One of the goals of the Servant Leadership tools is to increase your awareness: awareness of where you are, where you want to go, and how you govern yourself, for example. Another way that you can bring awareness to your life is awareness of your emotions.
Some of us feel our emotions to the fullest and are all too aware of them. When that is the case, your emotions can control you and completely change the direction of your day.
On the other hand, you can tend towards suppressing your emotions and pushing them down. But refusing to feel an emotion doesn’t negate the fact that it exists. And, much like the conflict resolution style of avoidance, it only delays the problem into the future and doesn’t solve it.
But there’s a middle way to live, which we describe using the acronym LIDD: Listen, Investigate, Decide, and Dismiss.
Listen
The first step is to Listen. Think of your emotions as an alarm clock. When it goes off, you need to listen to it. You don’t shove an alarm clock under your pillows and wait until it hopefully turns off on its own. It jolts you awake and lets you know that there’s something you need to pay attention to.
Similarly, your emotions make you aware of the fact that there’s something you need to pay attention to or an action you need to take.
This is where the difference between controlling your emotions or letting your emotions control you happens. Because “I feel angry” doesn’t necessarily equate to “I need to punch something.” Instead, “I feel angry” means “one of my values has been compromised.”
It’s important to listen to the fact that the emotion exists and feel its presence, but wait and think before moving to instinctual action.
Investigate
That moves us to the next step, Investigate. This is where you ask yourself why the emotion was set off in the first place.
Which value was compromised or validated in a way that has elicited this emotional response? This gets to the core of the why of the emotion instead of just focussing on the what of the response. This also helps you make an informed decision on how to act that will hopefully lead to a better outcome.
Decide
The next step is to Decide. Knowing what emotion you’re feeling and what has triggered it, you can decide what action is necessary to take?
Remember the three things you can control:
- Your attitude and perspective
- Your actions and choices
- Whom you trust
You cannot control the circumstances that triggered your emotions, but you can control how you respond to them. Therefore, you can be an agent of change in your own life by deciding which actions are appropriate to take for a particular emotional alarm.
Dismiss
Finally, the last step is to Dismiss your emotion. It has served its purpose in letting you know that you needed to take action. So, once you have taken that action, you are free to thank your emotion for its service and let it go.
We get into trouble when we hold onto our emotions for longer than we should. Because emotions are alarms for particular circumstances, if you hold onto it beyond that point, you no longer have an active trigger point for that emotion but have tricked your brain into thinking that action is still required. That can put you on the defensive and make you more likely to make rash decisions.
Instead, you can let your emotion go after it has served its purpose and move on to the next thing.
Growing in your emotional awareness will help you to live in the moment and take charge over the three things you can control.
Gracie McBride is the Content and Systems Coordinator at The Crossroad.
