Episode 97: Dealing with Emotions - How to Deal with Them in the Moment

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Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall", your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and Founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

Thank you so much and hopefully again for joining me, Randall, here on "Around with Randall."This week we're going to tackle more of a situational issue that we've all run into and that's dealing with emotion and the fact that sometimes while emotions are incredibly important to our daily life - we would be non-human. It's the one of the core characteristics of human beings is our sense of emotions. Sometimes they can get the better of us. Today's thought process is really around what is it we need to do to not let our emotions control. Our behavior. But let our emotions guide our strategic thought, our overall direction, and not the immediacy of the moment.

I think that this is most evident in today's world, at least to my perspective, by what happens not all the time but more often than, I think, most would like to admit. On Twitter, I do not have a Twitter account, number one there's a part of me that believes that people may not care as much as what I think in the moment but more importantly, I bow to one of my heroes so to speak and that's maybe someone most of you aren't aware of or don't know, and that's Tony Kornheiser. Tony Kornheiser is a sports columnist in his past life and now a sports announcer and has a podcast, and maybe you know him more from his "Pardon my Interruption" with Michael Wilbon and ESPN in the afternoons. But Tony said something many years ago when Twitter came out and I've taken it to heart is that it's right to this point of emotion that he probably would get fired from a job if he had Twitter because he'd say something that would be not taken in the right way. And I feel much the same way but it isn't because I'm afraid of what I'm going to say, it's because I think emotion sometimes can have too much effect on what we say and that is so prevalent in the Twitter universe by political, and maybe actors and actresses, famous people. They say something and they may or may not mean it. They may or may not mean it that way. They may not have thought about the right way to say how they really felt, but it comes across incredibly insensitive, not very smart, and taken in a context rightly or wrongly that's just makes them look bad.

These things happen to us in our professional life. There may be a moment where you have an evaluation and you might not agree with what your boss or supervisor is indicating is their perspective of your performance. Maybe it's a gift that you thought you were going to get and you're not going to or maybe you've had a series of gifts that you were hoping for but they were declined by that prospect or donor. Maybe you've had a plan go badly. You thought A was gonna happen and it wasn't even that B happened, but like Q happened. It was so far away from what you intended and now it doesn't feel right. Most of the time when our emotions are driving a lot of our thought process, and maybe the logic disappears, are based to me in two contexts. Number one is you've done something that you're not pleased with or happy with and you don't know how to deal with it. Or number two, the situation or the discussion or the issue is out of your control. In either case, many times what we find is that the emotion begins to drive us to say something, do something, we make bad decisions.

And I've seen this recently with a couple of clients. We're watching the changes in the economy. They're concerned about gift performance, overall performance, what expectations are. We need to learn to deal with this, me included. And maybe, first and foremost, I've learned that there are some tricks that I use to pull back on that emotion. So let's take apart those two scenarios when something you've done, something wrong, and we'll get into the tactical pieces here in just a moment, but the biggest thing here is if you've done something wrong the easiest way to solve it is to first and foremost admit it to yourself and then own up to it to the people that you did something wrong with or to. It may be hard, and it may be a little painful, but what it does is it level sets the emotions to a large degree. I've kids that I talk about often and I deal a lot with this with my son, that it's not as apparent that I'm concerned about you making a mistake because you're going to make a billion of them. What I want you to know is I want you to own up to that mistake and learn from that mistake, and the first part is own up to it and be okay with being human.

If it's out of your control that's a little bit different scenario. I get aggravated in during travel for two reasons. Number one, I really don't like to fly. Most people are surprised by that considering how much I have flown in my career, but I just don't like it. I've had a couple incidents on airplanes that have just bothered me so I'm at edge anyway, and then the flight's late and I'm going to miss a connection. I can't get home to see my kids and my wife, which is the only thing I really want to do. Or I, something's wrong with the rental car issue. I had a recent situation where I was supposed to pick up my car like always and it wasn't there they don't have any answers, no one cared, and my blood pressure was going up. Things that are outside of our control. All we can do is deal with our own emotions because, as my father taught me many years ago, at the end of the day most people don't care and sometimes that's just the best realization. It's not that they want ill will for you or in the situation, but truly most people don't care about you. They don't care about me. That's why the choice of a significant other, a spouse, how how you relate to your friends, your family, the people that care about you, and it's a small group, taking care of those people is important because they genuinely do care.

