Mindset Series - Emotional Mastery - Part 1

Hi there. This is Rich Bello and I want to welcome you to the Enrichment show by Aruta. Each week we'll be bringing you some personal and professional inspiration. We hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to the Enrichment show by Aruta. We're really excited to kick off our show today. So today we're going to focus on the topic of emotional mastery. Specifically why emotional mastery is important. What emotions are and what their purpose is. What role does the brain play? The physical aspect. What two roles does the mind play? The mental aspect. And then the top 10 keys to emotional mastery. So let's get after it. There are three different ways that people deal with their emotions. Number one, there are those that aren't even aware of their emotions. They get an emotion and they just blindly act on the impulse. They're only stopped from fully acting out on the emotions by some outside force, such as a social norm or perhaps even the law. Then there are those who are aware of the emotion they're feeling and accept the emotions because they don't realize they can influence them. They do little to change their behavior, and often their emotions get the best of them. And finally, there are those who are aware of their emotions and choose to master them because they understand that emotions are important. That is, of course, what we should be striving for. That's what we're here for today. Emotional mastery is a crucial skill to acquire. Why? Well, as we'll see, the quality of our emotions is literally equivalent to the quality of our lives. It's that important. We'll also see that the true purpose behind our goals is not what we acquire from the goal itself, but the way that the achievement makes us feel. We'll also acquire an understanding of the importance that emotional mastery has in the degree of success in our lives. It's even more important than the standard measure of our innate intelligence, otherwise known as our iq. Finally, we'll understand that of all the resources that we have available to us are emotions of the highest value. So we better figure out how to use them wisely to get the highest return on these resources. The quality of your life is equal to the quality of your consistent emotions. I'll say it again, because while it's simple to understand, most people don't place enough importance on it. The quality of your life is equal to the quality of your consistent emotions. That's really the bottom line. I mean, if you're in a great mood all the time, is it really possible to say that you've got a low quality of life? And conversely, if you're in a lousy mood most of the time. Can you really say that you have a high quality of life, no matter how many material possessions you might have? I love this quote by Helen Keller. The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt. Most of you are probably goal oriented, myself included. Mostly probably achievers. What are the real goals in life though that we're after? I'll tell you, we're really after positive emotions, not material possessions. Think about it. When we're seeking a goal, the actual goal that we're seeking is an emotion, or in other words, a feeling. We want to feel good, which means a positive emotion. You may say that your goal is to make a lot of money. That's not really your ultimate goal. The money is what's known as a means goal. So what do you really want? What's your end goal? Not some green paper with pictures of dead people on them. You want the feeling that money will give you. The positive emotion. For most people, that's usually the feeling of freedom. Your goal is a relationship with. What do you really want? You want the feeling of love. By the way, I believe that all goals can probably be traced back to the feeling of love. If you dig deep enough. Which ties in neatly to our previous discussions about the prime purpose of life, survival of the species. And then you can see how desiring love is. Our number one emotional goal accomplishes that purpose. So since emotions are the real goals we're after, we might as well see if we can skip the in between means goals and go right after the ends goals. How do we attract and keep positive emotions in our lives? And how do we deal with the inevitable so called negative emotions? That's what we're talking about, Emotional mastery. Now when we talk about emotional mastery, we often hear the term emotional intelligence or EI. EI has been around since the early 60s, but it was popularized by Dan Goleman in his book by the Same name in 1995. Emotional intelligence. It's a deep and complicated body of research. For our purposes, I like to stick with the practical and the proven. What works and what anybody can understand. Common sense. There are generally five skill areas of emotional intelligence. Number one, having the ability to be aware of your emotions as soon as they arrive. The faster you're aware, the higher your proficiency in this area. Number two, having the ability to manage those emotions in the way that serves your best interests. Number three, having the ability to motivate yourself. Inspiration. Inspiration is when motivation comes from you Number four is having the ability to recognize emotions in others. Number five is having the ability to influence others to positively improve your relationships. All are really important. So in order to understand the importance of managing our emotions, our emotional intelligence, it's interesting to see where this fits into success relative to our innate