Bamboo Newsletter #36

Tools So Good To Improve Your Emotional Awareness That the Dalai Lama Paid for One of Them

From the Dalai Lama Instagram. I love how smiling and playful he often is. See below in Action Items for Dalai Lama Free Upcoming Live Zoom to Harvard on Leadership and Happiness.

Tools So Good To Improve Your Emotional Awareness That the Dalai Lama Paid for One of Them

If there is one area that I have had my biggest growth in, it is about emotions or feelings.  While I have been exposed to understanding a wider range of emotions and tried to be happier, with books like the How of Happiness, and Happier, I was unaware that there was what some call an Emotional Operating System, which I learned from Dr. Deb Sandella (RIM).

Awareness of our feelings is extremely important for our health, work, and relationships.  Yet most of us are unaware of our feelings or don’t know how to handle well our emotions. Below we will introduce the Atlas of Emotions (Dalai Lama) and LALA (my most used emotional tool).

Why Emotional Awareness is Important

Research shows that chronic negative feelings have a major effect on our health.  As reported in Goodbye Hurt and Pain by Dr. Deborah Sandella, a study at the University of Minnesota found that depression increased the risk of stroke by 86%, stress 59%, and anger by 100%.  Another study at Emory University found that women under age 55 with depression had twice the risk of dying from heart conditions.

Similarly, we are well aware that for our work, EQ outperforms IQ.  How we are feeling gives better results in thinking as an automatic response to life. Travis Bradberry, the co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, notes EQ is the strongest predictor of performance in business.  90 percent of top performers are high in EQ while just 20 percent of bottom performers are high in EQ.

In relationships, Dr. Jeanne Segal notes on HelpGuide.Org

“Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the secret of lasting intimate relationships, largely because it makes us extremely aware of the changes—large and small—that are constantly occurring in ourselves and others. By building your EQ, you’ll have the sensitivity that each of us is always seeking in a significant other. You’ll automatically sense, through active awareness and empathy, the little shifts in the dynamics of your romance that signal a need for action.

We have the potential to attain the kind of love we all dream of—deep intimacy, mutual kindness, real commitment, soulful caring—simply because of empathy, our innate ability to share an emotional experience. But to reach the height of romance we need all the skills of a high EQ: sharp emotional awareness to avoid mistaking infatuation or lust for lasting love; acceptance to experience emotions that could harm a relationship if left to fester; and a vigilant active awareness to apprise us of what’s working and what isn’t.”

As Part of Being Conscious, Our Emotional Awareness Becomes More Important

As I noted in my Part I review of Superpowered (Bamboo #33), when we were young emotions overwhelmed most of us and we were left wounded with limiting behaviors and created a range of adaptive behaviors.  As we become conscious in the second half of our life, many of us find that consciousness comes with a whole new set of issues. 

As James Hollis notes in his book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Grow Up, “The first category of inevitable existential, childhood wounding we may call overwhelmment, namely, the experience of our essential powerlessness in the face of our environment….In the face of this overwhelmment, the central message is, again, that one is powerless to alter the course of the outer world.  How that message is internalized, and extended into our coping strategies, is a matter of almost infinite variety.  However, it is possible to see three major categories of reflexive response.”

The first category is to try to evade the punitive effects by retreating, avoiding, procrastinating, hiding out, denying, or dissociating.  The second possible response would be to seize control of the situation which leads to many sociopathic personalities because the child has internalized the core belief: “the world is hurtful and invasive.  You must hurt or invade it first, or be hurt and invaded instead.”  The third category: “give them what they want”—which creates a society full of codependents.

As we consciously become aware of these adaptive behaviors, we need to excavate and find our original true selves and also how to eliminate these limiting adaptive behaviors and beliefs and replace them with our own original selves and new empowering beliefs.  This becomes a major part of our transformational journey or personal development in order to have better well-being, peace of mind, relationships, and abundance.  Yes, this is hard and difficult work, however, it is part of our hero’s journey, conquering the dragons within. 

The first part of this hero’s journey is learning how to become more aware of our feelings and emotions, and learning to listen to the messages which they are sending.  The rest of this article tells you how.

Emotional Operating System

This emotional operating system operates in the body much like any of other senses, hearing or smell, or pain, hunger, and thirst.  The emotional operating system sends signals that we have learned to identify as being happy, sad, angry, jealous, etc.  This emotional operating system sends these feelings that have messages via these emotions.  Worry is a form of warning or challenge.  Anger for example is that something is violating our boundaries or sadness is due to loss.

