High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 526: How to Master Your Emotions

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Your mindset drives everything – how you live, the stress you feel, and how you lead. Remember all of your emotions are valuable –emotions are not good or bad. By labeling your emotions, you can understand what led to that feeling with curiosity and openness.  Power Phrase of the Week: “I respond with purpose and intention. I master my emotions.”  Quote of the Week:  “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” John Maxwell     

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. It is time to check in with Sindra Kampoff, and we always have some really good conversations.

How to master your emotions is our topic for today. Sindra, you usually start us off with a quote. I like this quote by John Maxwell. He said, life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. So this is perfect for me coming off of a very busy week and lots of emotions going on. But what inspired the topic for you today? Well, when I think about the questions that I get asked, and the most frequent questions I get asked, a lot of people ask me, you know, like, how do I stop my own negativity? And I think what's interesting is today what we're going to talk about addresses that. But to kind of start off, let's kind of think about how all emotions are actually important and

helpful. So there's a book that I really like by Susan David, and she wrote a book called Emotional Agility. And she describes that like one third of us judge our emotions or good or bad. And we kind of suppress them. We don't want to really want to feel them. But feeling our emotions is the first step to what she calls emotional agility, which means being flexible with our thoughts and our feelings so we can really be at our best every day. So what exactly does that mean to be emotionally agile? So it really means being flexible with our thoughts and our feelings. And I think the power of this is to help us get like unhooked when we feel kind of stuck with our emotions, our feelings, our emotional agility helps us get unstuck. And so what we know actually, it's connected to our success. It helps us be grittier, it helps us kind of unhook from these difficult emotions so that we can overcome setbacks,

just in a little stronger way. And the opposite, Lisa, would be called emotional rigidity, which means that we do get hooked on our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors, even though they don't serve us. So why is it so important to be emotionally agile then? So it's important because our thinking in general is really rigid and repetitive. And so the first step really to be emotionally agile is to see that all the emotions that we feel are really valuable. And what that means is that just by noticing them, how we're feeling helps us get unhooked.

And the second step is to really label how we're feeling. So we might ask ourselves, you know, what's the purpose of this emotion? But labeling our feelings can actually help us see that they're just information. They're just data on something that's really important to us. So when we get really upset about something, it's helpful to know, okay, what's really the purpose of this emotion? Because it's really showing you that there's something that you really care about. There's something that's really important to you. Because if you didn't care about it, you wouldn't feel it.

And so what should our next step be once we label the emotion? Well, when we're labeling it, what's really important is to say, like in our own mind, even saying something like, I'm noticing that I'm really frustrated right now, instead of like, I am frustrated right now. And it seems like a small difference. But the key is to notice that you're not your emotions. And so just by saying, I'm noticing that I'm sad right now or frustrated right now, helps you kind of see that you aren't your emotions. And then the second step would just be asking yourself, what's this emotion telling me? We can act independent of how we feel. So just because we're feeling this emotion doesn't mean we need to act like that.

And we can ask ourselves, what's important to us? What values do I want really guiding me right now? And using those to guide what you do is really the best way to deal with our emotions. So, Cinder, what's the benefit of what we're talking about today? Well, studies show actually when we label how we feel, it decreases our stress. It allows us to be more innovative and change and ultimately improves our job performance. And I would just say like as leaders, it's really important that we don't suppress how we feel that because sometimes our emotions and our feelings and our thoughts are really important to our success. And I'd also say like mentally strong people, they don't repeat the same kind of disempowering emotions

or stories in their own mind. They can label these emotions and then ask ourselves, what is this emotion telling me? I think that's one of the most powerful things that I'd like people to get from today. How would you summarize today for us? I would summarize that our emotions and our thoughts really drive everything we do, the stress we feel, how we lead, how we live. And so remembering that

all emotions are valuable. They're not good or bad, you know, our emotions in general. So just by labeling our emotions, you can understand, you know, what led to that emotion is ask yourself, you know, what is this emotion telling me is really important. So, Cyndra, what is today's power phrase? I like this one. I respond with purpose and intention. I master my emotions. I like that. A good thing to think about as we head towards our week today, and really every day, if we keep it top of mind. If people want to follow along, ask some questions, or see your work, where can we go? You can head over to Dr. Sindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. And what I'm talking about today is from my new book, Beyond Grit for Business. So you can see that book and then Beyond the Grit,

the original book over there. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.