Coaching Videos & Tips - May 9 2019 No.602
PREPARING FOR SUCCESS
No, I'm not talking about the logical, structured and planned way the ordinary person prepares for an upcoming important event or engagement. For example, you can't script an important conversation (because you don't know what the other person has in his or her script)... so what's the point! Instead, the most important preparation starts and the end... but there's an important twist in the tail - you're going to have to watch the video to find out what that might be!
Don't forget, you can browse all previous videos, tips and reflections in The Archive
Control your emotions! Very often, when we find ourselves in challenging situations, we make them more challenging by getting emotional about them. When you find yourself becoming annoyed or frustrated, angry or agressive, fearful or anxious... stop.
of course, you can't tell your thinking mind to stop... it will just keep thinking all those useless thoughts that trigger the emotions. You need to do something concrete about it. So, when I say "stop", I mean start something else. Get in touch with one or more of your senses. You could take a few deep breaths, you could take a break, walk away or you could be something as simple as feeling the table top or seat of the chair... it's what one of my clients (in the power generation business) calls "earthing himself"!
I believe that love is the only proper emotion and, even at that, I'm probably talking about falling in love. All the other so-called emotions are not emotions at all, they are the apparently emotional by-product of useless thought. You find yourself in a challenging situation, you start thinking about how challenging it is and you begin to "feel" threatened or "feel" annoyed. I've put the word "feel" in "" because you're not feeling these emotions, you only think you're feeling them. But, to misquote Henry Ford, if you're feeling something, you are!
10,000 years ago, if we were threatened we acted - the stress response made sure of that. As functioning beings we've probably regressed becasue, nowadays, when we're threatened (or "feel" threatened!) we have too much time to think about it and, as a result, we don't act appropriately or in a timely fashion. Thinking about "feeling" threatened magnifies the threat... we frighten the living daylights out of ourselves.
That's what today's Quick Tip is all about. We are expert at whipping ourselves - if someone is beating is up, we will readily join in and you're never going to win a fight when it's two against one! As someone said to me recently, this is probably one of the most obvious examples of normal crazy everyday insanity.
Come to your senses (as today's tip suggests). Ground yourself in the here and now. Observe the present. Re-mind yourself of the importance of getting and staying focused. And do all these things when you don't "feel" the need - in doing so, you'll enhance your self-awareness to the point that you will self-check your "emotions" before they run away with you.
Two incidents from the last week about us and our emotions.
Just as I approached a respectable looking gent on the Roman Bridge close to my house, he tapped his 'phone, someone obviously answered and he started screaming - I mean pained screams from the depths of dispair and anger and, in a complete rage, threw his own 'phone into the fast-flowing river... I decided I'd just keep walking.
In the supermarket carpark, a middle-aged woman was bouncing on the bonnet of a car... I actually thought it was a joke (you know the way models often pose on the bonnets of flash cars!) but, actually, she was screaming at the car owner (no idea why) and, as I walked to my car, she squared up to the guy and started thumping him.
Gofor a stroll, take the train... all human life is there. And it's crazy.