Control of the situation is usually very defeating to most people because when they don't have it, feels as if there's nothing they can do about it. But there is, there's the ability to think about alternatives and options and all kinds of things, and it all comes back to controlling that emotion. So let's talk about some incredibly tactical things that you can do in a moment when emotions are running high so you don't say something or do something that you're going to regret, that isn't indicative of really who you are as a person. And by the way this applies to me, so it doesn't show the worst sides of Randall, so to speak.

The first thing is, sounds crazy, but science has proved this, is just to breathe. In the short term take some deep breaths. That starts a process inside your body from a philosoph, a biological perspective. We'll put it that way, that your body begins to calm down when you breathe in, that oxygen is brought in, your heart rate slows a little bit. Doesn't mean the emotion goes away, but things calm down a little bit. If you need a longer period of time to gain perspective, and that's really the question we're talking about, is your perspective in the situation, what can you do to encourage that. Breathing and really the breathing is kind of a pullback from the precipice, it's kind of to me a metaphorical thing that has truly biological outcomes. I have found, particularly in the last 10 years, one of the things that I do when things get a little stressful is I go take a really aggressive walk. Now I'm a bigger guy and so an aggressive walk can really wear me down, and I walk once or twice a day anyway, but I'm really hoofing it and by putting on some tunes on my phone with my earbuds and just walking. All of a sudden the emotion begins to calm down and I'm able to take the second step, which is where we're going to go in a minute about how do you look forward in a much more logical way. So breathe, take a walk. Sometimes, a lot of times, it's physical. What can you do just to burn off some of that emotional energy?

A second thing that you can do once you've kind of gotten that first step down, go find a mirror. You might be saying what? Go find a mirror. If you look at yourself in the mirror, what you'll find is from a kind of an emotional, psychological perspective, is that you will view yourself a little bit differently and you actually calm down. When I do these podcasts, and if you're listening you're not watching then you don't see it, but I'm doing it on zoom and i'm looking at myself and I have found that I get calmer as I go through each podcast because I'm looking at my own reflection. It's really amazing when you look at yourself and just breathe, how much perspective that will give you. Not as much maybe about a scenario or situation, but about you. And at the end of the day that's the only thing you can control is you.

The third thing that you can do is find a slogan or a mantra that can bring you a sense of calm. For some reason, my brain runs quick, and early on in my career I tried to allow my mouth to keep up with my brain speed and what it came across as was, well he's nervous, and he's he's he's got a lot of energy, and he's not sure of himself, and there's not a lot of confidence. And like no, that's not it. And I've learned a particular phrase that I'll share with you. It's not exactly revolutionary but it helps me. I say to myself, "slow everything down, slow everything down, slow everything down." And after saying it three times I find that situations themselves or begin to my diction slows down. It sounds as if I'm more confident, even if I'm not sure what's going to be said next. I'm able to consider the implications of my words. What slogan or mantra is there for you that allows you to slow everything down?

So breathe. Pull back. Take a walk. Get perspective. Number two, look at yourself in the mirror and look deep into your eyes and allow you to see yourself as who you are in the situation you're dealing with. And number three, find something in that moment to say that will help trigger these. Slow down effects in that moment. The key is to pull back again from that precipice, but it doesn't necessarily, and most times mitigate the bigger problem. So part of today, this last little bit I want to talk about, the tactics of what do you do next because something happened that got you emotional, and the question becomes what you do with it? Because you don't want to probably go through this again. If it's a negative experience the first thing I always think about is this a moral or ethical issue because that's the first question to me.

If this is a moral ethical issue then my choices are really limited because if I have a moral code then I'm really not going to do things that violate that code. So the decision-making process is a very few options. To be candid, not many things are actually moral or ethical to be, can't, to be honest with you. Truly moral or ethical but when they are I'm either going to walk, or I'm going to tell you what I think, or I'm going to bring in support, or it's going to be very, very not very many options we're probably not going to have a reasonable conversation if you're asking me to do something that's against a moral or ethical fiber of my being.

