Emotional agility, the key to success and happiness

As told to Mandy Appleyard

We go out of our way to look for the best in other people - so why do we treat ourselves so harshly? Psychologist Susan David says the key to a happier life is to increase our emotional agility and step outside old habits. Here's how...

Get unstuck

Every day we speak around 16,000 words - but our mind creates thousands more. Thoughts like 'I'm not spending enough time with my family' or 'I'm going to fail at this'. It's easy to get into an emotional rut that keeps us from reaching our bigger goals. But you have to realise you’re stuck before you can initiate change. The first step is to notice when you’ve been 'hooked' by your thoughts. There are tell-tale signs; one is that your thinking becomes repetitive; another that the story your mind is telling seems old, like a rerun of some past experience.

When you're hooked, the attention you give your thoughts and feelings crowds your mind; there's no room to examine them. You need to distance yourself from them - label them as an emotion or feeling rather than as a reality. Labelling allows you to see your thoughts and feeling for what they are, transient sources of data that may not be helpful. If you slow down and label your thoughts then the self criticism that once seemed like dense fog, can feel more like clouds passing through a blue sky.

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Be kind to yourself

We’re often encouraged to feel we’re living one long perpetual Iron Man marathon – we have to be disciplined, we have a To Do list, we must be tough and knuckle down in life. The notion of self-compassion often feels incompatible with that, when actually it’s simply about creating a safe internal space for ourselves. A good way to become more accepting and compassionate towards yourself is to look back at the child you once were. You didn’t get to choose your parents, your economic circumstances, your personality or your body type. Recognising that you had to play the hand you were dealt is often the first step toward showing yourself more kindness and forgiveness. You did the best you could with what you have. Showing yourself kindness is even more important during life’s rough patches. Accept yourself with compassion, courage and curiosity. You do it for others – spouses, children, friends, relatives and colleagues – all the time. Now do it for yourself.

Make choices that break unhealthy patterns

You can’t choose or control your desires, but you can choose if you follow them. When you’re emotionally agile, you don’t waste energy wrestling with your impulses: you make choices that are connected to what you value. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. This means making choices that fit with what you value. If you value being an attentive partner, you can choose to put your smartphone away when you get in from work and focus fully on your home life. Decide what is really important to you, then it becomes so much easier to achieve the goals you want to achieve and to consistently make the choices which support those goals.

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Stress doesn’t have to be the enemy

We live in a society where we’re told that stress kills, so we feel that when we’re stressed we shouldn’t be. But sometimes experiencing stress in the price of admission to a rich and vital life. Avoiding stress is impossible, but it doesn’t have to own us: we can own it. The first step is to accept that it exists and it's not going to go away any time soon. The second step is to understand that 'stressed' is not who you are. When you say 'I'm stressed', you conflate your whole self with an emotion. Doing so fuses your entire identity to that feeling of stress, which makes the experience so suffocating. Calling a feeling what it is, can be a powerful strategy. 'I notice that I'm feeling stress,' creates space between you and the feeling. It will help to let go of unrealistic goals by accepting that being alive means sometimes getting hurt, being stressed and making mistakes. Life has a way of humbling us and heartbreak is inbuilt. We're young until we're not. We're healthy until we're not. We're with those we love until we're not. Free yourself from ideas of perfection so you can enjoy the process of loving and living.

Choose courage over comfort

We’re always hearing that we need to manage our fear and control it, but that sets people up for failure – only once they’ve managed to conquer their fear can they get on with the things that are important to them. ‘I want to apply for a new job but I’m fearful so I need to be less fearful then I’ll apply’. NO! Fear is an absolutely normal emotion so accept it, don’t deny it. Abandon the idea of being fearless. Instead recognise and label your fear, and face up to it. Say to yourself, ‘Doing this thing is important to me AND I’m going to do it anyway.' So much of our energy is disproportionately spent around the emotional aspect of fear, and very little is spent on the action part. We need to flip that: if having the conversation at work or confronting your husband is important to you, move towards it with your fear. Courage is recognising that you are fearful and still doing what is important to you. Choose courage over comfort by embracing new opportunities to learn and grow, rather than resigning yourself to circumstances.

Susan David is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School who has spent more than 20 years on academic research and consulting to develop her strategy of emotional agility.

This article appeared in the August 2016 issue of Good Housekeeping UK.

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