How to Build Your Emotional Agility

The prevailing wisdom says that negative thoughts and feelings have no place at the office. But that goes against basic biology.

00:00 The ability to manage one’s thoughts and feelings is essential to business success.
01:40 Step 1: Recognize patterns in your thought.
02:04 Step 2: Label your thoughts and emotions.
03:38 Step 3: Accept your thoughts and emotions.
03:17 Step 4: Act on your values.

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[elaver]

We always take about emotional intelligence. The originality of this training video is that it does not only define what emotional agility is or list it's components, but it provides important practical tips to control our emotions and feelings (e.g. taking 10 depress before we speak). I also liked the concept of workability. Believing that we can work on it is crucial in managing ones emotions. The take out is "trying to become the leader you want to be".

[tkay]

Perfectly timed, thank you. I will save to watch again regularly.

[cleytonarruda]

Just finished reading Susan's book and justo loved it. Indispensable to understand a little better how yo navigate in the world we are included

[lansingday]

I like how values drivenness is shown as Heartfulness, compassion for self, when, in the midst of thought forms and difficult emotions rising one can choose to touch the heart space and even with a kind of gentle massage. I like the ten breath pause/time-out. That's a good stretch of time. Why not teach conscious breathing to your core management team? Practicing the power of SOUL at Work. "Before we begin this meeting, let's breathe together.
Three conscious breaths (with a soft smile)".

[KiranKdarknightrises]

"Emotional Agility" - hearing it for the first time🙏

[alexisazria]

Very interesting video! Thank you for posting.

[nimzsakrajz]

If you know about Vipassana meditation, this will be very easy.

[christwodata]

It's okay. More tangible examples would be great.

[emmanuelmatuco]

2023 September 10- Comment Part5D- Animality- HBR youtube channel: The Explainer- How to Build Your Emotional Agility

(Tracer: Previous comments Part5A- Hell and Part5B- Hunger is in HBR-The Explainer: How to Build Your Emotional Agility. Please note, the succeeding comment are my personal commentaries of what I’ve learned. Not the official position approved by the organization that I am part of) Personal commentary starts:

Animality – A Life Condition

Let me start this discussion with a modern haiku I wrote and submitted for my poetry skillshare class.

rabbit steps on a gray shadow
…froze! Too late.
diving hawk snatched him up.

The life condition of animality, with all due respect to all animal lovers, refers to a state of life innate in all life, plants, fishes, animals, man, etc. In “The True Object of Worship”, Nichiren Daishonin characterized this life-state as: “foolishness is the world of Animality (cf, MW-1, p52). Another: “It is the nature of beasts to threaten the weak and fear the strong” (MW-1, p34).

We can all see this at play, primal, in the African savanna. Rabbits eaten by hawks. Hyenas eaten by lions and vice-versa. Every predator and prey is caught up in their immediate circumstances. An urgent and instinctive need for food and survival. The most feared, the biggest, is the Elephant. It can stamp a hungry lion into a pulp. Yet amazingly, this most dangerous of animals is a herbivore. It doesn’t eat lions.

Can you imagine, if this giant, this elephant, is a carnivore?

Why it evolved that way beats me. Probably nature’s check and balance. Sustainability. So ultimate power isn’t about size. Man, also an animal, is physically fragile. Physically powerless against rhinos, hippos, lions, elephants. Yet all these fearsome animals fear man the most. Why?

Fragile and small though, man has the god-like capability to create atomic bombs. Destroy all of them. End all life on Earth.

If all animals can do social media, like express their thoughts in linkedin, youtube or HBR, all of them would say – “collectively, man is stupid”. To these animals, we are gods. We were given God-like powers. Yet, with all those powers, we seemed to be hell-bent in destroying our “mother earth”.