If it's not an ethical moral which is 98% of the time when we have these emotional issues that we're need you having to deal with. I always think about when you pull back how do you then venture back into that conversation? How do you venture back in to rebuild? So a couple of thoughts.

Number one, when you do get into a conversation where emotion has been leveled or under control or you feel a little more secure about where you're at emotionally, I go back to what my mom always taught me about I feel messages. I once, and I probably told this story, said something about mom's comment about me and I think she said something, I can't remember what it was but I feel as if you don't listen to me and I said well that's not fair and she said wait a minute I feel that way you don't get to dictate my feelings. It was a really profound moment for a late teenage boy because I didn't have a logical response, still don't to this day. You can't tell someone that they can't feel that way. And if you're not emotional about the moment then the way you feel makes sense to you and probably will make sense to them. When you treat me this way I feel subservient, or when we had this conversation I felt as if you didn't listen to me or my perspective, or when we were dealing with this particular challenging scenario I felt my opinion didn't count. So I feel messages can be powerful because it's hard for someone to say you shouldn't feel that way you feel, the way you feel.

I think the other thing is that you need to be ready to agree to disagree and that's hard to do an emotion when the emotion's running high. There are different perspectives for the same situation. You may see them as moral or ethical. Well that's going to affect your decision-making process on what to do, but most the time somebody else sees something differently. If it's not moral ethical the question is, what are you willing to put up with. I think that the ability to have a respectful conversation is critical to not leave things hanging out there, so sometimes it feels a little painful or even maybe even a little troublesome to venture back into a situation that was a problem. If you don't end up dealing with it it's going to end up eating you up more than it'll eat up someone else.

So learn that re-entry into the discussion using I feel messages and being ready to agree to disagree can help you get through it. Also remember there's a difference between short-term loss and long-term loss. There have been many situations I've dealt with where I'm willing to take a short-term loss because it's going to give me a long-term gain, that the difficulty in the moment is going to get us to a better result in the end, and that's sometimes hard and it's almost impossible if you're highly emotional to see that long-term strategy. Lastly when you get to this point you may have to have a conversation as a last resort with yourself to say this isn't going to work and you've got to walk from the scenario, situation, the relationship, whatever. If it happens over and over and you're not listened to, or you're not respected, or your opinion doesn't count, or if someone is, I want to say adversarial, but really what I'm thinking of is is he doesn't have the respect that they should for other people, at a certain point they're not going to change. And you have to make a decision. Is it time to go? And while it's always difficult to make a change I've also learned when you make a change sometimes the solution, even if it's unknown is so much better than the challenge that you're in.

Emotions are tough to deal with. They're personal, and nobody should ever apologize for having their emotions. The question is how we deal with them. How we work through them. How we can get away from the precipice. Breathe, and look in the mirror, and find that slogan that calms you down, and then going forward re-enter into a respectful conversation. If it's not truly moral ethical, realize you may disagree. And if it just isn't going to work long term, be ready to walk, do something different. But don't give up on your emotions. They're great guides as a, you know, not sure. Robert Fulcrum put this in everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten, but the basic premise usually your sixth sense, your pit in your stomach's usually right. And that usually is something emotional. Trust them, but learn to deal with them and control them so you always are in control.

Don't forget to check out the website hallettphilanthropy.com. We're always posting blogs there. We're working on our RSS feed so you can get them to your doorstep every time they come out. On i think Tuesday and Thursday. And if you have a question for me email me at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Appreciate what you do. I hope you appreciate what you do. If you appreciate what you do then it doesn't make as much difference, back to that emotion, what everybody else thinks. But they probably appreciate it as well because nonprofit work is critical. People are in need, the things we need in our communities are more in need today than they've been in a long time. Nonprofits fill those holes. Philanthropy is about helping people, which brings me to my final part, my all-time favorite saying. Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. We are people in this industry who are making things happen, who find people in the community to partner with us that also want to make things happen, for the people and things that are just wondering what happened, and that's to me a tremendous professional career opportunity. I'll look forward to seeing you right back here again on "Around with Randall." Don't forget, make it a great day.