These days most of us feel challenged by the pressures stemming from the pandemic. The concept of Emotional Fitness comes out professional development, describing leaders that are emotionally responsive and nimble. Emotional Fitness is a proactive approach to mental health, encouraging practice and engagement to build internal strengths. There are now emotional fitness “gyms” where you can access classes and workshops virtually through monthly subscriptions.
Here are links to a few of them:
We can grow our emotional fitness, as we are all CEOs of a most important life: our own. Research has honed in on 7 traits of emotional fitness:
- Self-Awareness
- Empathy
- Mindfulness
- Playfulness
- Curiosity
- Resilience
- Communication
All of these “traits” can be nurtured and grown through intentional practice.
Self-awareness
This trait is about understanding our own biases, perceptual errors, and triggers. Self-awareness tells us whether we are in emotional overdrive or neutral. It helps us know when we are unable to take in information because of the internal noise of our (miss) perceptions. Self-awareness increases intra-personal intelligence: the ability to accurately perceive our own strengths, challenges, emotions, beliefs, and motivations. Self-awareness rests upon honesty and acceptance of our own flawed humanity.
Empathy
Affective empathy refers to feeling the feelings of others. Cognitive empathy is perspective taking—mentally inhabiting the world view of another. Empathic, or compassionate, concern means paying attention to and caring about other’s emotional states without judgement. It is often confused with sympathy, however there are crucial differences. Sympathy is a judgement, i.e., “poor you”. Empathy is a presence—you are fully present to receive the feelings or perspectives of another. Empathy is critical to conflict resolution—when we can feel or imagine why someone else acts in certain ways, we are less likely to react to their behavior. Empathy allows for “fellow feeling”: the sense that we are not alone in our humanity. Empathy communicates “you are seen, felt, and cared about”.
Mindfulness
The ability to observe our own emotional states, and the states of others, without needing to distract, minimize, rationalize, or deny is mindfulness. Allowing others their own emotional processes, tolerating ambiguity, letting go of the need to immediately “fix” are some of the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness allows us to sit with difficult emotions.
Curiosity
“Curiosity is about prioritizing your need to learn and grow over your need to avoid criticism” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-emotionally-fit-leader/202102/the-7-traits-emotionally-fit-leaders). Curiosity assumes interest. When someone is genuinely curious about you, you feel seen. Curiosity helps people deal with uncertainty; curiosity gets engaged whenever there are opportunities for discovery.
Playfulness
Playfulness gives us permission to experiment and fail. It allows us to “hold lightly” our judgements and fears, encouraging us to think expansively to uncover unique solutions.
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to bend but not break when life gets challenging. Resilience allows us to learn from failures. Resilience helps us ride out difficult times, adapt and change when we need to, and return to our center when the demands quiet.
Communication
The ability to describe abstract concepts using language that conveys emotional truth—this is how leaders inspire others. To take in accurately what others communicate, and to communicate skillfully and truthfully, is the foundation of successful engagement.
These traits are process oriented: there will always be room to grow greater self-awareness, empathy, mindfulness, curiosity, playfulness, resilience, and communication.
States become traits through self directed neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity posits that our brain changes depending on what we do: our behavior changes our brains. Self-directed neuroplasticity means changing our brain by having intentional experiences that create desired states. Every time we create the desired state, we strengthen the expression of that state.
There are two ways to experience a state: to do something that engenders the state, or to remember a time you experienced it. For example, to experience empathy I might watch something sad, and experience empathy as I feel for the character; or I can remember a time I felt empathy toward a friend, partner, or relative. The more I remember/engender an experience of empathy, the more deeply my brain becomes hard-wired for empathic responses. Like grooves on a record, we increase our capacity for empathy by practicing it. The more time we spend experiencing the state of empathy, the more hard-wired it becomes. At some point, it will become fixed as part of character traits: the state of empathy becomes the trait of empathy.
One other important “how-to” when increasing emotional fitness is to start your practice with your strengths. Most of us learned to study by “tackling the hard stuff first!” This is not a good way to proceed, as the rewards of practice are too remote. Begin with the state you can most easily access. You will have the most memories of yourself in that underlying state, and you will be able to more easily create experiences of that state. Help yourself dip into that state several times a day, by using a timer or other external organizer to remind yourself to practice. For example, each time you experience the state of empathy, spend a few seconds expanding that feeling. Expand the experience of empathy (or curiosity, or mindfulness, etc.) for a few seconds each time you practice. Notice throughout your day when you’re feeling empathy, and when others offer you empathy.
Improving our emotional fitness will have a global effect on healing by building emotional capacity. We can proactively increase our emotional fitness one day at a time.
Reference:
“What is an emotional push-up” Washington Post, 10/19/2021