The big elephant evolved to eat plants. They even use their powers to bring down trees so other smaller animals could hide in the fallen branches and escape from predators. These powerful Elephants helped achieve balance. In their actions, they are human-like. Man, some, in the life-state of stupidity, which is also another name for Animality, seemed to evolve to the contrary. Instead of promoting harmony with Earth, it seemed to evolve towards Earth’s destruction.

Greed caused financial crashes. It devastated habitats. Stupidity caused a pandemic. And possibly future ones. For what purpose do we manufacture and store them bio-weapons? Accidents will happen. Did we create bio-weapons to battle “elephants”? Or was it to destroy “ourselves”?

Going back, caught up in one’s immediate circumstances (Animality), the compass as to what is right or wrong is broken. Inside it, the moral foundations of collective survival and harmony seemed to be inoperable. “I need to flee now; I need to fight and eat now; let tomorrow take care of tomorrow”. It’s like a blazing fire is suddenly razing the African savannah, and every animal for himself. The sense of connectivity to each other or interdependency is gone. The inherent dignity of the person or the nation-in-front-of us is lost in the inferno of the immediate circumstance. World wars occur. Ultimately the “animals” survival gameplan is: “threaten the weak, and fear the strong”, just as the Daishonin described the world he’s in.

A person, a nation, forgot they have the “power” to step back, to transcend immediate circumstances, to think and act morally for humanistic goals. It’s a power born out of wisdom, not instinct. We, as the other animals looked up to is Humankind. God-like. They’re saying “Why become us? With your god-like powers, or wisdom, you can rise up from the life-condition of animality. Looked at our suffering”. In his “Letter from Sado”, Nichiren Daishonin said: “Fish want to survive; they deplore their ponds shallowness and dig holes to hide in, yet tricked by bait, they take the hook. Birds in a tree fear that they are too low and perch in the top branches, yet bewitched by bait, they too are caught in snares” (MW-1, p34). Imprisoned in their “immediate circumstances”, the “foolishness” of Animality, they fell.

Could “the bait of immediate circumstances” also lead to a great nation or civilization’s collapse? What if the “bait” of greatness takes advantage of a leader’s gullibility? What about debauchery? History’s got records. I’m sure, ChatGPT can secure an example from history. Probably that may explain why there are no records from past civilizations, even greater than the present. Probably.

I’ve concluded, those life-conditions, of Hell, Hunger, Animality, if allowed to be dominant in a leader, will only make matters worse. Is there a way out?

Sensei Daisaku Ikeda guided me with these words: “People only become human if they are educated as human beings. It is not birth that makes us such. Only when one is raised as a human being, does one become human. That is why education is so important.”

Constructive, collaborative, compassionate dialogue is a must. “Hell’s” prisoners can be released from incessant suffering through the deep compassion of a person. Sakyamuni sent the ray of light of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to Devadatta who have fallen into Hell. “Hunger’s” powers can be harnessed for good. A hunger to help others. Surely then, a compassionate education, institutions, great Professors from all walks of life, can choose to become “good men and women”, Bodhisattvas of the Earth, and help others find their way out of suffering too. I was mentored out of Hell, Hunger and Animality by Mrs. Fukue Daguman. By Sensei Daisaku Ikeda. By this Buddha called “Soka Gakkai”.

Let me close this discussion with the second haiku, in classical 5x7x5 form.

Candlelight flickers
palms joined, intensely silent
-child prays for a toy

(See you in the discussion of the world of Anger (the root of Wars) on the next comment. This is a commentary. You are my secret sharer, ala Joseph Conrad, and I am thinking/writing out loud. Emmanuel Matuco@ linkedin.)

[Qiaoli.]

Sorry for keeping coming up with “emotional damage”

[beatricet]

Why is the "leader" in this animation a man, and the voiceover a woman? Could it be gender bias? That men are typically leaders and women's voices are soothing? 🤔 The creators of this video should consider including a female in future leadership videos, not just for the voiceover.

[robertjansen]

Presenting a different race as the main character made viewers unsafe because of its stereotypes.