Managing our mindset
It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a year of reaction. The arrival of Covid-19 has forced us to adapt our way of living, working and thinking and it’s safe to say not everyone has the right idea...if you haven’t figured it out, stockpiling toilet paper isn’t going to help you.
Often when unforeseen events happen, many people will have an emotional reaction and let that emotion influence what actions they take. In the workplace, if we are constantly reacting to things happening around us, we will always be on the backfoot and being in that position for too long means we start to make mistakes and stop operating at our optimal performance.
We, therefore, need to learn to control our ‘Mindset’ towards situations and flex our ‘Emotional Intelligence’ to remain in control of our emotions and in turn, our behaviours and actions. If you cannot control your emotional responses, your ‘inner battles’ may get the better of you causing you to become distracted and negatively impact the situation.
Below are some tips we have put together to help you in dealing with your mindset and behaviours when reacting to unforeseen events:
Re-frame your Mindset
A wise person once said ‘Failure is the best teacher’ - this is a re-framed mindset towards failure by looking at it as not a negative but a learning experience or personal development.
As situations occur, initially we may have a ‘mindset’ towards it e.g., this customer is going to be angry, this meeting will be a waste of time etc. Consider the situation from a different perspective and try to find the positives or opportunities e.g. I’m going to help this customer and make their day, I could use this meeting to discuss… - do this enough and eventually, you’ll approach each situation with an optimistic attitude whilst being aware of potential problems.
Self-Awareness
If something goes wrong, it’s natural to have an emotional reaction, we are only human. What separates high-performing individuals from others is their self-awareness where they quickly realise - I’m feeling these emotions, I need to take this action to correct my behaviours. This ability allows them to remain focused and think clearly whilst experiencing powerful emotions.
Managing Emotions
'My mind is bulletproof’ - Many athletes in boxing or MMA use this mindset as their opponents often try to ‘get in their heads’ by provoking an emotional response causing them to make a mistake.
By managing their emotions, they are able to remain calm and collected when being insulted or taking a punch which allows them to stay in control and focused on achieving their goal.
Similar to self-awareness, if you’re able to recognise and manage your emotions in certain situations, you can remain in control and focus on taking the necessary actions towards achieving the goal.
Complete an EQ assessment
You may not be aware of this but your abilities of self-awareness, managing emotions, motivating yourself, empathy and social skills can all be assessed and quantified to show your strengths and development areas.
If you’re looking to take your personal development one step further, we would recommend completing an Emotional Quotient assessment to stop guessing your development areas and identify what they actually are - we can even arrange for one of our team to debrief you on your results and lay out a plan for success.
