Emotional Mastery Framework
A tool for turning your initial reaction into a strategic mindset that will help you stand out for the right reasons
Managing any difficult or emotionally charged scenario starts with YOU. Even if you didn’t cause it. Even if you don’t want to deal with it. Avoidance is not the answer.
I’m sure you’ve been told “you can’t control what happens, but you can control your response”. I know how frustrating that phrase can be… because what people don’t tend to do when they give you that piece of ‘advice’ is tell you how to control your response. That’s why I put this framework together for you.
Most negative emotions come from a fear of something, and in many cases, that fear is of not being in control. Mastering your emotions lets you control the situation instead of letting it control you.
Think of your emotions as a wall between you and a resolution to your situation. You can’t run through the wall, and if you try anyway, you’ll (a) hurt yourself and (b) look extremely silly to everyone watching. Knocking the wall down will create a huge mess and likely structural damage to whatever it’s attached to (i.e., you and your relationships). You need to climb over the wall. To do that, you need to understand the material and dimensions of the wall to find a strategy that will get you safely over it.
The strategic self-inquiry steps in my Emotional Mastery Framework will help you create a ‘mental reset’ in your situation and shift you from an immediate emotional response to a calculated action.
It seems like a lot in the beginning, but if you practice this, you can go through the entire framework in just a few minutes whenever you encounter something that provokes an immediate negative reaction within you.
Training your brain to process rather than act on (or completely ignore) raw emotion helps you trust yourself when approaching challenges that seem impossible to solve. It will also help you sleep better because you’ll have fewer of those “I wish I’d said that instead” moments to look back on as soon as you get into bed. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
Even when things are personal and you feel like you are being attacked, if you focus on managing your emotional response and what you can control, you are more likely to use the best strategy to resolve the situation in a way that makes you look good to those observing you handle it. That’s not the only goal, of course, but it is one that a lot of people want when things go wrong…
This framework gives you a tool to turn your initial reaction into a strategic mindset that will help you stand out for the right reasons in a crisis, conflict, mistake, relationship breakdown etc.
Emotional Mastery Framework.
Turn an initial reaction into a strategic mindset
Struggling to identify the negative emotion? Here are some common ones:
Alienated, Angry, Animosity, Anxious, Apprehension, Ashamed, Attacked, Awkward, Betrayed, Bitter, Burdened, Confused, Defensive, Desperate, Disgusted, Dissatisfied, Dread, Embarrassed, Envious, Fear, Hurt, Inferior, Insecure, Insulted, Intimidated, Irritated, Offended, Overwhelmed, Panicked, Powerless, Rejected, Resentful, Shocked, Stressed, Suspicious, Uncertain, Uncomfortable, Unnerved, Vulnerable, Wary.