by Jenn Kaye
I was speaking recently to a group of employees in a corporation. During the training, we were covering communication skills for dealing with emotionally charged situations and the subject of how to handle your emotions came up.
Did you know that emotions have the ability to affect our performance, productivity and communications more than any single factor - including intellect, experience and expertise? They do. And yet, we are also repeatedly told that when we express our emotions we're being, well, too "emotional." As if that's something bad! So what happens, is that most of us, especially as women, attach ourselves to our story. We go on, and on ... .and on. We vent about an emotionally charged situation to our co-workers, our friends, our family, sometimes for days, or weeks at a time.
Even when someone we care about tells us it's time to let it go, we can't. It's almost as if the feeling of letting it go will then no longer give us the validation that we're right.
The problem with holding on to the story is that it drains you of valuable energy, time and positivity. And when you are drained, angry and all caught up in your righteous self you will rarely get what you want.
You see, we all have a story. Stories upon stories. About what happened to us in our childhood, how our supervisor or co-workers treat us, how we never seem to get the respect we deserve, about health, money or family problems. We identify so strongly with the story that we let our story define us. The truth is, it's not about our story. It's about what we learn from our story, and what we DO with our story - to become more powerful, make better choices, help others going through similar situations.
So, I was explaining this when one of my training participants raised her hand and asked the simple question, "How do you stop it?" I asked her what she meant and she replied, "How do you just stop having those negative fears and emotions? It's so HARD."
While I do have a simple system for how to work with your emotions in a more positive way, I answered her with this video. Please watch (and enjoy!)
