I was taking my son to catch a bus back to college, which is always an ambivalent emotional situation. We’re in a little bit of a whirlwind because we’re not sure where the bus station is located. Finally, after we’ve located the station, we settle in to wait. All of the sudden I hear a loud cry all the way from the other side of the street. Honestly it was enough to stop traffic. I almost gave myself whiplash trying to see what was going on.
The tension slowly eased as I realized it was the cry of a baby.
I watch the parents struggle to figure out what the baby may possibly want. It was warm out, so they put shade over it’s carriage. The crying continued. The father tried offering a bottle. Still the crying went on. They exchanged concerned looks, unsure of what to do. Finally the mother took out a pink stuffed unicorn and placed it into the carriage (I\’m guessing the child took it). ‘Lo and behold, the crying subsided. Both parents smiled in relief, looking like they had just run a marathon when, actually, what they did was speak in their first language to their child: emotions.
No matter what you think, the very first language you ever speak is not native to the country that you’re from. It’s not English, Japanese, Spanish, or Norwegian… The very first language you speak is emotions. Plain and simple. Just think about it for a minute. At one point we were all that baby I mentioned above. Do you honestly believe the first conversation you ever had with your parents was, “May I have some milk and please bring me a warm blanket?” I don’t think so. Most likely it was, WAAAAHHHH!!!! And your parents, just like the aforementioned ones, loved and worried about you (and quite possibly wanted sleep), so they tried milk, clothing, diapers, maybe a Teletubbie, or whatever childhood stuffed animal you had. Your ability to emotionally express yourself enabled your parents (who also speak “emotion” by the way) to meet your needs.
Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert in neuroeconomics, says, “I would conjecture something like 90 to 95 percent of our decisions, our behaviors are constantly being shaped non-consciously by our emotional brain system.” This doesn’t sound like a language we can afford to not have mastery over.
Now I’m not saying you should go into work with a pacifier in your mouth, hold your breath until your face turns red, or lay on the floor kicking and screaming, so you get that raise that you want (would be something if that worked though). What I am saying is, a better understanding of how you’re feeling and how other people are feeling does give you the ability to communicate more effectively and efficiently with yourself and the people around you.
Here are some tips to help you gain mastery over your emotions to better your relationships, increase your confidence in your style of communication, and effectively meet your challenges that you want to take on:
Build an emotional vocabulary– Just as ABC’s are the building blocks to our words, the signs and symptoms within our body help us read and understand what emotion we’re feeling. It takes incredible courage to build our emotional vocabulary, because our first response is often to react rather than to dive in and feel any of our uncomfortable emotions. But, when you start to feel uncomfortable, take a moment and do a body scan from head to toe. Are your hands sweaty? Does your chest feel heavy or tight? Does your face feel flushed? Stop and identify what’s going on for you physically. Then ask yourself, what is the emotion that I’m actually feeling that is giving me these bodily symptoms? Is it fear, embarrassment, anxiety, frustration, anger…? Over time you’ll be able to quickly identify the bodily sensations you feel and which emotions give rise to them.
When I was driving my son to the bus, we were having a great conversation. Then, all our light-hearted banter ceased when I asked the seemingly innocent question, “So, where is the bus station?” When my son replied that he had no idea, I immediately felt my chest tighten, along with my hands on the steering wheel, my eyebrows knit together in a frown, and my hand involuntarily raised to check the time. I immediately recognized this as my body’s response to the anxiety that began to roil around in my mind, snuffing out all of the earlier lightheartedness like a candle.
Ask yourself why – Emotions aren’t there to give us perspective, they\’re there to give us information. If we don’t want the emotion to make our decision for us (cause us to react just to relieve our distress), we need to ask ourselves, “Why am I feeling that way?” This gives us some space from the emotion that we’re having. If we’re feeling fear because a car almost hit us, we may not need to get too far into the ‘why’. But if the why reveals that we’re feeling fear because we’re going into something unknown and challenging that we want to do for ourselves, we may have other choices and emotions that we want to create for ourselves that would lead to a better outcome.
As I continued to drive, looking for a place to pull over and Google the bus station on my phone, I found myself automatically responding to the feeling of anxiety that had arisen, asking myself, “Why?” Why was I anxious? I quickly discerned that not knowing the location of the station meant we might miss my son’s bus. That, in turn, meant he would miss his train, and so on and so on. I was anxious because one misstep could set up a chain reaction that could take us days to sort out.
I know, I know, this is a first world problem. It wasn’t like my son was going to be abandoned in a major city, homeless, with no food or clothes on his back on the mean streets of Burlington. And, even if he had been, he would have figured something out, after all, he is 21 years old. My ability to quickly decode my physical sensations, identify my emotion, and make a decision that was in my best interest took only a matter of seconds. Those precious seconds were crucial so that, instead of allowing my subconscious mind to react to the perceived threat at hand… aka, a missed bus departure, I could choose to pause (pull the car over), regroup, and make some practical decisions to solve the problem.
At the bus station, the baby’s wail caused me to reflect on how I responded to my own emotional vocabulary, which has become so automatic for me. I didn’t yell or curse (both real possibilities a bit over a decade ago). I didn’t call my son names for not having that critical piece of information. Instead, I understood what was happening, I know myself enough to know I do well under pressure, but I’d do better if I pulled the car over. My son and I used our technology to find the location of the bus station, and then we were both able to feel and appreciate the physical sensations of relief replacing the anxiety.
When we get back to our emotional vocabulary, cultivate our skills at knowing why it’s there, and use the information it provides us, we become “proficient” in speaking the universal language that connects us all, no matter your creed, race, religion, faith, personality or otherwise… Having mastery over our emotional vocabulary not only helps us regulate how we feel, but allows us to communicate better with others and understand where they’re coming from emotionally as well, and ultimately have real choice over how we respond in any situation.
If you would like help lessening your fear and anxiety, reaching your goals, breaking habits, or creating new ones, I’d love to work with you. Just click the button or the link below for a free consultation and let’s talk.
