3 Tips To Stay Feeling In Control

There are all times when we feel we are not in control. I haven’t met the person yet who relishes this feeling. There are however some key tips to help you stay feeling in control at times when it could easily go the opposite way.

Feeling in control, as discussed here, is referring to knowing that you are deliberately controlling your decisions and actions. Our ability to stay in control is key to growth and happiness.

We all want to stay feeling in control.

We all have a core human need for certainty. We all need to feel that we have a degree stability in our lives and that there is a certain level of predictability about what will happen. When we feel that we are not in control, it threatens our sense of stability and can greatly affect us.

Being a human means that we will experience a constant flow of emotions, a range of uncomfortable and comfortable emotions, that depending on our level of awareness and ability to regulate our emotions will either result in us feeling in control or the opposite.

We are consistently getting triggered by external sources within our environment that will lead to feeling a certain emotion depending on the trigger. We see, hear, taste and touch things all the time that trigger us emotionally. For example, you see a person who has hurt you in the past, it might trigger some uncomfortable emotion within us.

We all get triggered.

It’s largely out of our control, the exception being where you are able to reduce triggers surfacing in the first place. For example, you may be able to avoid any association with the person in my earlier example.

What we do have control over is whether we respond to the trigger.

There’s basically two ways people behave when they are triggered: Reacting or Responding.

· Reacting is behaving without thinking. It’s impulsive and often emotionally driven. It often leads to the person who reacted feeling that they were not in control of the situation and would likely have acted a different way had they thought it through.

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· Responding, the ability to create space between the trigger and your behaviour to that trigger. Stephen R Covey in discussing Habit 1: Be Proactive in his book ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ refers to this as the ‘space’ between the stimulus (trigger) and the response and this space creating the opportunity to choose how we respond. This space allows us to stay feeling in control.

To stay feeling in control of your life, there is a need to respond rather than react.

Here’s 3 tips to help you respond and stay feeling in control of your life.

1. Be aware of your triggers.

You are aware that you will be consistently triggered. Now it’s reflecting on what, who, when and where you tend to get triggered. This will help prepare you for possible triggers in the future and possibly avoid some triggers from even occurring in the future.

2. Develop strategies to be able to respond when triggered.

If you don’t have any planned strategies you want to use when triggered then it’s likely you will react rather than respond when triggered. When triggered, we tend to be emotionally driven and don’t have the same rational thinking we would have when we are not triggered. Develop strategies you could use in place when you are triggered. Some examples include: take 3 breaths, walk away, count from 10 backwards, close your eyes and take one slow breath, look up, take a drink of water, say your mantra.

3. Be aware of your emotional state and practice your strategies.

We wake up in the morning at neutral on the emotional thermostat. Our initial thoughts either direct us towards boiling point at the top of the thermostat or direct us to the calming point at the bottom of the thermostat. As do all the other thoughts throughout the day. The more aware we are of our emotional state heating up towards boiling point the more consciousness we need to utilising strategies that support us when triggered as we are nearing a zone where we might be triggered more easily than if we were at neutral or calming zone.

These 3 tips all link to staying in control of your behaviours through bringing consciousness to what you are thinking and how you are managing your emotional state.

Will you now be able to always consciously respond rather than impulsively react. Likely not, but like with anything, the more you are aware of what you have control over and practice your strategies, you will do it more regularly. Importantly, it will help you come back to feeling in control again when you are not feeling this way.

It’s also important to add here, we often feel disappointment at our reactions when we do react rather than respond. Reflect on the fact you didn’t use a strategy, consider what you want to do next time when a similar occasion arises, and let it go.

Don’t waste energy beating yourself up for being human!

The aim is to be proactive rather than reactive and set yourself up for success with your toolkit of strategies to be able to respond to anything that comes your way.

#leadership #leadershipdevelopment #leadershiptips #helpingleaderssucceed #control #happiness