How to take control back of your emotions and reactions

The beginning of the year is always a good time to reflect: 

You believe that other people’s needs are more important than yours.

You are afraid to express what you need.

You blame others for your failure.

You believe that someone or life is doing something to you.

You struggle to receive feedback.

You argue with your spouse about something that you later realized was trivial.

You compare yourself to others.

You want to control others. 

You think you are better than anyone else.

You believe you are not good enough.

Do you recognize yourself in one of those or any of those? 

These are examples of what our little voice in our head tells us. You might recognize it in the emotions it stirs up in us whenever an external event triggers them. Most of the time, it feels like an automatic reaction to the external event itself without us being in control of it. 

That little voice is our ego, is our reactive instinctual structure that developed before we reach the age of 3. The ego is responsible for our fight, flight, or flee reaction. The ego is our survival instinct, and when it can’t find a life-threatening situation to react to the way it did for hundreds of thousands of years in our ancestor’s brains, it makes them up. 

All the statements above are not life-threatening. When an external event happens, the ego interprets it as threat and instinctively puts us into a state of high alert, and we react. Emotions are rising in response to that perceived threat to our existence…from our ego. 

The ego is not the real us. It’s our developed personality. The way we behave today and react is mostly coming from the environment we grew up in before the age of 3. The ego is a fast-reacting structure. When there is a life-threatening situation, the ego is crucial to our survival. To be that fast when an external event happens, the ego quickly searches our memories or survival blueprint to find the same situation or a similar one that occurred in the past and grabs onto the first things we think we should do in response. 

The ego comes from the deepest, oldest, and undeveloped part of our brain called the reptilian brain. The reactions to today’s event are based on what happened in the past, and they are reoccurring again and again. Those are our patterns, and everything is filtered through those unconscious ways of reacting. As life goes on, we find ourselves repeating the same thing, stuck with the same pain or emotion, just dressed differently as the flavor of the day. 

As I mentioned earlier, we are not our egos. The ego is like a mask we wear on top of our hearts that dictates how we react. Underneath that mask resides the true self, without any external interference. 

To access our true self, we need a tool to help us see through and decipher our reactive patterns.

That tool is called mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to observe and be curious about what is happening inside us. During functional MRI scans, subjects showed increased activity in the frontal lobe when asked to be mindful and think about their last vacation or their last family reunion. The frontal lobe of our brain is a slow reactor, and it takes more time for the frontal lobe to react than the reptilian brain, where the reaction is almost instantaneous. 

Mindfulness allows the frontal lobe of our brain to observe the world for what it is without reacting to a real or imagined threat. Mindfulness tells our reptilian brain that we are okay, in control, that there is no actual threat. 

As you can imagine, our ego doesn’t like it when we are mindful and present. The ego is a construct of the past, and being mindful takes place in the current moment. Our ego will work hard to ruin that moment by bringing up difficulties from the past or raising concerns about the future. To defeat our ego, we need a methodology or a mindfulness model. 

The C4UTM system: the four Cs of mindfulness comes into play.

There is an event, and you feel triggered. 

C1: Connection with yourself: 

Take a moment to block out external stimuli and focus your attention inward. This simple task is more challenging than it sounds, as our mind has been trained and coached to focus outward, to pay attention to other people, external events, or objects. 

You don’t have time to connect with yourself? This is what your little voice or ego tells you to believe. The less you feel in control of your emotions, the more you would benefit from taking a moment to connect with yourself. 

Connecting with ourselves means focusing on the sensations in our body, our emotions, and our feelings. What is your body telling you? Is there tension somewhere? Are you holding your breath? Do you feel anger coming up? Do you feel small or in fear?

C2: Curiosity about what is going on internally. 

Now that you slowed down and your focus is inward, the next step is to be curious about it. This is not the place to find a solution or fix something, and there is nowhere to go. To be curious is about observing what is going on and asking yourselves open-ended questions about it.  

the first part is the observation (being an observer gives you some distance from the emotion itself)

I observe… 

I feel… 

I realize…..

