Perceive emotions: be your own observer.

In the last article, I shared with you what is emotion and emotional management. In the next five articles, I will enter the second module of emotional management: the five-step method of emotional management. Remember my story mentioned in the first article of the emotional management series. At that time, I realized my emotions, accepted their existence, tried to understand the beliefs and expectations behind them, and finally found a foothold to adjust them. This process is to help us reflect and perceive our emotions, where I am stuck, and where is the breakthrough to solve the problem. These are the five steps of emotional management.

You may find it a little complicated. Emotions are coming up. Who remembers these five steps? Don't worry, this is a process of deliberate practice and gradual mastery. Let's disassemble it step by step.

Today's article focuses on the first step of the five-step method of emotional management: being aware of emotions: being your own manager. Let's start with a short story about the workplace:

Xiao Yang is a designer with about one year's working experience. His leader Dapeng left the company because of his career development. Lin Lin, the head of the peer department, was transferred to Xiao Yang's new leader. Lin Lin is very capable, clear-headed and logical, and Xiao Yang also believes in his professional ability. However, Lin Lin and Xiao Yang's original leader, Dapeng, have completely different leadership styles. The original superior will fully authorize Xiao Yang to complete a module independently. We reviewed the results together, and Lin Lin asked Xiao Yang to communicate all the details of the work clearly before the work began. She confirmed that there was no problem at first and let Xiao Yang start working. After working with Linlin for two months, Xiao Yang has never adapted to Linlin's management style and always feels tied behind his back. After lunch that day, Lin Lin sat down next to Xiao Yang and asked him to turn on the computer to revise yesterday's work report. The afternoon meeting was in a hurry and the report was opened. Lin Lin began to instruct Xiao Yang how to modify it. Make up this scene with your brain. The font here is a little small, and there are some problems with the symbols there. After a month, Xiao Yang secretly complained, wondering why leaders always use these edges and corners. 15 minutes later, Xiao Yang's heart was broken. Finally, when Lin Lin proposed a new revision point, Xiao Yang stood up with a "hey" and said, "It takes more time to teach by hand here. Come on yourself. " "。 Say that finish got up and went to the teahouse. The more I thought about it, the more unhappy I became, so I quickly made a decision: leave. So, back to my seat, I resigned with Linlin. Linlin was a little dumbfounded and didn't say much. The next day, Xiao Yang regretted that he was too impulsive, because he was satisfied with his current company and position, but he was riding a tiger and had to submit a formal resignation application.

The story is over, let's forget Linlin's management style. Let's say Xiao Yang. Did you notice a detail? Xiao Yang regretted his resignation, but he was forced to leave because of face. Xiao Yang's impulsive behavior under the guidance of emotions actually hurts his own interests. You may think Xiao Yang's mistake is too low-level. I'm not that naive. So, I also want to invite you to review your career:

Have you ever done anything similar?

1, angrily said something and did something.

I didn't particularly realize that I was in an "abnormal" emotional state.

When you calm down, you will regret it.

What you said or did caused some troubles, but you still have to deal with it yourself, which also hurt your own interests.

If you think about it carefully, I think you will also think that you have done such a thing before, but how can you not get into such an embarrassing situation? At this time, you need to be more aware of your emotions.

Awareness: it is to realize that you are in an emotion, what is this emotion and why you have this emotion at the same time. This feeling is like a third party observing itself and asking itself: What's wrong with you? Do you feel sad or sad? Why do you feel sad? In this case, we become observers or witnesses of our emotions.

As Jon Kabakin, a famous advocate of mindfulness-based decompression MBSR, said: Consciousness means keeping attention in a specific way-focusing on the goal, and there is no evaluation at the moment. This ability-is especially important for emotional getting along.

There is also an old saying in China: If you are not afraid to remember, you are afraid to sleep late. Here, "thinking" refers to emotion, and "feeling" refers to awareness. When we face our negative emotions, "awareness" is often the first step to solve the problem.

Why do I say that? I mentioned in the first article of the emotional series, what does emotional drive mean? It means that we have some actions because of something or excitement. Indeed, emotions can stimulate action. But there is really no rational participation, so let emotions sit in the driver's seat and directly drive our actions. Xiao Yang in the case is in this state. And our infancy has been in this state for a long time. What about awareness? It's like installing a safety valve between stimulation and reaction just now. When we realize that we are in a special state of anger, fear and anxiety, in short, we can at least remind ourselves: stop first and don't make impulsive choices in this special state. This is the first step for us to get out of autonomous driving.

We can also interpret the meaning of perception from the perspective of the physiological structure of the brain: according to the research of psychologists, there are two systems in the human brain: the action system and the intelligence system.

The action system will directly drive our actions, without rational participation in the whole process. At this time, emotions will be in a driving position. But in most cases, the behavior decisions we make are produced by the interaction of two systems. The speed of the action system responsible for emotional management is generally about 6 seconds faster than that of the intelligence system. In other words, when I encounter something that triggers emotions, we will completely listen to the command of the action system for about 6 seconds, and then the intellectual system will play a role. In the period when emotions completely drive us, if we don't realize our emotions in time, we will enter the state of automatic driving. And awareness is to help us not to act impulsively in this time difference.

Further, awareness not only makes us realize what kind of emotion we are in, but also makes us realize what and how much this emotion is. For example, the mood of "anger" is impatient when it is low, angry when it is high, and furious when it is particularly high. Xiao Yang just made the decision to resign in great anger. You can use the emotional color wheel in the picture to help you perceive emotions more deeply.

There is only one answer: deliberate practice. You can't finish reading the article today, and you can realize yourself like a third party when you are in a mood tomorrow. But if you do exercises once a day, I promise you, after two weeks, you will definitely see the effect. This exercise is called emotional diary. In the diary, we should write a true story that touches our emotions, and this story needs to contain several elements: trigger time, thought, emotion and action. Before that, let's distinguish between emotions, thoughts and actions.

Concept: Evaluation, explanation and cognition of objective events.

Emotion: it is a subjective feeling: anger, sadness, disgust, irritability and depression. ......

Behavior: What did I do and say?

For example:

I didn't mention the action in the picture. Should we continue to break the jar or regroup and make a more realistic study plan? It is possible, but remember that this emotional diary has actually taken constructive action against the protagonist of emotion and produced positive effects. How to adjust my helpless and frustrated mood, I will share it in the next article ~

Ok, that's all for today's article. Let's summarize the main points of this article:

1, awareness is to keep your attention in a certain way without any judgment.

Consciousness is the first step for us to deal with negative emotions.

3. Consciousness can help us get out of the state of automatic driving.

Writing an emotional diary about "event-thought-emotion-action" can improve your consciousness.