This week we continue to unpack our theme of Grounding by exploring the power of Embracing our Emotions.
Grounding by Embracing our Emotions
As Nicholas Janni shares in his new book Leader as Healer "Emotions are the gateway to our deeper humanity, to a richer, more heartfelt and empathic relationship to life and to leadership”.
Acknowledging and embracing our emotions in a safe and supportive space creates incredible opportunities for leaders and leadership teams. It can release and redirect the energy used by our nervous system to hide or block unwelcome or uncomfortable emotions; foster deeper connections with ourselves and others; and allows us to pause to appreciate the intelligence and wisdom behind our emotions, uncovering what are they trying to tell and teach us.
Looking after our nervous system
We have been ‘overtrained’ to control our emotions, developing strategies over time to keep our emotions 'in check'. Whilst some of these strategies have served us, they have also drained us of our energy and overloaded our nervous systems.
Connecting to our emotions in a safe and considered manner can help us release the energy that our nervous system is using to keep emotions hidden, frozen or blocked. This released energy can then flow through us, relaxing our bodies, grounding us, and from this state opening higher channels of insights and creativity.
As Janni shares "the simple action of acknowledging an emotion can bring a sense of transformational release…Fear has never blocked us, what block us is our inability to actually feel the fear... The ‘repair’ happens through feeling, not through changing anything……no drama necessary, just simple acknowledgment".
Have you ever had a good cry with a colleague you trust, and new ideas, insights or perspectives emerge at the other end of the release? Or felt a lightness or release in your body after being honest with yourself about how you feel?
Cultivating deeper connections to ourselves and others
When a leader is prepared to tune into their own emotions, they tend to be more resourced to tune into and hold space for other's emotions. How can we be fully there for others if we are absent to ourselves?
Have you ever been in a meeting when a colleague had the courage to share how they were feeling, and the rest of the group was moved by the realisation that they were all sharing that same feeling in secret? When you gave each other permission to feel? When that vulnerability brought you closer to each other?
Connecting with the intelligence of our emotions
An overreliance in our rational (left-brain)intelligence limits our ability to access the full bandwidth of our whole human intelligence including our emotional and sensorial (body) wisdom.
Fear, anger, resentment, frustration, grief, which are some of the most common hidden and blocked emotions, may represent something your inner wisdom is inviting you to notice, attend to or protect. For example, our resentment may point to the need for us to set healthier boundaries; our fear may speak to something important that we deeply want to protect; or our frustration may signify an inner request to slow down.
Embracing your Emotions
As we continue to explore how to ground ourselves to sustain our leadership impact and be of service to what matters most, we invite you to embrace your emotions.
To borrow some of Nicholas Janni’s beautiful reflective questions:
· Which emotions do you allow other people to see in you? Which do you hide?
· How do you relate to others when they are expressing emotions?
· How perceptive are you at noticing what is happening emotionally in you and in others?
· What are you called to experiment with?
Photo by Ilona Panych on Unsplash
