Do You Need More Emotional Agility? How do you deal with your difficult emotions?
Do you try to wish them away, bottle them up or stew over them? And do you get worried that you’re worried, unhappy that you’re unhappy or stressed that you’re stressed? Is there a better way to deal with these emotions? Let’s face it, no matter what you do it can be impossible to avoid these emotions. They are just part of life’s ups and downs, disappointments, and hurts. “Undervaluing some emotions and overvaluing others can be toxic in an increasingly complex world,” said Susan David from Harvard Medical School and author of the bestselling book Emotional Agility when I interviewed her recently.
Susan explained that being too rigid about which emotions are good or bad can lead to judgments that can diminish your compassion for yourself and others, and make you less resilient in the face of life’s challenges. Susan suggested that emotional agility is critical for building psychological safety in yourself and within your workplace. The gift and power of emotional courage [ TED Talk : Susan David ] The Tyranny of Relentless Positivity. We are caught up in a rigid culture that values relentless positivity over emotional agility, true resilience, and thriving, says Susan David, Ph.D., a Psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and author of the book Emotional Agility.
And when we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. In this TED Talk, Dr. David explores why tough emotions are essential for living a life of true meaning and, yes, even happiness. Susan David, Ph.D.: “In South Africa, where I come from, “sawubona” is the Zulu word for “hello.” There’s a beautiful and powerful intention behind the word because “sawubona” literally translated means, “I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.”
This crucial question has been at the center of my life’s work. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. Now, don’t get me wrong. Find Happiness by Embracing All of Your Emotions. Our culture places a high value on happiness—having the best job, house, the most friends, things in general.
We’re constantly in a state of grasping for something—filling ourselves up from the outside. And it’s totally bumming us out. Susan David is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. She says our obsession with happiness hinders our ability to do the hard work of living: being able to recover from setbacks when we inevitably make mistakes, or lose a job—you know, when that picture-perfect veneer we were working away at starts to erode.
It is really important that as human beings we develop our capacity to deal with our thoughts and emotions in a way that isn’t a struggle, in a way that embraces them and is with them and is able to learn from them. David suggests we instead focus on what’s important for us, and happiness will become “a byproduct of that focus”: What Is Happiness Anyway? Emotional Agility. Executive Summary Reprint: R1311L The prevailing wisdom says that negative thoughts and feelings have no place at the office.
But that goes against basic biology. All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include criticism, doubt, and fear. David and Congleton have worked with leaders in various industries to build a critical skill they call emotional agility, which enables people to approach their inner experiences in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way rather than buying into or trying to suppress them. Recognize your patterns. Label your thoughts and emotions. Accept them. Act on your values. Sixteen thousand—that’s how many words we speak, on average, each day. Mental Strength. Values.
Self-Compassion. Coping. Emotional Agility Insights Quiz. What to Do When You Feel Stuck in Negative Emotions.
Emotional Skills. Emotional Agility [RSA Replay]