intelligence. I otherwise known as our iq. It's been reported in various research that iq standard measure of one's innate intelligence, is accountable for anywhere from 1% to 20% of somebody's career success. Now if that's true, that leaves 80% to other factors which includes your emotional intelligence. Have you ever seen a very smart person do a very stupid thing? I have. I'm sure you have too. So if these other areas you can improve upon. Mastering emotional intelligence is definitely an area that you want to work on. And its degree of importance depends on your particular career. For some careers, it may have a very significant impact on your success. I would surmise that any career that entails managing relationships will be a good candidate for emotional mastery to be a significant contributor to success in that career. Anything that involves leadership, personal relationships, sports, etc. There are also studies that show intelligence is indeed an important factor in making it to senior levels of an organization. Once you're at the senior levels, everybody's smart. That's the bottom line, baseline level. You got to be smart. Your IQ has to be high to make it there. So the key factor that gets you over the top is your ability to master emotions. That's not equal at these top levels. I'm sure you probably have plenty of real life examples you can draw upon for that. Now, utilizing your resources on improving your emotional mastery would likely yield a high return on investment in terms of not only career success, but in most other areas of your life as and especially those where you have to use your emotions. When we examine our emotions, we have to keep in mind that there are two categories and they overlap. The first category are positive and negative emotions, and the second category are resourceful and unresourceful emotions. It's good to look at them in these ways. All emotions have some purpose in mind, no pun intended. From an evolutionary perspective, that is. While it's true that we desire being in a positive emotional state, that won't always be the case. These emotions themselves are designed to give us what we need at the time. Sometimes you literally need what typically are referred to as negative emotions. In fact, that's their purpose, to help you to survive. That's the biological purpose of these negative emotions, to get you back on track. To get you back on the path. So the key to viewing emotions at any given time is not necessarily whether they're positive or negative, but whether or not they provide you with the resources you need at any given moment. Are the emotions you're feeling resourceful emotions or unresourceful emotions? Meaning are they giving you what you need at that moment to get you on the right path? Which again, biologically means survival. We can substitute in fulfillment and happiness for survival because in the current environment that we're living in, that applies. In other words, a short term negative emotion may be just what you need in the moment, in the short term moment to get you to have long term happiness. Now, the same emotion can be resourceful or unresourceful. It depends on your situation, on the trigger, whether it's real or not, whether that trigger in fact is real or not. For example, you may think that a rope in the road is a snake, but it might only be a rope. The rope triggered fear, but the trigger itself wasn't what you thought it was. It was just a rope, not a potentially poisonous snake. Now, it also depends on what meaning you give to the emotion. For example, some people are deathly afraid of flying. But flying is one of the safest forms of travel. So your meaning is factually incorrect if you're afraid of it. And then it depends on your reaction to the emotion. Is your reaction appropriate for the situation to get the best result for your overall mission? For instance, a young employee makes a huge mistake and it costs a firm money. And if that mistake is made again, it could put the firm out of business. Now you're the boss, how do you react? Your reaction is in front of the whole team. It could be to yell at the employee and humiliate him or her, or to use it as a teachable moment for the whole firm and to motivate the team. You get to decide which is going to be best. The key to emotional mastery is A how you interpret them and B how you react to them, how you react to these emotions. For instance, fear can be a very good thing. It can help us to prepare for some type of danger. The pain of guilt keeps us from violating our own values a second time. If I did it once and the pain of guilt was really bad, I won't do that again. Guilt is a good emotion to have. As long as you learn your lesson and don't stay in the emotion. You stay in the emotion, then it's harmful. Even sadness can be a good emotion. What happens when you're sad about something. It's a signal to others that we need their support. The key though, again, is that we don't want to be feeling these emotions for too long. You want to take care of the situation and get back to feeling the happy emotions. Take care of it quickly. But sometimes we need to go there because something in our internal or external environment needs fixing and the negative emotion lets us know. That gives us a signal and it gives us the resource to fix it. Emotions are a signaling device similar to a compass. Positive emotions signal you're on the right path to true north towards survival and fulfillment. We're going to give you the resources to keep on going. That's the message. Now, negative