Emotion Management

Managing emotion is not easy for me. I find that all to often I allow my emotions to get the best of me and I definitely have a hard time focusing that emotion in a productive manner. I feel as though I do not understand well just exactly what my emotions are until it’s too late. I may have just been slightly frustrated over a small issue, but now I’m completely consumed with anger because I couldn’t resolve a small conflict.

Goleman (2001) states, “having Social Awareness or skill at managing relationship does not guarantee we have mastered the additional learning required to handle a customer adeptly or to resolve a conflict-just that we have the potential to become skilled at these competencies. ” This is where I find myself in life. I have the ability to become skilled at many emotional competencies, I just haven’t learned how to yet. Socially speaking I deal very with impulse control and am very effective at resolving conflict.

Personally speaking I am just the opposite. I would do very well to learn and practice, what Goleman calls, The Self-Management Cluster. The cluster involves focusing on and managing internal states, controlling impulses, and acknowledging resources. The pursuit of happiness is a driving force in a human’s daily decision making. We choose who, what, where, why and how based on our imagination of the future and how it will treat our future selves. In attempting to create this state happiness I often find myself just the opposite.

I like to think that I’m pretty good at shooting myself straight and not over or under predicting the outcomes of my future, however I must agree with Gilbert’s (2006) view that “Our imaginations aren’t particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. ” If I could live in the ideal world that my simple brain can conjure up I would be wealthy, be situated in the exact job that I know was created just for me, and live with a wife who just adores me.

As it stands I only live with that that wife, my imagination thought up the other bits. Sitting here now reading the last line I think I just reinforced the idea that my imagination definitely lacks imagination, The idea of this paper is to consider prescribed readings from Goleman and Gilbert and write a health and wellness prescription for myself. There is one excerpt from Goleman’s book that speaks to me. There is growing evidence that fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capacities.

For one, impulse is the medium of emotion; the seed of all impulse is a feeling bursting to express itself in action. Those who are at the mercy of impulse—who lack self-control—suffer a moral deficiency: The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character. By the same token, the root of altruism lies in EMPATHY, the ability to read emotions in others; lacking a sense of another’s need or despair, there is no caring. And if there are any two moral stances that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion” (Goleman, 1995).

I believe my prescription from this excerpt is to focus on practicing self-control. I am very good at loving my wife, but I am awful at being a partner. I choose to do what makes me happy in the moment, like exercising or reading a book, rather than spending quality time together. I’m very compulsive to my own wants. I need to look at what the needs of our relationship are and then weigh in how my needs may be affected and make decisions based on all the information gathered. Currently I am very compassionate, caring, giving person.

I believe that I am very healthy and have a fair amount of emotional intelligence (EI). I listen well and ask for clarification of what I’ve heard rather than assuming what I heard. I fight fair. I create boundaries and try my best to listen to what my body is tells me. I believe the authors would agree with these statements. I believe they would want me to focus more on self-control and developing more compassion for my personal relationships. I believe I do a good job at finding happy. I try to keep day-to-day life simple and do the little things with big rewards.

My prescription for myself is to seek out understanding for my lack of personal impulse control and focus on relationship building activities at home. Achieving a level of balance and control of daily challenges is essential to overall health and happiness. Barringer and Orbuch (2013) quote Marilu Henner explaining “Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life. ”