How to Regulate Your Emotions

Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week. Sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance, an inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your friends because we all have to share more positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening.

Now let's begin. Practice emotional regulation. Practice emotional regulation. And we're going to talk about what that means because here's what happens. You have two choices in a conflict situation. You have emotional regulation or you have emotional contagion. You'd better make that choice consciously. Emotional regulation or emotional contagion. So what is emotional contagion? Emotional contagion is that part of us that we are hardwired to do which is mimic or act out respond to someone else's emotions. It's how when you walk up to a group of three people who are sad, you start to feel sad. It's how an eight month year old baby Mel Abraham when you smile at the eight month year old and they smile back, they can't help it. What's happening there, it's in your brain, in your prefrontal cortex, these things called your mirror neurons that make you. Or in your cortex, it helps you want to mimic other people and match their emotions. It's why when someone yawns, you yawn. It's why when someone gets super angry, you feel your blood go up. It's automatic, it's impulsive, and it is hardwired until we run a new program over it so many times that that gets dampened. Maybe it doesn't go away, but it gets dampened. Emotional regulation, however, is a conscious choice to sense and feel the emotions coming up and to regulate them appropriately for my intentions or the situation. It means you take the reins of your emotions and your feelings and your behaviors. It means you're personally responsible for it. And that's hard because if you heard me teach on this before, there's a big difference between emotions and feelings. I talked about it in the daily fire that your emotions psychologically. So when we talk about emotions in my field of practice, whether it is in actually doesn't matter what field of practice. If it's in psychology, if it's in coaching work. Emotions are automatic, physical, impulsive and very difficult to dictate their extremity. Emotions tend to happen. Feelings, however, think about feelings are kind of like the wake of an emotion, but you get to apply meaning to it. Feelings you have much more control over. It's a lingering effect of an emotion. Emotion in most, at least most neuroscience and most studies of physiology of emotion and emotion is actually pretty quick to come up and go, right? Emotion can come in maybe 60 seconds, 90 seconds, sometimes 2, 3 minutes in the extreme. But the emotion itself tends to pass. And now the brain is starting to label it, attach meaning to it, decide what does this mean? What does this mean for me? Is this safe? Is this bad? A lot of mental processing has actually taken over and now it's creating a lasting feeling. Your spouse comes home and they start accusing you of a bunch of random stuff. How do you meet that? Well, hopefully you go, okay, this person must have been traumatized or triggered at work today. This is a person who's creating a situation here. They can get not good. So I want to improve the situation and I want to build a relationship. This is my spouse. This is my partner. I've committed and sworn to God that I will honor and protect and love and serve and care for and be there with and for this person. Okay, I take another deep breath. Let me not react. Let me start manage my self talk immediately. Be here. Take deep breaths. Listen, Brendan, be here. Take deep Breaths. Listen, Brendan, it's not react. It's not screaming. It's just be here. Listen, react. It's emotional regulation.

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My friend John Gray, he wrote this book called Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And whether or not you like that metaphor, whether that's old school now in the modern era, one of the things he said to me that one time was so good. He said, I was talking about, he was asking me about conflicts I had in my relationship and how I approached him, what I said to myself and everything else. And. And he goes, he literally interrupts me describing what I think is my coping mechanism. He goes, bren, do you wear a watch? Yeah, I wear a watch. He goes, here's what I want you to do. Next time your partner is saying something that you don't like or they're venting to you and you don't want to hear it, and it's going to cause you to get angry or mad or to solve or to react. Next time, all I want you to do is, is as they're talking, make great eye contact, take a lot of deep breaths. Really quickly glance at your watch, don't let them see it, and just wait 20 minutes as you make eye contact and you breathe. I said 20 minutes. Why? He goes, because by the end of 20 minutes, they're out of gas. They vented, they frustrated, they got it out. And you were there listening, being attentive, not solving her problem, not telling her she's wrong. You just let her go for 20 minutes, man. I go, that's it. He goes, you got to watch. Like, oh, my gosh. And you know what? It's real. It totally works for the guys looking for the tactic. Shut up. Listen, Give her some time to talk. This works in almost every relationship. Every conflict situation. The other person really needs to vent and talk it out. And if you can understand, they're coming from a place where they are triggered or traumatized, where they're defensive. Did you know the more people tend to talk and if a person just sits there with them, the more they talk it out, the more they actually calm themselves down. Therapists will know this, right? They just sit and listen sometimes, right? Very rarely with another person who's holding a good space there will someone keep ramping it up. You've got to practice emotional regulation. As soon as you feel it come up, breathe, maybe move around a little bit, go for a walk or pause the conversation to go, you know what? I'm feeling really upset or triggered right now. Can I take a beat? Can I just. I'm going to do a lap around the house. I'll be right back. Is that okay? Can we just hold it for a second? I really want to do a good job for you in this conversation. I hear this is important for you, but I'm all kind of frazzled. Can I come right back and be more centered with you? Oh, we're allowed to say that? Yeah. Oh, okay. You go around, take a deep breath now you come back centered, more calm. You breathed, you move. And remember the self talk. Remember the self talk. The self talk is what generates the feeling after the emotion passes. So what are we saying to ourselves? What are we stating? What are the thoughts going through our head, being thoughtful about that? Mine again. I already told you, improve the situation, build the relationship. Improve the situation, build the relationship. Even if I disagree, I can still improve the situation. I can de escalate the emotions. I can make the person feel honored, heard, respected, even encouraged, even if we disagree. And I can make sure that whatever I'm saying is going to help us move through it and build from there versus attack and destroy. For those who have that, if you know this, please write it down. I've been a person who attacks and destroys. Because if you've been a person who attacks and destroys, you can see the littered dead bodies of old relationships that you Hurt like you got to go. Okay, let me be honest. I was trained to attack and destroy like a dog. But dogs can be trained. Old dogs can learn new tricks. Forgive the language here, but I think it's really important to be severe about it a little bit and use metaphors like that. Because most of us, if we are out to attack and destroy someone in argument, we grew up around it. We saw it. And I'm not judging it, even though it sounds like I am, because I'm teaching.

I'm raising my hand.

That's what I grew up around. That's the way I was till my early twenties. I'm not preaching. What I'm here is trying to teach what we know from research and from all these years of practice. That just helps the situation. So next time you feel triggered in a conflict relationship, breathe, move, self talk. That's your three emotional regulation moves. Breathe, move, self talk, breathe, move, self talk. If you're like, but I can't move. I'm stuck there in the situation. They won't let me leave. They don't like that. Be like, okay, keep breathing. Keep breathing. Manage your self talk. Right? Manage your self talk. Often movement can be as simple as maybe just take one step back to feel a little more safe. Maybe go on the other side of the kitchen counter. Really? Maybe in the meeting, if you're feeling that way, move chairs, stand up, ask, can we have a conversation? Can we walk and have this conversation? A lot of times I'll teach managers, take the team or the employee for a walk if you're there in person. I know it's hard in a virtual world, but it's much easier to process. Who's gone on a walk with a friend recently and just found yourself sharing things and feeling better afterwards? That's generating your breathing. You're moving. You're having positive conversation. That can be used here. Okay. That can be used here. Again, this is hard. If you're right there and they're in your face, I get it. But if they're right there and they're in your face, you can still breathe and you can still speak to yourself. You can always breathe and you can always speak to yourself. You can always breathe. Always speak to yourself. Please do that in that situation.

Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendon show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity.

Right?

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Sam.