Too often we make all sorts of decisions based solely on our emotions at the time of the event, or pasted events. We decided to be a certain way with certain people because of an emotion we have towards them or we don’t get something done because of an emotion. Our emotions are a big thread in the fabric of our personality and character. It’s ok to have emotions, it’s ok to use them to help build ourselves. BUT, only when we are aware! There is something called emotional hijacking, which leads to our lives being controlled by our emotions. Which in my opinion leads to becoming a sheep. When we let our emotions become our defining characteristic it makes it really hard to achieve any upper tier goals.

Across the board it’s become very obvious to me that the leaders that engage in successful companies, family and any type of organization, do it with this superior ability to control their emotions – and almost as importantly, other people’s emotions. No, I’m not talking about manipulating people out of their emotions, I’m talking about empathy. But more on that in another post. For this article I wanted to talk about the best way I have found to harness this ability. The technique is simple, which as you may know makes it that much better, because simple is more actionable and easier to hold on to. Self awareness is the best antidote to our emotional hijacking. When we train ourselves to be self-aware, we can stifle our emotions and become that calm presents that seems to be able to take anything on, even in the face of Hopelessness, become a leader! and in today’s world, that’s what we need more of. We have to many bosses and they are suffocating the growth their employee’s. And for those of you who are thinking, “I’m just a low-level employee” , this applies to you too! Trust me, people who take action in this will raise in the ranks.

So, let’s try to rain in our emotions and control ourselves more and more each day. I know I will be working on it, because I know deep down that I can be the leader that I dream about one day….. Soon.

Self-awareness is a swift antidote for emotional hijacking