Shortlist: Dr Alan Watkins – 5 steps to controlling our emotions

Leadership expert and neuroscientist Dr Alan Watkins, CEO of Complete, outlines steps we can take to improve our emotional self-regulation.

In his TEDX talk entitled ‘Why you feel what you feel’ Alan Watkins (a leadership expert and neuroscientist) argues that understanding why we feel what we feel is one of the most important aspects of human development.

He explains that emotions can predict our health and wellbeing, our motivation, performance and our sense of fulfilment – as well as our ability to make effective decisions.

And after understanding comes ownership and control. When we learn how to control our emotions we can become happier and more successful. In fact, we can change our lives completely.

Here, are his five tips for balancing our emotions:

1. Start to think differently.

Stop viewing others as the cause of your problems, whether that means your colleagues, boss, customers, the market, or macroeconomic conditions. The one thing you can control is yourself. You can move to a place that doesn’t feel overwhelming, exhausting, or constantly on the edge, regardless of what is going on around you.

2. Get a grip on how you feel.

When faced with huge workloads, do you feel panicky and out of your depth? This may be justified, but it doesn’t help. You have to choose to get on board, attack, and enjoy the thrill of the ride.

In addition, you must change how you feel about things. You cannot do any of that if you don’t first accept that it is indeed possible to control how you feel consciously; in fact, you are the only one who can do it.

3. Pay attention to your feelings.

How do you feel right now? Ask most people and they’ll guess. It’s not something you’ve probably ever really paid much attention to. You’re way too busy trying to get ahead of your to-do list to stop and think about how you actually feel.

When you do pay attention to your feelings, you may find it difficult to distinguish between different emotions. Over time, you will become better educated and your emotional palate can be developed.

4. Pinpoint your emotions.

There are 34,000 different emotions. You need to know where you are, emotionally speaking, to deal with waves of work pressure. By identifying emotions every day, you’ll notice a greater level of emotional self-awareness within three weeks and enhance your emotional literacy. Few people have any degree of awareness, or control, of this dimension of who they are.

5. Encourage an environment of self-motivation.

One of the challenges of leadership is motivating the workforce. Imagine a universe where people are self-motivated, where you don’t have to exhort them to a better state – they turn up to work already fired up and ready to go, each morning. Imagine the results you could generate if everyone in your workforce was optimally motivated every day.

That is exactly what can happen when people take ownership of their own emotional state. Leaders no longer need to drag, pull, push or cajole people, as they are already operating from a motivated and energetic place.