Emotional Discipline

How to gracefully handle and manage difficult emotions when we are in situations that can trigger them

I read a quote by Warren Buffet the other day in an article online and I wanted to share it with you because I thought it was interesting.

“You [Warren] can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow,’”. - Warren Buffet quoting his mentor and former CEO of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. Tom Murphy.

In the article Warren Buffet revealed what the article called his most indispensable piece of advice that he had ever received. The advice was from one of Buffets earlier mentors Tom Murphy, former CEO of Capital Cities/ABC Inc who told him that, “‘You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow,’”. Personally I thought that piece of advice much better than the more commonly passed around, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all” because in a nutshell Tom was teaching Warren (and now us) about emotional discipline.

What it is emotional discipline? According to Psychology Today emotional discipline sets up the capacity to deal with current and future challenges. Or, said another way (my way), it’s knowing how to gracefully handle and manage difficult emotions when we are in situations that can trigger them.

Essentially, emotional discipline is not ignoring your feelings, or suppressing them, or preventing/ blocking yourself from experiencing them. It’s not about being emotionless or shutting off all feeling either. Rather, it’s about acknowledging them as real, and then giving them space to exist before you interact with them.

Three benefits to emotional discipline include being,

• Better equipped to make wise decisions

• Better equipped to unlock the outcomes you
  want to achieve in life

• Better equipped to develop and maintain good relationships, managing conflicts and communicate effectively.

So, how can we begin to practice emotional discipline in our everyday life?There are three key element/steps to emotional discipline

• Step 1. Acknowledge - What happened, how you feel about it /how it made you feel?

• Step 2. Examine - Where is the emotion or feeling coming/ being directed towards? and who/ what triggered it/them

• Step 3. Understand - What is the best way to move forward in a constructive, positive, and beneficial way

Just a thought. Hope it helps.