I spent the festive season in France with the family and we were supposed to fly back to Senegal early January. On the eve of the flight at 10 pm, an agent from the airline company called to offer a compensation to reschedule the flight and leave a day later. I declined for multiple reasons. The following morning I got to the airport at 8 am to find out that the flight was delayed to late afternoon. Then I found out I couldn’t embark with the kids due to problems with our COVID tests. I add to book a flight 2 weeks later.
Over the course of 24 hours, I experienced all sorts of emotions : anger, frustration, sadness, despair, annoyment and more. I couldn’t think properly I was just mad.
I had read about the difficulty of dealing with our emotions when we don’t label them right. I was also aware that failing to differentiate the nuances between our emotions often result in inappropriate response. At that time, I had no nuance, I just wanted to cry, scream, knock someone and collapse.
Now with a bit of time passed, I think this is a good opportunity to list a couple of ressources that will help me relook at what I felt, what happened in my brain and how I can better manage in the future.
3 Ways to Better Understand Your Emotions
An interesting Harvard Business Review article whether you want to improve your emotional intelligence or just get better at dealing with your own emotions.
“Dealing effectively with emotions is a key leadership skill. And naming our emotions — what psychologists call labeling — is an important first step in dealing with them effectively. But it’s harder than it sounds; many of us struggle to identify what exactly we are feeling, and often times the most obvious label isn’t actually the most accurate. (…) It’s been shown that when people don’t acknowledge and address their emotions, they display lower wellbeing and more physical symptoms of stress, like headaches.”
One of the way to better understand our emotion is to broaden our vocabulary. HBR article use work from psychologist Susan David. This is actually her work seen on LinkedIn that triggers this post.
Emotional Agility
Emotional agility is a concept and a book by Susan David “Emotional agility is a process that enables us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. The process isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts. It’s about holding those emotions and thoughts loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to ignite change in your life.”
What is particularly striking is the fact that many different emotions encompasses a more generic emotion such as happiness, anxiety or embarassment as shown below. The “emotion umbrella” shows clearly that we don’t express accurately what we feel.
How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin
To add on the topic, in this short TED Talk, Daniel Levitin shares a example when he got locked out of his home and the consequences because he was stressed. His tips are based on basic common sense worth being reminded of.
Have you already felt a tornado of emotions that you couldn’t properly label ? What helped you differentiate those emotions?
Formamind is a regular newsletter focused on psychology, innovation, creativity, team collaboration, leadership and my personal journey towards understanding how our brain works.
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