The second part is completing that observation with an emotion or a feeling. 

that….

I’m angry… 

I have tension in my jaw…

I’m judging myself or others… 

I’m scared…

Then, it’s time to be curious about it with open-ended questions: 

Why do I feel that emotion right now?

Where do I feel it in my body?

What is the meaning of that emotion? (Why am I angry or disappointed?)

The concept here is to go slow and go through one layer at a time, like if you were peeling an onion. 

You can go as deep or as far as you can or as shallow as you can tolerate. 

You might have to go back to C1 as you lost your focus after the first question. Being curious about our emotions is a threat to the ego, and it doesn’t like to be confronted. That little voice in your head might be screaming to “stop that.” The ego wants you to stop the threat to itself.  

You are uncomfortable, you want to go back to your life, you don’t want to be curious anymore. Don’t fall into this trap. Curiosity only works when we follow the questions all the way to their roots. 

To break a pattern, we need to understand the true meaning of what is happening inside of us. 

C3: Compassion for yourself

Being curious about your inner experience and asking yourself questions can bring up vulnerability, pain, shame, anger, fear, self-judgment. As you go deeper into the “why,” you will likely encounter memories of painful or traumatic past events. 

Staying present to these emotions and feelings can be overwhelming. This is normal, and you might need to go back to C1 as it’s too painful for you to stay here. 

Self-compassion is about being gentle and supportive with yourself, understanding that whatever comes up is not right or wrong. Nobody can challenge the way you feel at that moment. Whatever you feel doesn’t make you a bad person or a less good person. To continue with the observer from C2, we can use the same approach here 

I’m judging myself for….

I’m ashamed of….

I feel vulnerable, and I’m afraid of….

Your ego doesn’t want you to be compassionate for yourself because doing it so breaks its control over you even further. So your little voice will be louder and louder, agreeing that you should be ashamed or judging yourself for what you did. 

Having self-compassion is like holding a mirror in front of you that reflects the truth of what is coming up for you. However, in the beginning, you might need help from a therapist, a personal development group, a coach, or even a trusted friend to hold that mirror in front of you that doesn’t reflect your ego, self-judgment, or self-criticism. 

As you embrace self-compassion, the reality changes: time slows down, and you observe from an emotional distance without judging or criticizing. This step is critical as you can’t grow if you allow your ego to criticize or judge you. Compassion allows you to connect with options and choices your ego hides from you. 

C4 Change

When our ego leads us, it often feels like we have no choice. From that perspective, it seems that we are going through life with the same thoughts, emotions, and situations repeating themselves. The reality is we do have choices. 

Once you have completed C1, C2, and C3, you’re ready to make that choice. The way to realize that you can choose something different than your ego wants is to ask different questions. 

What if there was another way of being?

Who said I can’t change?

What if I didn’t need anybody else to validate myself?

What if I can behave in a way that it isn’t driven by fear, a desire to please or to prove myself?

As you answer these questions, new options and opportunities will start to show up as if a veil has been lifted. It’s going to come from a place of knowing, a gut feeling that has nothing to do with anybody but you. C4 helps rewire your neurological brain pathway. 

As you can imagine, this step is the biggest threat to your ego. You might hear your little voice saying that you don’t really have a choice, and you might be scared of the unknown or worry that people won’t appreciate or love you. 

Change will allow you to break from your ego’s control. You need courage to make the choice to confront pain, danger, uncertainty. Courage will let you take back control of your life. 

There you have it, a mindfulness approach to free you from your ego. If you want to go deeper, you can read my book Mindful nEGOtiation. The book uses mindfulness in negotiation situations (professional and personal) where our ego can be triggered. It also includes a bonus chapter on applying the C4UTM methodology in professional and personal situations outside negotiations where the ego can be triggered.