How to regain perspective when you’re fired up
When you’re emotionally fired-up, it becomes difficult to help yourself and others too. Your brain’s emotional centre (limbic centre) is activated, which means you’re at greater risk of saying or doing things you’ll later regret.
How can you zoom out and regain perspective? Ask questions!
David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership, notes this simple strategy can take you off the Drama rung and on to the Planning and Vision rungs on the ladder to success.
Visioning questions give logical food to the brain, thus triggering the ‘business centre’ (Pre-frontal Cortex) and settling the ‘emotional centre’.
Questions like “What’s your goal for this project?”, “What would the desired outcome be?” can help you see the big picture.
Once you’ve regained your Vision, you can start Planning: “What do you think you need to do now?”, “What plan do we need to implement in order to achieve our goal?”
This approach can steer conversations, team meetings and brainstorm sessions, helping to dissolve emotions and take you further up the ladder.
Where Corporate meets Wellness is being aware of where you’re getting caught up and consciously using tools to navigate your way onward and upward.
Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash