Self-management is about being aware of and able to process your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in a healthy and intentional way such that you can choose how you want to respond in the moment.

 

How many times have you had an outburst that you regretted? Whether at home or at work, you lost control and later had to do damage control.

 

Realizing that reacting, rather than responding in the moment, isn’t helpful, you want some self-management strategies. You want some specific examples about how to practice self-regulation in the moment that it feels most impossible.

 

So many of us grew up with no social and emotional learning (SEL). You took courses in science and language, but not in emotional awareness. It makes sense that you can translate verbs in other languages, but can’t control your reaction when you are triggered.

 

Like math and chemistry, luckily, these skills can be learned. Below, I’ve created a quick “how to” guide for self-regulation based on the RULER approach.

 

In this guide, each of the 5 steps is followed by an action item, home work if you will, that you will need to practice to master.

 

Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of “Permission to Feel,” developed the RULER methodology to build SEL in school systems, but here I apply it at the individual level.

 

Step 1: Recognize – become aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

 

The first “R” in the acronym stands for Recognize. This step is about 3 layers of noticing.

 

Find an example of a situation that triggers you to use as you read through this step. It will help you concretely begin to bring awareness to your state of being. 

 

1. The first layer is noticing your thoughts. What is your mind telling you? What story are you creating and attaching to the situation or person? Now much evidence do you have that the story is true?
2. Emotions are the second layer of noticing. What’s going on for you internally? How does this show up in your body? If you are experiencing anger, does that show up as pressure in your chest? Maybe your ears get hot? Do you “see” red?
3. The third layer is your behavior. What action do you take in relation to the story and emotional response? Do you close down? Do you attack? Or is victimhood your go-to?

 

Your thoughts and emotions drive your actions and the three are always interconnected.

Action 1: Try to trace the connections as if you were drawing a map.

 

For the next 30 days, pick whichever layer is the easiest for you to notice. In the situation that you selected, are you more aware of your thoughts, emotions, or behaviors?

 

When you notice this layer – your emotions, say – try to add as much detail as you can to it. If you notice you are angry because you feel pressure in your chest, do you also notice tingling in your hands? What is the pressure like – is it hot and expansive or cold and dense? If it had a color, what would it be?

 

The more detail you can give a layer, the easier it will be to follow the detail, tracing a path to the other layers.

Step 2: Understand – being able to make sense of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

 

Being aware of how the layers connect gives you a comprehensive picture of the patterns you are running. Once you see how your thoughts create your feelings which influence your actions, then you have the power to decide how to change the pattern to get a different outcome.

 

Understanding means looking at the connections and trying to understand where they came from and how they are impacting your outcomes.

 

In the situation you chose to use to work through this, can you identify a thought, connect it to an emotion and the resulting behavior?

 

An old one for me was feeling white hot rage when the trash wasn’t taken out. The anger was the easiest part to identify.

 

Connecting it to the thought, I realized that the story I told myself at that time was that my partner didn’t respect me. Anger at feeling disrespected makes sense.

 

I also felt like his not noticing the trash (which was true because he was focused on other things) was indicative of my worth. In my head, the line parroting and squawking about was “if you mattered, he would notice.” A big reaction to a fear about worth also makes sense.

 

However, I didn’t have a lot of proof that the story was true – he never disrespected me in other ways and I knew I mattered to him.

 

Connecting the emotion to the other side of the equation [thoughts + feelings = behavior], I could see that seeing the trash ignited my trigger, unleashing the story that fueled my fear.

 

That fear and anger led me to lash out at him. Or sulk. I also ruminated a lot. All of these behaviors drained my energy and alienated my partner.

 

Action 2: Make meaning out of the connections.

 

For the next month, try to look at the connections you see and make sense of them. In the example above, my fear wasn’t clear at first.

 

It was only when I realized that anger was a protective emotion that I thought to wonder what it was protecting me from. The emotion of anger is a lot easier to bear and often covers fear and disappointment.

 

Try an experiment and get curious about what the emotions are or what the thoughts are and how they connect to each other.

 

Step 3: Label – put a name to your feelings. Try to be as granular as possible.

 

As you do step two, it’s important to be as specific as possible. Most of us know three to four emotions. We are happy, sad, mad, or glad.

 

Envy and jealously are different. These often get mixed up and are used interchangeably. The thoughts and actions around them are different. How you handle them is different too.

 

Saying you are mad when really you are disappointed makes it harder to understand what’s going on, communicate effectively, and change your outcomes.

 

Action 3: Practice being as descriptive as possible to drill down to the core issue.

 

In the earlier example, disrespect was the surface issue. Feeling like I mattered was the core issue. Had I not been able to label the fear, I would not have been able to recognize that my need was to feel I had value.

 

 

Step 4: Express – communicate clearly and calmly what you are feeling and what you need.

 

Being able to accurately express what you feel inside can be difficult to do even in the absence of a trigger.

 

Where old hurts arise and the feeling that the situation is never going to change pop up, communicating becomes formulaic with each side repeating the same old frustrations and insults.

 

Repeating the same arguments, which may not have been accurate to begin with if you hadn’t taken the time to identify the underlying core issue, only widen the gap between you.

 

Communicating like this also doesn’t leave space for new possibilities. You become the person who and s/he becomes the person who. It defines you, closing rather than opening doors.

 

Action 4: After you see the pattern, practice expressing your feelings and explaining how they connect to the thoughts and behaviors.

 

At times, if the situation is “fresh” you may be too fused with your emotion to be able to see the pattern, so try doing this with an older situation where the emotion feels residual, rather than acute.

 

Working through past situations like this, especially ones that still have a hold on you, can be cathartic.

 

Where you understand what happened for you, sometimes it opens you up to see a new point of view of the why and how of the situation that is freeing.

 

Speaking your truth, even if only to yourself, is also liberating.

 

Step 5: Regulate – self-regulation is key to being able to get curious about your feelings and express yourself calmly.

 

 

In some ways, this step comes first because often we aren’t able to understand what’s going on in the heat of the moment.

 

Yet, it’s also the last step because it’s what we need to continue to do to be able to respond intentionally, rather than react unconsciously.

 

This is the point where you mindfully detach from your emotional reaction.

 

Emotions are physical body sensations that are only 90-seconds long. Everything after that is story and interpretation.

 

The mind fuels the feeling long after the emotion has passed. The key here is getting out of your mind and back into your body.

 

You don’t use your mind to calm your mind. That’s like pouring gasoline on the flames. Use your body to calm your mind.

 

 

You do that through mindfulness and meditation. Both are techniques to control your focus. Leave the chaotic whirl in your mind and breath yourself into the present moment.

 

Action 5:  Pause or walk away when you hit a trigger and commit to using your body to connect to the present moment for 2 minutes.

 

Two minutes is enough to give you just the teensiest gap between you and the anger or disappointment. Your breath, the connection between spirit and body, literally calms your fight or flight response, so you can regain control.

 

It doesn’t mean you won’t be upset, but it does mean that you will be able to respond, rather than react.

 

Continuing to intentionally detach from the feelings, helps you get curious and practice steps 2 and 3, deepening your understanding and adding specificity to your reaction.

 

The process above is simple, but effective. Like any skill, the degree to which you master it is dependent somewhat on personality, but mostly on how often and well you practice.

 

I get a lot of clients who want to know how long they have to practice. My response is often: how long do you have to brush your teeth to keep them clean and healthy?

 

The good news is that it does get easier with time. And when you begin to see different outcomes, the impact spurs you to want to keep practicing.

 

If you want a partner to help you practice the process, schedule a free call with me to find your emotional liberation.

 

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With gratitude to Andjelka Ljubic for her provocative work “The Choice.” What will you choose? Find this piece and more here: https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Photography-Wanna-Have-The-Choice-after-Andjelka-Ljubic-The-Choice-2017-Limited-Edition-of-3-3-AP/1666231/7932595/view