“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response”
Most people have heard this pithy quote, but I wonder how often we consider its meaning. How do we find and leverage that tiny space to stop reacting to emotions in ways we regret and start responding to feelings in ways we prefer? This is the essence of emotional regulation skills.
(History note: Stephen R. Covey used this quote when writing a foreword for a book on Viktor Frankl. Covey found the quote while perusing a university library in Hawaii, but laments that he has been unable to find the book again after his initial encounter.)
You can’t regulate emotions if they are locked in a box
We must understand and embrace emotions to live a full life. In this article, I share how emotions bring full color to life. Our brains are locked in a dark cave. It’s only through our body and feelings that our mind can experience this richly colored world. The more we ignore or lock away our emotions, the more grayscale life becomes.
A lack of emotional skills also limits our resilience. When we lock up emotions, we become like an oak tree that breaks in a windstorm instead of a palm bending in the storm. Science is clear that emotional intelligence positively impacts our quality of life and our business outcomes. The good news is that we can improve our emotional skills with practice. With that in mind, here are three ways to regulate your emotions more effectively while retaining all the vibrant colors of emotional experience that make your life exceptional.
Self-awareness (or understanding) is the bedrock of emotional intelligence. We cannot regulate emotions if we do not perceive and understand them. When we learn to name our emotions with granularity and trace them back to their causes, we gain the agency to change our perspective or change the cause. Naming feelings also helps create separation between us and our emotions – prying open that precious space between stimulus and response.
If you can’t name 10 emotions off the top of your head or you struggle to express what you feel in your body, do yourself a favor and read this article before moving on. Here’s a quick refresher:
- Reflect on the events that led to the emotions you feel to determine your basic emotions.
- Use an emotion wheel to get more granularity on the right word – i.e. fury vs frustration.
- Use the mood-meter to get clear on the quality of your mood.
- Meditate on where you feel the emotion. Your body is always trying to talk to your brain. Improving your interoception yields major benefits for EQ, leadership, and decision-making.
Increase distance between yourself and your emotions
When we unthinkingly react to emotional stimuli, we usually regret our actions. If we can make space to consider our options, we can respond intentionally. The Stoics built their philosophy around this idea. When we fail to pay attention, emotions sweep us down a river of life. We mindlessly react to things, never really considering how we want to show up. Our actions seem inevitable. One of my students said, “99% of the time the way I want to react to one of my emotions makes the situation worse.” Sage words. With practice building emotional regulation skills, we can become more intentional. Name the emotions, create space, and then consider how we will react.
For example, most us us feel bad when a co-worker makes us angry and we might passive-aggressively make a snide remark to get back at them. If we had taken a minute to reflect, we might have seen how to fix the situation that made us angry. We might not have found a solution, but we could have addressed the situation in a direct conversation and gone home feeling good about ourselves instead of being embarrassed by our sophomoric behavior.
For Stoics, it is human to feel anger when we think the world is unfair. It is less than human to blindly follow that anger to actions we regret.
If we can recognize and name our emotions quickly, it’s not all that difficult to create some separation and allow time to respond instead of react. Here are some pro-tips to create space between you and your emotions:
- Take a deep breath. Taking intentional control of an automatic process like breathing forces us out of our emotional thought patterns and allows us to think objectively about what we should do with our feelings. I see people (ahem me) ignore this because it is so simple. In reality it takes a lot of strength and discipline to do it. Try it today, you’ll have a chance.
- Reframe the story. Stories move us. Paul Zak’s research shows that we actually feel the same emotions as people we hear about (or see in movies) because our bodies release hormones similar to those we would experience in that situation! If you reframe a story, you can change your emotional physiological reaction. Telling yourself you are excited about a challenge instead of anxious about it can change your response. I know it seems silly, but this one takes creativity and discipline.
- Practice equanimity. This concept of not labeling things as good or bad can be immensely helpful for managing emotions. The best imagery I have seen asks you to imagine yourself as a spinning top. If something unexpected creates a strong emotion and knocks you off center, how long does it take you to wobble back to stability?
Emotional regulation is hard work – fuel up!
We all laugh about the classic Snickers bar commercials where a person is acting out their emotion and then some candy makes them reasonable again. It’s funny but it’s true. Big emotions become manageable with a little self-care. When something seems insurmountable, I like to “sleep on it.” Taking care of our body with good nutrition, fitness, and sufficient sleep gives us the bandwidth or capacity we need to regulate our emotions. Physical energy helps us generate energy in all domains of our lives, including emotional energy. Taking a step back to work out, grab a snack, or take a nap will give you the energy to work through the emotion and help you create some separation between you and the feeling. If you sense emotions rising on your team, advocate for a quick snack break.
Pro tip: Expressing gratitude is a surefire way to increase your emotional energy. When your boss gives you bad news or your kids run you ragged, find someone somewhere and shoot them a text expressing something you appreciate about them. Then email me to thank me for this tip… double benefit!
Emotional regulation skills help you show up the way you want to
Emotions make life beautiful, but left unchecked they also make life hard. To regulate your emotions more effectively, learn to identify them, create separation between the feeling and your identity so you can respond, and when all else fails grab a candy bar.
Want more? Check out my favorite resources on the topic below, and check out other blogs in our Emotional Intelligence series.
You can also sign up for our leadership tips email to get this straight to your inbox!
The Extended Mind Book about introception and thinking broadly.
Atlas of the Heart Book to help understand and label emotions. A few pages on each of the 87 common emotions we experience!
Primal Leadership Book about emotional contagion and using emotions as a leader.
EQ 2.0 Book with tips on improving in all four domains of EI.
Permission to Feel Book that details the RULER method for understanding and regulation emotions.
How Emotions are Made Book about the social influences on our emotional experience.
Permission to Feel Podcast with key points from Permission to Feel book.
Why You Should Not Trust Your Feelings Article arguing against completely trusting your feelings – a counterpoint.
Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On? Article arguing for a more comprehensive understanding of EI than “being nice.”
Emotional Intelligence is a Trainable Superpower Podcast episode discussing ways to develop EI.
1990 EI Article from Salovey and Mayer The first academic article on EI, and a different way to understand the concept from the way GOleman popularized it.
Emotion Wheel on Medium Wheel of emotions useful to label with granularity.
Mood Vs Emotion Quad chart using energy and quality to help identify particular moods.
