Angry? Who, ME?

I didn’t see myself as angry early in my career … and I was.

I accessed higher than ideal levels of anger, but didn’t recognize that within myself. Looking back, I can now understand both why I didn’t see the anger within me, and how my unrecognized anger hurt my working relationships.

This blog post is written with the hopes of opening the eyes of others who have high access to anger, but can’t see it.

Patterns Playing Out

In my early working life, I was acting out a pattern of behavior that had been modeled in my home throughout my childhood. To be clear, I, and only I, am responsible for my behavior. Now and then. And what is true is that I was shaped by my earliest relationships. And anger played a role in the shaping.

I didn’t see my anger because it was my default experience. It’s what was modeled for me and how I was wired to conduct day to day interactions. I didn’t experience myself as angry or not angry. I just was.

We are all shaped by our primary relationships. And not simply metaphorically, but also, neurobiologically. Meaning, the neural wiring of our brains, our mental models, our implicit understanding of what is is and isn’t acceptable are all shaped by our earliest relationships. And it can blind us to certain aspects of ourselves. (more…)

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Posted in: Emotion: Anger|Emotional Intelligence

How Do You Shift from a Feeling of ‘Have To’ to ‘Get To’?

I was toast!

It was a Thursday night, a couple of months ago. I was frantically preparing to facilitate a full-day workshop on Friday for a coaching client and his team – and I felt ill-prepared. On top of that, I was to facilitate a full-day retreat for the CEO roundtable I facilitate on Saturday… at my home!

And I wasn’t ready. Ugh! And I was tight as a drum.

I explored the experience with my coach afterward. She asked “What had you choose that response?” It was fortunate that it was a video coaching call, because I kinda wanted to slap her. 😉

I responded, “Well, I suppose I did choose that response, and it certainly wasn’t an intentional choice.”

What became clear after our exploration was that my tightness and rigidity was being driven by the story I was telling myself. It was a story of “have tos.” (more…)

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Posted in: Emotional Intelligence