emotions signal you're on the wrong path, you're going south. We're giving you the resources you need to get you back on the right path heading true north, which is pain. We're giving you some pain here. Get back on the right path. That's what the negative motion gives you. Right pain. Now, sometimes the compass settings aren't right, so you need to check it. Is the trigger real? The snake versus rope example, the trigger was not real. Do you have the facts right? Flying is safe. Is your reaction appropriate? Do you motivate or do you yell? Now, you can have four combinations of positive and negative emotions that are resourceful or unresourceful. Here are some. You can have negative emotions that are unresourceful. For example, you get angry at your child as a result of a fight he had with another child. You react quickly without thinking. You yell and punish your child without even explaining what he did was wrong. This is a negative emotion and you are in a negative, unresourceful state because you didn't think about your reaction. It's the worst place to be. You let the anger get the most of you and you lost out on a teachable moment. Hey, thanks for listening to the show. At Aruta, we want to help you apply the knowledge. Did you know that we offer life coaches to get you on track and to keep you on track. Head over to aruta.com to learn more. Now let's jump back in. Now let's examine a situation where you're in a negative emotional state but acted resourcefully. Same situation, your child was in a fight, but this time you pause and react differently. You use your reasoning abilities. You decide that your best outcome would be to make this a teachable moment so that it doesn't happen again. You decide that your best action would be to calmly explain to your Child why what he did was wrong, and then ask him to apologize to the other little boy, assuming they're little boys. You're in a negative emotional state, but instead use the energy to put that energy to use and use that emotion provided to do some teaching. Okay, now third example. Now you have five cocktails in two hours. You're feeling in a really good mood, positive state, and you decide to drive home. Not a good idea, right? You're experiencing a positive emotion, but your state was unresourceful. Wonder why that was causing you to make a poor decision, A big poor decision. Right? Okay, next example. Now you're at home focused in on preparing for a webinar and you're on a roll. You're in the flow state. You're in a positive emotional state because you're producing something beneficial. And being in the flow state is the ultimate in being in a resourceful, creative state. That's the best of both worlds. So when I told my wife I was going to talk about anger as a positive thing, she thought I was crazy. She said, good luck with that. But how can a negative emotion be a positive thing? Well, I'm going to explain how. So let's take a deep look at anger as an example where a negative emotion could be a positive thing, right? It can be a resourceful emotion. Anger means that we're not getting our way or that somebody has violated us in some way, either physically or challenges a belief that we have, or just something else that is blocking us from getting our way. Anger clearly can have many negative consequences when acted on out inappropriately in reaction to some trigger. There are many reasons for that. Usually there's a misinterpretation of the trigger itself, or the reaction is disproportionate to the situation. That said, we should also keep in mind that the emotion of anger, like all emotions, all negative emotions, was provided to us as a guidance system and a tool to utilize for a biologically primary purpose, which is survival, and can now be used to get us on the track to happiness and fulfillment. So what good can getting angry serve, right? Number one, it promotes survival. That's an easy one. That's clearly its purpose in the first place. This is the fight or flight response, right? Anger gives us the energy to put up a good fight when our survival is at stake. We need that stress relief, okay? Are you crazy, Rich? Anger is the most stressful thing there is. Well, studies show that discharging anger is actually the most peaceful thing that you can do. It has the most calming Effect on the mind and the body. Oh, control. So if we're angry, we're provided with a sense of control in a situation, as opposed to feeling helpless, which is a really bad feeling to have. Nothing worse than feeling helpless. Motivation. If we react and use anger appropriately, we can use that energy and the focus that it gives us to solve problems and get beyond any obstacles that are in our way. Here's a good one appropriate for these days. Justice. Right? We get angry, we find ourselves or others being cheated. We find others or ourselves being cheated inappropriately, or we seek justice. We didn't get angry, we like, wouldn't do anything about it. Another one is goal attainment. Kind of similar to motivation in that we can use the anger to figure out ways to achieve our goals and clear away the obstacles that are in our way. Again, you have to use it in the right way, in a proportionate way. Believe it or not, anger is an optimism trigger. Anger can empower us to focus on believing that we can attain our goals. Think about that for a second. Right? It's true. Protection of others. We see our little brother being attacked by a bully, we're gonna get angry. We may need this energy to protect our little brother against the bully. It also promotes