No matter how emotionally intelligent we are it all starts with your ability to manage your emotions or emotional regulation. Self-management is all about this. Self-management essentially aims to recall the techniques of self-awareness & manage emotions on real-time basis. Meta-cognition means your brain tricks you to procrastinate or delay certain tasks because of fear, discomfort so on, techniques of meta-cognition deals with these tricks, in turn tricks your brain to take action.
Here are the techniques:
1. Be mindful & Practice mindful breaths: details of performing mindfulness are given in the previous post; self-awareness. Mindful breaths not only enables you to maintain poise but also, enhances objective or critical thinking. No matter, how much EQ techniques we know it all starts with thinking, as thought is the womb of every action. Mindful breathing is an effective stress management technique. Being mindful throughout the day is a challenging task, it may seem impossible but the benefits outlast the efforts. Being mindful simply means being able to observe what goes on in your mind. Remember, mind is powerful beyond your imagination. Practice mindful breaths at least 5 numbers in the intervals.
Steps to mindful breathing are given below;
Close your eyes & focus on the nostrils.
Stay in the moment & observe the breath from the beginning till the end by being unbiased, unprejudiced & non-judgemental towards every thought you get in your mind.
Interestingly, it’s very easy to take care of our emotions at its inception. Being mindful throughout the day helps us in this way.
Credits- Pinterest
2. Deep breathing: If you observe our breath, we make shallow inhalation & exhalations. This indeed affects our emotional health. After, every short intervals it’s advised to take at the least 5 deep breaths. This rule is called 5 deep breath rule. Deep breathing enhances acuity. Deep breathing is an effective method to calm emotional turbulence. Deep breathing cures respiratory diseases & eases blood pressure levels. Deep breathing is prescribed by doctors for depression & other cognitive disorders like ADHD so on.
3. Prepare emotion v/s reason list:
Humans are emotional & have great tendencies to make decisions based on emotions. We encounter dilemmas while making decisions, because we simply cannot stay away from emotions. Each emotion we carry in our mind has a reason, chalking out the reason for each emotion can enable rational decision making. This is shared by a certified psycho-therapist from a renowned institute. It’s simple to create a emotion v/s reason list;
On the left-hand side of the page, list all the emotions that’s telling you to take action or make a decision.
On the right-hand side of the page, list all the reasons for their(emotions) existence.
Ask yourself, which emotions are clouding your rational thinking & ultimately decision making.
Reason them with sound rational thoughts & then take the decision.
This is an effective technique to make rational decisions. In the previous post we explained about critical thinking, which acts as a supplement to the above technique.
4. Count to ten before you react on anyone or anything:
This is basically a meta-cognitive technique. Each reaction is a reflex response to stimuli, to counter this we use techniques of meta-cognition. This requires to be mindful of what’s going on in our mind, when ever we you feel yourself getting frustrated or angry, take mindful deep breaths of 5, & start counting numbers from 1 to 10. If your mind isn’t calm, continue it for another round. This enables us to get a rational perspective of the situation you are in & what you can do.
FourMost of times, mindful breathing will solve the problem, if the emotional intensity & frequency is high, it’s better to use this technique. It’s also applicable on things because we have seen individuals reacting on objects. Basically, this cools down the heated limbic system or the emotional center of our brain.
5. Rely on the best teachers: It’s said that Time & patience are our best teachers. If we learn patience we can learn the lessons of time. Since, life is made of time, it enables us to learn life's lessons.
Whenever we are in anger at the uncontrollable, we react with fury, this is not required. Instead, we can be patient & take action when it’s the right time. We know that we can’t do all things now, but we can say it’s possible with time & by making our efforts. Also, by using the above methods can enable us to be patient & calm in times of crisis.
Credits- Google
6. Identify your emotions in movies, songs: This is one of the best methods to motivate ourselves during emotionally disturbed times such as depression. I will make sure to write a post on techniques to counter depression. Choose the movie or songs wisely so that it can inspire & motivate you to take action.
7. Take control of negative self talk: If we mindfully observe ourselves, we talk to ourselves a lot. Especially, when we are in a negative situation negative self-talk will be at its peak. This further aggravates our situation & problems. Taking care of negative self-talk through the day is really important. It’s said that each negative thought is like a virus, it can hamper the whole positivity of the person. Best way, to tackle this is inducing positive thoughts & introducing positive self-talk esp. during intervals, this profoundly influences your subconscious mind. Talking about positive aspects, good things & future prospects profoundly changes our life. Some say it’s a wrong to talk to ourselves, actually it’s not, as long as others aren’t noticing it, also we can’t go against the nature for long.
credits- Pinterest
8. Focus on prospects rather than obscurities: This is the fundamental concepts of positive thinking philosophy. Most of times, our mind needs one trigger emotion to think all about the wrong things. When we focus on prospects of our life, we tend to believe in it & manifest those beliefs. I will make sure to write a post on power of human mind, & the mental energy conservation techniques to enhance the power of human mind.
9. Learn a valuable lesson from everyone: this is really important. In our day-to-day lives we meet different people at different times & at different places. As humans, we are emotional, we make mistakes emotionally like wrong postures, body language, gestures so on. If we learn lessons from others’ emotional mistakes & also from our mistakes, we can definitely better our emotional regulation. Being mindful about what's going on around is the key to this. This can applied to events as well. Each important event in our life can teach us a valuable lesson.
10. Seek counsel: Most complicated problems are solved from counseling. If we talk to some one who aren’t emotionally connected to our life, we get different viewpoints of our life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) & Rational Emotive Behavioral therapy(REBT) are the two wonders of modern psychology. Counselors offer varied services related to behavior, thinking, marriage, companionship & other life problems. CBT is based on the teachings of stoic philosophy. It was started by psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis, who introduced Albert Ellis theory along with CBT & REBT respectively.
Credits- TQ quotes
11. Apply 5 second rule: this is a wonderful meta-cognitive technique discovered by Mel Robbins. Our brains are designed to avoid anything that’s uncomfortable, hard or scary etc. When we decide to take action, electrical impulses have to pass through limbic center(emotional center) to reach pre-frontal cortex, where the rational decision making take place. But limbic center stops those impulses, & thereby procrastinates the action, by giving trivial reasons like fear, etc. When we count backwards starting from 5 to 1, it tricks our brain & helps us to get through habit loop, thereby enabling us to take action(rational decision making). It’s one of most beautiful techniques of meta-cognition.
Credits- four minute books
In the coming posts, techniques to manage stress & anxiety. Also, techniques related to social awareness & relationship management will be covered. Emotional regulation is a skill the more we use it, the more skillful we will become, & more we can regulate ourselves.
Thank You all once again!!!😇😇
Yadu