Activating Your Positive Emotions
We all experience positive and negative emotions in business and life. For sure, anger, anxiety and loss can be a motivator, but the most powerful motivation forward comes from our positive emotions. Our positive emotions are part of our emotional health and differ depending on life experiences, upbringing, genetic makeup, and other circumstances. They can also be shaped by a personal or business crisis, parenting, spiritual life, or innate characteristics.
Among the successful leaders we have worked with, the most ubiquitous positive emotions are hope, compassion, forgiveness, joy, generosity, empathy, and love. Few people possess all of them, and stellar leaders understand that developing positive emotions requires effort.
In our urgent world, you can choose to turn to your positive emotions to help you handle speed and disruption without falling into your negative emotions.
Tips to help Build Emotional Muscle
– Identify and understand your emotions. Use language to define the subtle differences in your emotional experiences. Experiencing and expressing your emotions in a healthy way will make a big difference in the way you feel.
– Demonstrating positive emotions like hope, compassion, joy, empathy, generosity, forgiveness and love is what sets happy and fulfilled people apart from negative, unhappy people. Moving from fear -based emotions like anger, irritation, and agitation to love-based, positive emotions will help you to be more positive.
– Avoiding, resisting, and repressing your emotions can cause you to express emotions in unhealthy ways. Pause to stop and reflect upon your feelings and find resilience—that inner reserve of energy and emotional equilibrium can help you handle life’s ups and downs.
– Don’t give up or give in to helplessness. We learn to give up when we perceive or experience no control over repeated bad events. When we give up, we have little resistance to adverse situations. If you fall into helplessness, you can’t perceive a setback as an opportunity.
– Awareness of yourself, others, and your environment is the key to understanding your emotions. When you are more aware, you can then lean into the positive ones and avoid spiraling into the negative ones.
Healthy & Conscious leaders are aware of themselves, others and their environment, and lean into their positive emotions.
View The Healthy Leader video on Positive Emotions