Straight from Wikipedia, "Emotion, in everyday speech, is any relatively brief conscious experience characterised by intense mental activity and a high degree of pleasure or displeasure." Emotion - it is INTENSE isn't? All animals feel it and react the way they want to react. Controlling emotion is something that animals can't do. However - humans have that option.
Consider yourself as two different versions of you. One being a sane, logical, level headed and perhaps a person filled with wisdom who could analyse things clearly and be completely fair in decision making with very less to no bias. The other version of You is this freakish, crazy, emotional being just reacts to things and yields to strong feelings instantly.
All you've got to understand is that you have these two polarising personalities. Following a simple formula of one talking to another - would help a lot in preventing damage to both your profession and personal life. However insane you go, just remind yourself to avoid these things even though you feel they are right during that time.
Consider yourself as two different versions of you. One being a sane, logical, level headed and perhaps a person filled with wisdom who could analyse things clearly and be completely fair in decision making with very less to no bias. The other version of You is this freakish, crazy, emotional being just reacts to things and yields to strong feelings instantly.
All you've got to understand is that you have these two polarising personalities. Following a simple formula of one talking to another - would help a lot in preventing damage to both your profession and personal life. However insane you go, just remind yourself to avoid these things even though you feel they are right during that time.
1. Don't send an email - Whenever you are running hot with different thoughts - writing an email is not a very wise decision. For instance, you are very angry at your boss or a subordinate and that you want to vent out that anger - email is clearly not the right choice. You will use words which your own sober version would regret later. Just remember that writing an email is not a great idea and if your sane version agrees to it now - it will 9 out of 10 times be right. Instead of hitting that send button, you may draft and keep it though for your rational self to review later.
2. Don't commit - This again is important while running frenzy with emotions there are lot times one will tend not to consider and commit to something. Most of the times this will not result as disastrous as an email, your "word" reputation may degrade. If you are too happy or too ambitious, just prefer words like 'I will have to analyse this', 'I'll get back to you on this' instead of words like 'I can do it by tomorrow', 'This is a piece of cake'
3. Don't swear - With the right ingredients like continued stress, provocative swear words, bashing in public - comes a diabolic ingredient swear words. Swearing, cursing or threatening at someone will not always be a sensible choice. However, a lame, reactive and a weaker one. Your saner you would agree on this. Try to remain calm or even better - avoid putting yourself in such a situation in the first place.
4. Don't go Social - With the rise in a lot of social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., it has become quite common to share your strong opinions. However, anything that goes out to the internet is very hard to take back. Even setting a Whatsapp status message could be something you should avoid.
5. Don't go Gossip - There are times when you hear an extremely sensitive information or anything that pumps the adrenaline in your blood, you may want to instantly share with someone which you would later regret you would not have done. The best thing to do in such a circumstance is to let it pass and not just share or expose to people you would later think you would not.
It is easier said than done and I hope the sensible part of you is reading this and if you could agree to some of this, then try to stop for a moment and try to recollect during a tense situation that doing any of these could be detrimental to your career and life!
Cheers!
Braga