cooperation. Really? I mentioned this with my daughter. Are you crazy? How does it do that? Well, it most certainly can. If you get angry right in a meeting and again, express it in a certain way in the right way, people will be more likely to pay attention to you and cooperate with you to get to the right result. People don't like to see people upset, but it has to be expressed appropriately, which means thoughtfully and respectfully. Otherwise the result will be the opposite. It won't be a good result. And then emotional intelligence. Since anger is such a strong emotion, if you can figure this one out, the others are much easier. Be patient and appreciate anger. Make sure you catch it in time. Otherwise there can be serious consequences. So to be fair, let's take a look at the many dangerous drawbacks of anger health. It's been well documented that chronic high levels of anger with respect to intensity, duration, frequency, and how it's expressed all can have extremely detrimental impacts on your health. The ways are many, but it would take us a long time to list them out. Just name a few, like high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, insomnia, brain function, immune function, respiratory function. So there I listed them out. The primary reason is that the hormone cortisol is elevated during anger, which is fine for a short period of time, but for long periods of Time. This hormone can wreak havoc on your mind and body. So how else? Your self esteem. In the short term, your release of anger might feel good. Often longer term, if your anger was misplaced, disproportionate or just plain wrong, you'll feel shame, guilt or embarrassment over your outburst. This damages your self esteem, your relationships. Frequent outbursts. Intense outbursts of anger, either physical or verbal, can destroy families, marriages, friendships, you name it. Your children. Your children who witness chronic and intense outbursts of anger can be devastating. Right? It also sets a bad example for them. Your career. Poorly managed anger or frustration in the workplace can cause a lot of lost respect with co workers, impacts your ability to lead and retain employees. Your lifespan. Studies have shown that those with chronic anger have a reduced lifespan, which makes perfect sense given the health issues that anger creates. Anxiety disorders. Anger tends to increase desire. Anxiety. It increases your stress levels, increases your depression levels and judgment. Anger that is inappropriately expressed is often tied to a loss of prudent judgment, which can lead to undesirable consequences. For example, yelling at a referee late in a close game and being penalized for it. Not in your best interest or your team's best interest. Alright, so let's just step back for a second. What are emotions? They're a reaction to some sort of stimulus or trigger. Their role is to quickly decide whether the stimulus is a friend or foe from a biological standpoint, which is where they originate. The question being asked is whether the stimulus is something that will help us to survive or something that will kill us. Right? What's the stimulus? What's this trigger? What's coming at us in our current environment? The question is whether the stimulus is something that will either meet our goals or keep us from our goals or happiness or fulfillment. Now the default option is to take action without thinking. That used to be the prudent thing to do, especially in the biological response when time may be of the essence. Tiger's coming at you. Run. There's no time to think. You don't have time to think about it. And if you do, you've lost valuable time and you could die. This applies in today's environment as well. If something dangerous happens, but that's not what we're talking about. Walking across the street and a car swears to hit you, jump out of the way. Don't think about it. However, where there is time to think about it, we tend to make better decisions than our first emotional impulse. Now we're going to talk a little bit about the evolution of the brain and how this impacts our emotions. The brain stem is the oldest portion of our brain and responsible for all of our basic necessary functions like breathing, digestion, and sleep. That's a given. Next is the limbic system. We call this the old brain. This is built on top of the brain stem. This is the area responsible for learning and memory that can help us to adapt to new environments. It's also where our emotions come from that's really important in this discussion especially. And finally, the neocortex. That's the newest part of the brain. And this uppermost layer is the portion of the brain we can utilize to make master our emotions that come from our limbic system. It regulates them. This is where the prefrontal cortex resides. Everybody talks about the prefrontal cortex, the pfc. This part of the brain provides us with the ability to reflect on the meaning of the trigger and also on the initial recommended response of the lower brain, the emotion. In other words, we get to choose how to respond when we utilize this portion of our brains, as opposed to some sort of automatic response. If we don't, we basically have two minds. We have the old layer, or the lower mind, which biologically is where the limbic system is, which houses the amygdala. We also have the new layer, or the upper mind, which biologically is where the neocortex is. And that's where the prefrontal cortex resides. The way that cause and effect works its way through these two minds is really fascinating. First, a