Commitment Number 3: Feelings
BY ME
I commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come, and I locate them in my body then move, breathe and vocalize them so they release all the way through.
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TO ME
I commit to resisting, judging and apologizing for my feelings. I repress, avoid, and withhold them.
Big Idea:
The third commitment of conscious leaders is to not
resist or recycle any emotions.
There's little room for emotions in the workplace.
People are taught to think with their heads only. That's even truer of leaders:
unconscious leaders think feelings and emotions distract from work, so they try
to repress them.
We repress our feelings in a lot of ways, and we all
know how it feels. Just think about the last time you felt uncomfortable about
something at work but didn't say anything about it.
Another way unconscious leaders resist dealing with
their feelings is by recycling them: getting stuck in a cycle where they feed their
emotions with thoughts that support them, like a jealous person looking for
evidence that their partner is cheating on them. This gets you stuck in a
self-perpetuating cycle of bad feelings that you never actually address.
Conscious leaders, on the other hand, are committed
to having high emotional intelligence. They know that feelings are a source of
wisdom.
Anger, for instance, is a sign that something isn't
harmonious some part of the whole needs to be fixed. Sadness is your body's
way of telling you to let something go. Joy is a sign that things are going
well, that you need to celebrate!