How Do You Function At Your Best When Life Is Giving You Its Worst?

May 22, 2012 - PRLog -- When you interact with a co-worker, supervisor, direct report or customer, they seldom know or care what else is going on in your life.  Imagine getting short with a customer.  Is it more likely to be met with a complaint to your manager or a sympathetic “Are things going well at home, dearie?”

While our lives might happen all at once, others interact with us in separated modules.  The customer doesn’t know or care that the last customer was a jerk to you.  The customer doesn’t care if the manager made you cry ten minutes ago.  The customer doesn’t care that you and your wife argued about a major purchase on the phone on your last break.  The customer only knows how you are interacting with that customer right here, right now.

In our personal lives, it is not much different.  A friend might be more concerned about what else is going on in your life.  Even so, a friend still won’t find your bad day a good enough reason to berate you.  Our child might understand that mom had a hard day at work, but that doesn’t make being screamed at and called names about a dirty bedroom and a missed homework assignment much easier.  A wife might be understanding that her husband is angry at his boss, but she certainly does not appreciate being the target of all the anger he dare not unleash at his boss.

Again and again in life we have to get a handle on things that bug us.  We have to get out of the stressful quagmire that drags us down into the muck and mire of negative emotions.  We need to live Above It All.

Author Scot Conway teaches a technique called Embrace, Elevate, Expand.  

“One problem is that we try to deny, resist or hide from what’s going on.  Each of these makes things worse in the long run.  When our problems are overwhelming, it is often because of these habits.”

Instead, Conway explains, we should Embrace.  “Think of it like wrestling or a jujutsu.  If you want to get control, you have to grab hold of the opponent.”  He says that reality is what it is, and simply accepting that fact gives us a chance to get control.

Elevate is a step done by “climbing the ladder.”  As an example, two steps in the ladder is to practice stepping up your feelings to thoughts, and your thoughts to choices.  By stepping up just one level at a time, we can shift to more effective and useful thinking.  

Expand is taking something in that thinking to other areas of our lives.  “If you did Embrace and Elevate well, Expand can help you actually do better in other areas than if you didn’t have the problem in the first place.” Conway says.

He admits that it is a skill to be cultivated.  “When you’re good at it, you can Embrace, Elevate, Expand quickly and apply the lessons immediately.  Since that takes practice, I have a whole collection of tools and techniques in my book to give you things you can do right now.”

What if you need to get hold of your emotions right now?  For that, he says “My book Emotional IQ includes a system for that.  It’s called Instant State Change.  It’s very powerful. I allows you to feel whatever you want to feel when you want to feel it.”

Sure, there are times we might really be angry, but we need to pretend to be happy, right?  Not so, Conway says.  “You actually want to FEEL the emotion, not just pretend.  I teach how you actually create the real emotion, right here, right now.”  

“I also teach why you do not ignore your negative emotions.  Those emotions all have messages in them, and you just ignore them at great risk,” he explains.  Thus his book Emotional IQ includes sets of lessons on what he calls “Emotions of Change.” Conway makes it simple and clear in his book.

Scot Conway, Ph.D., has authored Above It All: A Must-Have, Powerfully Simple Way to Launch to Exhilarating Heights from the Quagmire Below Commonly Known as “Life.”  Another of his books closely related to the topic at hand is Emotional IQ. Emotional IQ: Instant Emotional Genius in Quick, Easy Steps with a Single Secret Insight.

He reveals that he is finishing a new book on The Art of Letting Go (working title) about forgiveness.  As is his habit, he teaches it in a step-by-step, powerful way.  He provides a method to keep all the wisdom we can from every experience while letting go of the negative emotion.  He mentions this “Five Step Forgiveness Technique” in Above It All.  We look forward to his next book because everyone needs to know how to let go!

Above It All: A Must-Have, Powerfully Simple Way to Launch to Exhilarating Heights from the Quagmire Below Commonly Known as “Life.”
http://www.amazon.com/Above-All-Powerfully-Exhilarating-e...

Conway’s closely related work is also available: Emotional IQ. Emotional IQ: Instant Emotional Genius in Quick, Easy Steps with a Single Secret Insight
http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-IQ-Instant-Insight-ebook/...

Conway may be contacted at Scot@MasterRevelation.com.  He is available as a keynote speaker, corporate trainer and executive coach.