Behavioural Self-Control
SUMMARY
Do you find it challenging to keep your impulses in check as you navigate your emotions? Or do you have proven strategies that you utilize that help you to stay calm under pressure?
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the year and Master Coach Trainer. Today, I want to continue our conversation as we enter this second quadrant of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Management, by talking about a foundational competency of Behavioural Self-Control.
Behavioural Self-Control allows you to keep disruptive emotions in check, to be able to navigate them, allow them to take their course, and for you to be able to steer them in the direction by steering your thoughts and, therefore, your behaviour so that you get the outcome that you want.
Let me take you through a five-step process that I teach my clients to be able to - when that initial emotion happens - navigate it and steer it down the path that gives you that outcome.
Number one is to Name the Emotion.
Number two is to Audit Your Thoughts.
Number three is to Decide the Outcome.
Number four (this is a big one) is to Control the Sabotage.
Number five is to Choose The Strategy.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you find it challenging to keep your impulses in check as you navigate your emotions? Or do you have proven strategies that you utilize that help you to stay calm under pressure?
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the year and Master Coach Trainer. Today, I want to continue our conversation as we enter this second quadrant of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Management, by talking about a foundational competency of Behavioural Self-Control.
Most people have things that push their buttons, and then they react on impulse. It's like when you were young, and you just decided that you would give that girl a kiss on the cheek, and she was totally surprised and it didn't work out how you wanted it to work out. Or you abdicate control and give over the control of your behaviour to this inner-crazy person, and it causes conflicts to escalate all the time.
Last week, we had a look at how the brain works as data comes in, as the prefrontal cortex does what it can to regulate the responses of the emotions that we experience. I'm here to tell you that when we learn to control our behaviour - to manage it in a way that successfully takes us to a logical outcome rather than an emotional reaction - we can have way more energy, we can be unflappable, we can act on logic, and we can get much better results for ourselves, for the people we interact with, and for the greater good.
Exercising Behavioural Self-Control is taking back the remote control. It's when buttons are pushed, being able to decide what outcome you want to happen, to manage not the emotion but the response to it.
Behavioural Self-Control allows you to keep disruptive emotions in check, to be able to navigate them, allow them to take their course, and for you to be able to steer them in the direction by steering your thoughts and, therefore, your behaviour so that you get the outcome that you want.
Let me take you through a five-step process that I teach my clients to be able to - when that initial emotion happens - navigate it and steer it down the path that gives you that outcome.
Number one is to Name the Emotion.
You'll remember back when we were in self-awareness, we talked about the fact that there are at least 2000 words in the English language alone to describe the emotion you could be feeling right now. In fact, you could be feeling more than one emotion at any one time.
By labeling that emotion correctly, you're then going to have a strategy for the right emotion. So, the first thing you need to do is accurately assess, in a logical way, "what is the emotion I am feeling right now?"
Number two is to Audit Your Thoughts.
I love the word audit. You remember last week, we talked about the fact that whenever we go through a logical process, it lights up our neocortex. What you're doing is using "what" and "how" questions to audit and ask yourself, "what am I thinking right now?"
Number three is to Decide the Outcome.
When you decide where you want to go, you've got a much better chance of getting there. You can now ask yourself the question: "What do I want to happen here?" You've got something to aim to.
Number four (this is a big one) is to Control the Sabotage.
What is it that you do normally in situations that are emotionally charged? What is it that you say? What does your body language do that takes things down the path that you don't want to go? To do this, you ask another "what" question: "What could I say or do right now that would stop me from getting to where I want to go?"
Then number five is to Choose The Strategy.
So you've gone through a process of asking "what" questions. You know which emotion that you're going through. You know what you're thinking. You know where you want to go. You know what to avoid. So now you're in a state to employ a strategy that will actually get you there.
Over a period of time of repeating that strategy over and over again, you have now rewired your brain so that it will employ that strategy as you recognise that you're going through that emotion.
Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue our conversation in this quadrant of self-management by talking about stress and how we can use our Emotional Intelligence to reduce and manage our stress. I'll see you then.
