How to Develop Emotional Agility
/There comes a time in everyone’s life when things just aren’t jiving. Maybe you have hit some challenges in life or work and are struggling. Or maybe things are great on the surface, but deep down, you feel that things just don’t feel right. Either way, this post is for you.
Whether you are dealing with personal or professional challenges, an important skill to learn is emotional agility. Emotional agility is the ability to move through emotions instead of getting stuck or suppressing them. It’s a way to stay flexible when encountering hard emotions, and to stay present to the moment instead of acting out in less productive ways.
There was a time in my life when I would put my head down and ignore uncomfortable feelings. My sisters and I didn’t talk about emotions because our parents subconsciously discouraged the expression of emotions. So instead of expressing my emotions, I either suppressed them or found harmful ways to deal with them.
Early in my career, I often got praised for my hard work ethic. This approach served me for a time. But, when things got hard, I didn’t know how to deal with the uncomfortable emotions that accompany work setbacks and conflicts.
When faced with challenges, instead of sitting in discomfort, I used to (and still sometimes do) engage in unhelpful activities. Here are some activities I would partake in:
Complaining: Whining about my negative or unfair circumstances was a go-to strategy.
Numbing: When I was younger, I often numbed myself by partying with friends and drinking to forget about my troubles.
Compensating: To feel better and counteract bad feelings, I would do something that feels good, like retail therapy or binge watch TV.
Avoiding: Busying myself with tasks on a to-do list would help me avoid my feelings; cleaning and organizing my home were reliable strategies.
Lashing out: When I’m overwhelmed, I’d lash out, sometimes at a person who had nothing to do with the reasons for my stress.
Perseverating: Sometimes, my brain gets stuck and I replay the same story in my head, especially when it involves an injustice or a regret.
You may think these are productive activities. I mean, who doesn’t like a clean house when you are having a shit storm happening inside of you? Avoiding and suppressing your hard feelings can wreak havoc on your life and your relationships. Emotions that are held in often manifest in harmful ways. None of these behaviors allow you to be present with your experience and your loved ones.
Once, when I was a young brand manager at an international food company, I was the project lead of an innovation project for a US food brand. My team and I had spent over a year on a new product idea, testing the concept with consumers and spending several months developing the products. I even went to Hamburg with my product development team to meet with our colleagues that created and launched the successful German equivalent of this product.
My boss, an Innovation Director, and I took the project through the various ‘gates’ of the innovation process, getting approvals along the way. At a presentation to senior leadership, we presented our business case, along with great consumer results, and asked for the resources to move towards a feasibility study. My boss and I ‘pre-sold’ the idea to various members of the leadership team, to no avail. Because of prior history with a similar failed product launch, the executives killed the project instead of moving it forward. When I walked out of the boardroom at the end of the meeting, my heart was beating wildly. I felt numb and confused.
Afterwards, my boss asked me if I wanted to go to a cafe and talk about the meeting. When we sat down in the cafe, she asked me how I felt. I told her I felt blindsided by the outcome. The stakeholders, who initially agreed to the plan, reversed their decision at the meeting. I felt both undermined and disappointed.
I will never forget how emotional my boss got when we talked about our feelings in the cafe. She, too, felt the sting of betrayal. She was sad and angry, and felt badly for me that my project ended in such an abrupt way. By expressing her emotions, she gave me permission to talk freely about my emotions. My boss created a space for us both to be upset and lean into uncomfortable emotions.
Normally, I would have beat myself up for not doing a good job and perseverate about the outcome. But because I was able to talk about my feelings, I could pick myself up from this setback and move forward in a more grounded way.
When things don’t feel right, sit with that feeling. Really sit in the discomfort and feel your feelings. This might sound really basic, but most of us do not sit in the discomfort because it’s just that—it feels uncomfortable and unsettling.
Try these steps to get to know your feelings:
Name it to Tame it: Try to put words to the feeling. Try not to attach any meaning to the feeling. Just name it. I’m feeling overwhelmed.
Get into your Body: Identify where you are feeling these emotions and describe it to yourself. I feel this overwhelm as a constriction in my chest and a sharp pain in my abdomen.
Decode the Message: Ask yourself what this feeling is trying to tell you. This feeling is trying to tell me that I have too much on my plate and I am feeling pressure to perform. I feel like I need to be perfect, but I feel too overwhelmed to pay attention to the details.
Breathe: Breathe into the sensation until you feel more regulated. Take deep diaphragmatic breaths. You can also do the box breath, which is to count to four as you inhale, count to four as you hold the breath, count to four as you exhale and then count to four as you hold the breath. The breath helps ground you in the present moment.
Act from a Centered Place: What is it you need to do now? Do you need more space to process what happened to feel more centered? If so, tell others you need time. If you need to make amends or take action, do so. Act in a conscious way.
When you take the steps I outlined above, you will get to know your uncomfortable feelings and work towards greater emotional agility. You will develop the muscle to deal with emotions more effectively.
We may not always have a good boss or supportive colleagues at work to help us process our emotions. We may not always have people in our personal lives that can help us process our emotions in a non-judgmental, non-attached way. But, we always have our wise and centered Selves we can rely upon to help us manage our internal world.
When we are in the present moment and tap into this centered self, our capacity to act in a positive, compassionate way grows. So – name it to tame it, get into your body, decode the emotion, breathe and act from a centered place. Make emotional agility a management goal and see the expansive effects it will have in your work and personal life.