Emotional agility and the window of tolerance. Where we become more self-aware and better able to manage what life throws at us. This technology, this leadership, can help you move forward in a progressive way by improving your physical health, your mental and your relational health.
Video Transcript:
Emotional agility is kind of looking at it as a river. On one side, it’s rigidity. On the other side, it is chaos. And that’s how most people manage their life. They’re either rigid in their thinking. The world has to be this way or I’m not satisfied. Or on the other side, chaotic. In that, I’m just going to react to whatever happens around me. And both those sides create a lot of turmoil a lot of suffering and pain. In the middle is the window of tolerance and that’s what emotional agility is.
So, the lack of emotional agility puts us in the situation where we’re no longer in power. We actually are
giving it by being the victim to someone else. And as soon as that happens, we totally disconnect from
the ability to help ourselves. So first, taking it back is so critical. So, emotional literacy is about understanding our emotion. It’s not denying our emotions. I know I came from an Italian family and you know, as a jock growing up in high school, number one, for a guy to cry. Well, all that stuff is harmful.
When you feel something, if something sad happens, you should cry. Being tough to keep it down inside
does nothing but cause problems later. The need for your emotions to be expressed is very important. It’s when we take those emotions, internalize and deny them, project them, and no longer know how to deal with them; they then become kind of stuck in our craw, and then they create dysfunction because the things happening outside of you are not the things that cause the troubles. That your things inside you when you take it personal, when you don’t realize and recognize the world is just happening, the world is the way it is. When you start thinking the world has to be a certain way, that’s when all the troubles come.
So, the first step is for us in emotional management and emotional agility is to be able to understand
that stuff’s going to happen, it’s going to push our triggers. It’s how we respond to it that determines the
outcome and that determines everything in your life and in your health. Emotional literacy means that we’re actually starting to understand and study our emotion. Cool thing you can do is just – what am I feeling? What emotion is that? Am I fearful of something? Am I hopeful of something? Do I have joy? All those are important, but to recognize them, you start the journey towards emotional literacy. It’s when we understand our body is a beautiful thing and when it’s coherent when your physiology and your emotions and your thoughts are all in synchrony with each other, it’s like a beautiful ballet. But when they’re discord to each other, when one of them is off, it affects everything.
So, emotional literacy is first learning your emotions, being able to identify them, and then understand
how to release them so they don’t get caught up like coils that are pushed down inside where I’m not
going to feel grief, I’m not going to feel betrayal, I’m not going to feel those things. No, we need to address them and let them come up and let them naturally flow their course, and then we can get back to the reality, which is the reality of living. And the reality of living is not let your human predicament dominate you in your emotions and in your thoughts, but actually allow you in this area to plan your future the things that are important and put yourself daily in position and now take control of my emotions, my thoughts, and understand they don’t define me, I define me, that’s the key.
So, as we talk about this technology, I think back in my life, most people probably would think, oh, Dr.
A, you’ve got this amazing life and it’s been handed to you. It hasn’t, and I’ve had things happen to me
that have been tough.
A little over four years ago, I lost my wife. It was totally unexpected. Great shape and she just had a
cardiac arrhythmia and went. And that could have been devastating. And it’s certainly, I still today, you
see my emotion. By the way, the emotion I’m having now is when I think about her. She was so critical
to my life, but I’ve also known that I had to pick myself up and move on.
I can tell you this technology has been brilliant. Yeah, I’ll have thoughts, things will remind me and I’ll
have a moment of sensing that feeling and feeling a little sad, but the reality is, I’m thriving in my life.
I’ve never been happier in all the other aspects and I’m basically working and doing the things that when
I’m succeeding on that pathway, recognizing that stuff happens in our life. So, when people say, oh well,
you know, you don’t really understand. I do understand and I can’t think of anything more devastating
than what happened to me. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I feel as a tremendous obstacle in something I’ve grieved that it’s a way for me to grow and I know this technology has helped me. I know that if I didn’t have… if I wasn’t on this path, it would have been a lot harder.
The same thing for you. There’s a lot of stuff that we can let catch in our craw and really sabotage our
ability to function at the highest level. This technology will help you understand, understand that we
have no or very little control over anything outside of us, but we have full control inside to go on this
journey, this journey of self-exploration, learning emotional agility, learning to be able to step back and
be conscious and be the witness of what’s happening around us and understanding that includes not
just the physical world, but also our thoughts and feelings in the mental world.
That’s the beauty of this technology. It helped me tremendously and I know it can help you.
So, do this for yourself, do this for your family and your friends and come with us on a journey of
exploration to become more conscious of ourselves and the world around us.