What Happens When We Don’t Know How to Handle Our Emotions

Emotions are like a river.  If we allow the emotions to pass through us and listen to their messages, the emotions will eventually pass through our bodies.

In addition, when we don’t know how to use our emotional operating system, it leads us to develop many problems such as core wounds and beliefs, trauma, trapped emotions, phobias, and adaptive behaviors.  These issues leave many of us operating at our sub-optimal selves.

Many of us were not thought about how to handle our emotions properly.  And when we were younger we faced overwhelming situations such as being abused (physically, sexually, or emotionally), bullied, given tasks we couldn’t handle like caring for an alcoholic parent, or had a bad math teacher and it made us feel like we couldn’t do math.  These are the issues that we need to excavate.

It is also important to understand that when these emotions become unresolved in childhood, they remained stored energetically in our bodies; hence trapped emotions. These strong emotions and an event led our systems to store the emotions in our body and also to develop beliefs and adaptive behaviors that created our modus operandi for the rest of our lives. 

The Atlas of Emotions

Our emotional operating system is an important system that operates in the human body.  A project, called Ekman’s Atlas of Emotions (www.atlasofemotions.org) looked at all the research on emotions and did surveys across global cultures.  The Dalai Lama sponsored the project “In order to find a new world, we need a map, and in order for us to find a calm mind, we need a map of emotions.” The simple goal was to help people be aware of their emotions. The initial project only identified 5 universal main categories of emotions that 76% to 91% of global cultures could agree on: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, and Enjoyment. 

Enjoyment originally slated as happiness has a range of different descriptions from less intense to most intense as seen below (all pics were taken from www.atlasofemotions.org website).

Similarly, Anger has a range of states from less intense to most intense as seen below.

The Response Is Our Choice

What the project also teaches is that we have a choice of the responses based on our state. 

So for example, if a friend gets angry with you (event), you could feel the emotional state of fear (the emotional state with a range of intensity) and then choose a response (response) such as imagine them leaving.  This is the classic equation E + R = O.  The Event, plus our Response, equals the Outcome. 

However, the Atlas of Emotions takes it one step further.  E + (Emotion) + R = O.  In the middle, we can feel our emotion as a signal or message and this will help us choose our response. For example, a friend gets angry with you (Event), we may actually feel enjoyment (EMOTION) and we gloat (Response).  We need to feel our feelings i.e. be aware of our feelings before we choose a response. This is illustrated below.

Illustrated Example

 

Note that the Outcome may be that the friend punches you because you are gloating. So we need to be aware of our feelings and choose our response appropriately.

If the Feelings Were Anger

Another possible emotion may be that you feel anger that your friend is angry with you. And the response may be that you argue with your friend.

When we feel Anger, the Response though is up to us.  We can choose a variety of responses when we are Angry; assuming we are conscious of the emotional state we are in i.e. anger.  We could argue, scream/yell, use physical force, insult, or just suppress the anger.  The Response or R is ours to choose from a range of anger responses.  We are 100% Responsible for our Response.  This is show below.

If the Feelings Were Sad

If we were Sad, we would have a different range of responses to choose from.  We could ruminate, withdraw, or seek comfort.

The beauty of the Atlas of Emotion project is that it now gives us another tool in our E + R = O equation.  It provides us feedback via our emotions of how we can decide to respond.  The important part is that there is a pause in between the event (i.e. trigger) and the response.  We get to feel the emotion that the trigger (event) causes and then we can consciously decide how we want to respond. 

Emotions are Messengers

Just as importantly, when we understand that each emotion has a message, it will help us to choose the correct response.  

Anger: the message of boundaries are being violated; say no or stop.

Sadness: the message of loss; we need to reach out for comfort or love to others

Fear: the message of danger or challenge; is there danger? or is this worry?

Disgust: the message of something to avoid; avoid

Enjoyment: the message of doing more or savor; be happy

So once there is an event, we can feel the emotion (that is how our body is reacting to this even), then we can interpret the message from the emotion, and then decide how we want to respond, depending on our beliefs and values.  This helps us with our awareness to consciously choose a good response. 

The LALA System for Handling Emotions

While the LALA (Locate, Accept, Listen, Act) system was not in the book SuperPowered, I learned it from the authors Renee Jain and Dr. Tsabary during an Optimize.me Coach Zoom meeting.

