In her new book, "Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life," Harvard Medical School professor and psychologist Susan David explains and then challenges this reflexive ways of handling emotion. David argues that we should instead pay close, yet detached attention to our internal experiences. When harnessed, she asserts, the steady stream of thoughts, feelings, and personal narrative that makes up our inner self can become our best teachers. Our emotions can reveal what we value most, and we can then act on those values to evolve into our best selves - resilient, stable, curious, courageous, compassionate and empathetic.
What the research shows is if we push away thoughts and emotions, they will come back magnified. For example, there is a study that shows what happened when someone who was trying to give up smoking tried not to think about cigarettes. What happened? They started to dream about cigarettes. This is a phenomenon which in psychology is called "leakage." It is literally the idea that when you try not to think about something, that thing comes back, but amplified. So the idea that we could somehow push our emotions aside to be happy doesn't make sense.
There is evidence that people who value happiness, people who are focused on being happy, and who set happiness as a goal for themselves actually become less happy over time. Happiness, we've found, is the byproduct of pursuing things that have intrinsic value to us. In other words, when you do something you love, that's when you'll feel happy. To set a goal around "happiness" is antithetical to finding it.
Instead, David proposes "emotional agility" as an alternative to that positive thinking model. Every day we have thousands and thousands and thousands of internal thoughts, emotions, stories and experiences. Emotional agility builds our capacity to engage our inner world in a way that is courageous, curious and compassionate. Whereas positive thinking and avoidance have overemphasized the role of our thoughts, emotional agility is a skill set that builds on our ability to face our emotions, label them, understand them and then choose to move forward deliberately. It is the ability to recognize when you’re feeling stressed, be able to step out of your stress, and then decide how to act in a way that is congruent with your personal values and aligned with your goals.
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Category(s):Happiness
Source material from The Washington Post
