Tools to Regulate Your Emotions

The ability to keep your emotions under control requires more than a willing heart. Understanding a situation through the eyes of another and strengthening self-management and self-awareness skills are tools that can be used in your quest to regulate your emotions.

Seeing the Other Side
If you ever want to understand the type of person you are and how you behave, ask other people. It is easy to justify the things you do, so much so that it seems like everything you do is perfect. If you take an honest look at yourself, you would probably say not only is this perfection untrue for you, but it is unattainable for all.

Talk to your boss, co-workers or friends about how they view you. If someone says, ‘When everything is good you are a nice person, but if something doesn’t go your way, you have an explosive temper’, don’t get upset and don’t automatically say that it is untrue. Gaining this insight is a valuable tool for you to help regulate your emotions. Your emotions and how you express them is your responsibility. If you don’t like it, fix it.

Self-Management and Self-Awareness
Self-management can sometimes be a hard quality to tame when self-awareness produces a very arrogant and self-centered result. The strength to self-management and self-awareness lies in the balance between the two. Understanding who you are, the role you play, authority you possess are all very important, but when these things overshadow your ability to be consistent and accountable, this could cause a poor outcome. By the same token, if one lacks understanding of whom they are and their importance, this could also hinder their ability to be consistent and accountable. People who are aware of their methods of dealing with conflict and understand the bearing of their way of doing things aren’t as likely to make matters worse than those who are not aware of themselves.

Giving in Without Giving Up
Compromise is an unavoidable part of dealing with others in both the business world and in personal relationships. The ideal situation would be that everyone agrees with everything you say, but that is highly unlikely. Unless you live in a society that does not value diplomacy, this is a skill that will present plenty of opportunities for you to master it.

This can be even more of an issue when you are in a position of less influence. You may be expected to compromise at a greater level or even expected to follow the lead of your superiors, without regard to your own feelings or opinions. In either case, learning how to have your beliefs, while accepting the ideas of others and not causing tension in the relationship is crucial to your success in the work place.

Case Study

Henry was sitting at his desk and trying to type up a report when his boss, Todd, interrupted him. Todd told Henry that he was far too slow on his turnaround time. Todd wanted to get angry and say that he had more work this week than before, but knew excuses would get him nowhere. He tried to see that his boss must be getting the same treatment from his boss about the work output, and tried to simply tell his boss that he would try to work at a faster and more consistent rate. Todd thanked him and walked away, making what could have been an argument into nothing at all.