You can’t always control the situation. You may be facing a tough client or getting harsh criticism from a social media site or on the wrong end of a condescending remark. What will you do then?
Running and hiding, defensive retaliations and freezing aren’t good options but they are often reflexive. And they happen fast. Before you know it, you are quickly hijacked by a negative emotional state and your behaviour begins to spiral downwards.
When this happens, people often try to “talk themselves off the ledge” with phrases like,
- “Just calm down” or
- “Don’t worry” or
- “Take it easy”
Think back to the last time someone told you to calm down while you were very angry or anxious. How did that work for you? If you are like most people, it probably wasn’t very effective. It may have even ticked you off.
These mere platitudes don’t have a lot of impact. That’s because it feels superficial. And there is a good physiological reason for that.
Thinking is not enough
The human ‘thinking brain’ (Neocortex), while able to understand rational complex ideas, is actually not as fast or powerful as our ‘emotional’ (Limbic) or ‘physical (Reptile)’ brains. One evolutionary reason is that the emotional and physical brains are 60 million and over 350 million years old, respectively, while the rational brain is about 1.5 million years old. The older brain’s fearful fight, flight and freeze responses are more ingrained in our DNA than the relatively young thinking brain, at least in evolutionary terms. They also respond a lot faster than the thinking brain - in hundredths of a second.
So you need a tool that connects directly with your emotions and physical brains. Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that you can use anywhere, anytime and with anyone? And not just any tool. It has to be portable and able to be implemented fast. Preferably within three minutes of the encounter.
You can now get that tool in a method I developed to help entrepreneurs just like you.
With this tool you will know what to do when…
- you feel highly anxious or very sad
- You react “irrationally” and don’t know why it happened
- You feel unmotivated and tired
- Your body starts to withdraw in reaction to a criticism
- You are feeling overwhelmed by yet another commitment to which you couldn’t find a way to say “no”
Inside of each of us there is a better, higher self, I call your True Self that has the ability to regain control of your fearful states.
Isn’t it time to stop allowing it to be pushed aside and instead learn how to begin using it to your advantage?
Live Your Dream at Work
Dr. Sam Gerstein
Business Strategy Coach, MD, Author
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