Separate Emotion From Intellect
Now let’s discuss the third element of the Mental Game, the idea of being able to separate emotion from intellect. This is an extremely important concept, especially in the business world.
I’m sure you’ve seen far too many business owners who allow their anger to flare up when least expected. They lose days or sometimes weeks of productivity because they’re so wrapped up in the emotions of what’s going on in their business, instead of taking a step back and handling the situation logically and from a more success-oriented perspective.
How well do you handle this in your business?
How well do you handle a surge of negative emotion? Do you allow that to throw you off course and become less productive and maybe lash out at people, causing even further damage in your business?
Or are you able to weather the storm and make educated, intellectual, productive decisions, despite the fact you may be angry or upset or insulted or whatever else is going on with you?
Here’s an excerpt from a previous course I made, Mindset Before Profitability, where I dive into this topic a little bit. I’d like you to think on this from the perspective of how well you’re able to separate emotion from intellect, and hopefully some of this sticks with you and gives you something you can work with in your life.
“…a positive attitude can be more challenging to maintain on some days than on others.You can maintain your positive mindset even when you don’t feel like it.When you face challenges, or feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities, it can be difficult to maintain a positive attitude.
Try these techniques to uplift your mood and experience the inner peace you deserve: HOW TO MAINTAIN A POSITIVE MINDSET WHEN YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE IT!
- Start your day with something positive. Decide each morning that you’ll start the day headed in the right direction. Instead of waking up on the wrong side of the bed and setting the stage for a grouchy day, resolve to experience something positive first thing in the morning.
- Set exciting goals. If you wake up each morning with nothing to look forward to, your mind may quickly latch onto negative feelings that can last throughout the day. Give your life focus by setting goals that motivate and excite you. Write those goals down and review them every day. Each day, take some small action that brings you closer to attaining your goal.
- Surround yourself with positive people. If you want to feel better about your life, hang around people that encourage you and bring out the best in you. Spend more time with people that make you feel good about yourself and less time with those that complain about everything.
- Remember that bad days happen. When you have a bad day, don’t beat yourself up or dwell on it. Remember that tomorrow is a new day with exciting possibilities and challenges. Your next victory is right around the corner if you resolve to start with a fresh perspective.”
Sometimes by the nature of how our world works and how we work as humans, our emotional reactions to situations may cloud our ability to actually effectively deal with what’s going on and effectively examine what’s really happening, so we can make an appropriate response.
Robert Green, in his book, “The 50th Law”, says, “When you look at people through the lens of your emotions, this will cloud what you see and make you misunderstand everything.”
I really want you to think about that for a second. How true is that? How often have you been in a situation where somebody may have been forceful or aggressive or accusing when they shouldn’t be, and you immediately want to be defensive and explain yourself? They’re trying to pull you into a situation, that you really don’t even want to get into.
If you immediately go with the emotional reaction, you will lose that situation.
Whereas if you intelligently learn how to step back and almost interrupt that natural reaction where emotion takes over and you take a moment to examine where they’re coming from and what is causing that person to behave in this way, usually it’s some kind of fear, some kind of personal issue that’s going on in their life and it’s manifesting in their interaction with you.
If you’re able to take a pause, I’m talking a half of a second pause, to just interrupt your emotional reaction and give it a second and then examine what exactly is happening here, you might change the way you react and respond to a situations.
In some cases it’s going to be totally natural, but you can refuse to emotionally respond but instead respond intellectually, get to the heart of the matter and address the real issue of what’s going on here.
Here’s the thing. This is the important part of all this. I’m not saying you will not feel the emotion, and in fact that’s a big hiccup for a lot of people. You’re still going to feel the emotions of defensiveness or of upset or anger or hurt, when people are attacking you and coming at you in a way you don’t think is justified.
I want you to remember that feeling the emotions is not wrong, and in fact you should come to expect it.
But what you should also come to expect is your ability to interrupt the need to react emotionally and just react out of intelligence, even if you feel the emotional hurt or offensiveness. You can still act in spite of that and act in a way that’s more appropriate to winning in the situation.
So that’s the key thing here, is to not react to the emotions, but also don’t judge yourself if you have the emotions.
Even if you’ve dealt with this situation 100 times, you still may not be able to turn those emotions off of feeling upset or angry or defensive, because it’s human nature. We want to make sure people understand us and we can explain ourselves.
But it doesn’t mean you have to physically do it. You can make a more intellectual decision, while feeling those emotions.”
If you would like to learn more about my Mindset Before Profitability course, you can check it out here: https://bridgeportstrategy.teachable.com/p/mindset-before-profitability/