LALA is now one of my most used tools during the day.  Often, we are afraid of the emotion and we “trap” the emotion inside of our bodies because we don’t want to feel the emotion.  Understanding that emotions are like a river and need to run their course, feel and listen and allow the emotions to pass through the body.

• Locate the emotion in the body and feel it.  What’s the size, shape, and color of the emotion.

• Accept the emotion.  It is ok to feel the emotion.

• Listen to the emotion.  What is its message?

• Act on the emotion.  Decide what your response will be and do it.

Locate the Emotion

So when we locate the emotion in our bodies and can sense the size, shape, color (also dimension, temperature, weight, texture, etc. can be used), we activate our imaginations which allows us to communicate easier with our emotions.  It also brings our presence and awareness, our consciousness, back to the now and integrates ourselves.

Accept the Emotion 

When we allow ourselves to feel the feelings, we let ourselves know that it is ok to have feelings and we can get comfortable with having feelings, whether the feeling is good or bad.  When we were kids, we were allowed to feel and express our emotions.  Think of a crying baby. 

However, sometimes, the emotions got too overwhelming and that lead to trapped emotions.  Or we were told we could no longer express our feelings. However, as adults, if we just allow ourselves to feel the emotions and allow our soul and spirit to be heard consciously, the emotions will eventually pass through. 

For example, recently, when my friend died, I would normally not want to feel the sadness that is associated with knowing I will miss him.  I was able to go into the sadness and it was over a weekend deeply and another week.  However, now I can say that emotions have passed their point of significant intensity and duration. 

It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel sadness again while I am writing this note.  It means I am able to feel the sadness and accept it and have it go through my body and complete its task.  I am able to listen to it and act by giving myself self-compassion and love.  These are the two next parts of LALA.

Listen to the Emotion 

As noted above, emotions have messages. Not only general things like fear is danger.  Emotions can bring back entire scenes or issues and multiple things.  Our imagination (memory of the past events) is the communicator for our emotions, so it may bring us images or sensations or sounds or knowings (depending on if we are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). 

For example, in thinking about my friend who died, my memory recalled a picture of good times, when we visited our mentor together.  My imagination also projected future events when I need someone to talk to.  These are messages that the emotion of sadness is sending to me.  If I want to, I can talk to these emotions and ask it questions as to what it is trying to tell me (this is a technique used by both RIM and Clear Beliefs). 

For example, my sadness is currently located in my stomach.  I sense its size, shape, color, temp, weight.  It is the size and shape of a football, blue, cool, and weighs about 6 ozs.  I then ask, “what message do you have for me”.  “I am sad.  I really wish you had gone to see your friend before he died.  I am really sad I won’t be able to talk to him.”  I say, “go ahead and speak whatever else needs to be spoken”. 

It responds, “I want to make sure you get closer contacts with your family and friends.  Have a plan that you will do this more often and don’t let something like this happen again.  You should not have any regrets about not seeing the person or saying something you wished to say.”  I respond, “thank you.”. 

So here, the message was much longer than just a feeling of sadness and need to be with other people for love and affection.  The sensation or feeling also wanted me to be a better family member and friend.

Act on the Emotion

Act on what you heard.  E + (LALA) + R = O.  The last part of LALA is action and this is our Response to the Event and what we felt about the event and thought about the event.  So when we are conscious, we are aware of our feeling and our thoughts, which allows us to consciously respond to the event. 

This may all be happening in a split second or two.  However, with increased awareness of our emotions and our thoughts, we will have acted, hopefully, in the best interests of everyone with love, kindness, and compassion. 

Interestingly, when we act on our “gut” feelings i.e. the message of the emotions, we make better decisions than acting on just thoughts.  EQ beats IQ.     

Action Items:

1.       Become aware of your feelings.  When someone asks you, “how are you today?” instead of just responding “Fine”, really try to feel what you are feeling. Is it one of the 5 main emotions or something else?

2.       When making a decision, in addition to your thoughts, ask your body how you feel about the decision or the matter.  Then use LALA to interpret the messages and take action.

3. Live Webcast Conversation

January 17, 2021, at 9 am India (Jan. 16 at 10:30 pm Toronto Time)

His Holiness the Dalai Lama will engage in a conversation with Prof. Arthur Brooks of Harvard University followed by a question and answer session with students from 9 am to 10 am (Indian Standard Time). The conversation is for his class on Leadership and Happiness at the Harvard Business School. Those interested may watch the live webcast in Tibetan, English, Chinese, and other languages on the official websites and Facebook pages of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Viewers are requested to please follow their local social distancing rules.