced on performance failure. Hence, we are working AFRAID. We are teaching our youngest generation that how can anybody not stand up saying “I Made a Mistake”. The need for a change is to make a person comfortable to be vocal saying “I made a mistake, I screwed up, I didn’t perform well, I am scared”. How will a company excel if people working in it cover up mistakes with something to distract avoiding to speak up that they have made a mistake. 

 

This what empathy exactly is. If a complete generation is troubled and struggling yet constantly failing, maybe the reason is not THEM. The reason for all my failures is no one else but ME. We grow up in an environment around our grandparents or parents or siblings always there to give us empathy. Aren’t we the same born human being as we grow up?

 

I conclude with saying EMPATHY is something a leader extending their support and help need for the people to perform better and the people will return the Managers with expected performances directly boosting the Company’s growth.