Nine Questions for Dealing with Those Pesky Emotions

We're all weighed down by personal, emotional baggage. (Remember the 70s, when they were called "neuroses"?) Bottom line is there's stuff from our past that resurfaces again and again, often to our detriment. Often, we've convinced ourselves that whatever's happening now, and setting us off, is a repeat of what we've experienced in the past. If those experiences have been somehow traumatic or even just unpleasant, we're likely to (involuntarily) go right back there again. And the results can be destructive.

The Slow Leadership blog posted this great piece about how these issues can get in the way of our success and happiness. Any of it seem familiar? It sure did to me.

I worked out my own step-by-step process to identify when my "stuff" is getting in the way and what I can do about it. Since these incidents are usually flagged by the sudden appearance of some unpleasant emotion, I try to recognize it in real time and ask myself some (deceptively) simple questions about what's happening.

This can be difficult. My instinct is to try to ignore the emotional side. But since we usually act out our emotions in spite of ourselves, that's a losing strategy. So now I admit to myself that the emotion is trying to tell me something, and it's probably important. I try to welcome it, and look at it without judgment. I don't beat myself up about feeling it (even if it's ugly), or try to bury it. Instead I put myself in the role of observer and just look at it. I imagine myself as an uninvolved party looking on without any stake in things whatsoever. Just watching the action unfold from the sidelines.

And I ask myself the following 9 questions:

1. How am I feeling right now? (or, if I'm doing this after the fact, how do I feel when I think about what happened?) Am I angry? If so, what's behind that anger? Sadness? Fear? Guilt?
2. Why am I feeling this way? What triggered it?
3. How is that familiar to me? What does it remind me of? When have I felt that way in the past?
4. What assumptions am I making that need to be tested? What stories am I telling myself that may not, in fact, be accurate?
5. Given all the above, what am I going to do about it now?
6. Now that I've identified what is, what do I want?
7. What options do I have? Can I act on it? Should I act on it? Confront someone? Meditate on it? Pray?
8. Do I have an opportunity here for personal growth? Is there something I need to start doing differently? If so, how will I begin? (This is a great way to get out of the negative and back into the positive!)
9. How will I move forward now? What are my next steps?

Sometimes this is a tough process to go through. But it seems to get easier with practice. So far, so good.

So what's your strategy?