lower mind takes in stimuli from either the outside world or even from a thought inside our minds. Our subconscious mind doesn't really understand the difference between the two things. Everything's real. So our imagination, for instance, then it matches that stimulus against the memory bank and looks for matches from the past so they can advise us what is the best response to take from that particular stimulus. This is a very fast process and is often referred to as fast thinking term popularized by Dan Kahneman. It sends its best recommendation via an emotion, an emotional signal to the new brain or the upper mind, which is where the PFC or prefrontal cortex is located. This is often referred to as a bottoms up process. The PFC examines the emotion and applies a reasoning process to it to check it out, see if it makes sense, A due diligence process, if you will. The old brain, you see, usually overreacts. That's its job. It's looking for danger. It's impulsive because it wants us to act fast. But the new brain usually realizes, after applying some reasoning, that the Emotion should be changed to something that would lead to a better outcome. This is referred to as regulation. It sends the regulated emotion back down to the old brain, which usually calms down the emotions, like, okay, now it's calming this emotion down, right? Takes the brain's new brain suggestion. The revised emotion then is sent back up to the new brain, which then proceeds to make a decision as to which action to take or which reaction. Right? This is the response to the stimuli and of course results in some type of effect to complete the cycle. So we're going to do a little summary, right? And summary. The top 10 reasons why emotional mastery is important. Number one. There are three ways that people deal with emotions. They're unaware of them, and they impulsively act on them, or they're aware of them, yet still act impulsively on them because they don't think they can do anything about them. Or they're aware of them, but work to master them because they understand that they can do something about them and understand the importance of this mastery to having a fulfilling, happy and successful life. Number two. The quality of our emotions is equal to the quality of our life. Simply put, number three. Goals are always about the positive emotion we get from them, not the attainment of the stated goal itself. Number four. In various areas of success, your life, your career, relationships, leadership, sports, mastering your emotions is even more important, and probably far more important than your innate intelligence, otherwise known as your IQ. 5. Emotions are resources to get you what you want. Learn how to use them to do so. Don't let them use you. Number six. Your emotions are like a compass. Positive emotions will tell you that you're on the right path. Negative emotions will tell you that you're on the wrong path. Get back on track. The path biologically is survival. The path psychologically is happiness and fulfillment. But remember, the signals aren't always right. Now, number seven is both. Positive and negative emotions can be helpful in getting us to our goal of survival and fulfillment. The key is whether they are resourceful or unresourceful to us. We need to use the resources that they avail. For example, anger can be good under the right circumstances if we use it in the right way, if we can use those resources. Number eight. Emotions are merely impulse messages as a result of a stimulus that suggest to us how we should react based on how we've reacted previously to the same or similar stimulus, our memory. Number nine. The brain has two main areas. The old brain, where the amygdala resides, and the new brain, where the prefrontal cortex resides. The old brain and the new brain work together with emotions to get you to the right results. You need to know how to work with them. That's mastering your emotions. And number 10, the old brain links stimuli to its memory banks to see how the situation or similar situation was handled previously and recommended to the new brain via an emotion. What action, or better yet, what reaction to take based on what we did before. The new brain then needs to use its reasoning capabilities to do some due diligence on this recommendation to decide whether to take that action or not or some variation of it. Okay, so I've thrown a lot of great stuff at you. But remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. Only you can make the application. Now, an excellent way to apply the knowledge in addition to doing your homework is to hire a coach. We have them, but even if you don't choose one of our coaches, go out and get one somewhere. At least get an accountability buddy. Now coaches work with you to identify your top goals and then to hold you accountable for their achievement. You can sign up for a coach@aretut.com I love our coaches. Hey, feel free to download our new book, Finding the Opportunity in Crisis. It's free. Developing a crisitunity mindset is a great example of applying what you've hopefully learned in this webinar. Go to aruta.com and download it. And finally, if you have any questions, please feel to reach out to us@arerutad.com and and remember to make some thoughtful comments to contribute to the greater good. Do your homework. We'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for listening. Remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. Visit irutad.com for more information and to sign up for a complimentary coaching session today. Sam.