How Are You Feeling? Part 2

Read Time: 4 minutes

In this issue we’re back at it, diving a little deeper into those feelings. Honing in on all the variables that need considered when navigating the  “emotional stimulus to response” process, how it all relates to the concept of Drift, and its influence on your leadership lifestyle.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Part 1 of this series we encourage you to start there.

Picking up where we left off last week, highlighting the connections between feelings and self-awareness, according to this research, 95% of people think they are self-aware when only 10-15% really are. 

Self-awareness is the most fundamental skill for leadership effectiveness and personal well-being, but it necessitates having full appreciation of our entire being. Especially our feelings! 

So, it’s not surprising to see a statistic that reveals such a discrepancy.

From Stimulus To Response

OG psychologists and physiologists like Edward Thorndike, B.F Skinner, and Ivan Pavlov introduced the theory of behaviorism. Which states that all behaviors are learned through interactions with our environment, and those learnings boil down to two things: stimulus and response

From a behavioral perspective, feelings are nothing more than a response to a stimulus. Even more so feelings are behaviors. They’re internal behaviors we engage in following a stimulus. 

So feeling angry is the internal behavior (attitude), while slapping your desk is the external behavior (action).

The range of our behavior is ultimately determined by what both the internal (physiology & psychology) and external (environment) will allow at that moment.

In some instances behaviors appear to be automatic, but are they really?

No, they’re simply strongly conditioned responses to stimulus we have a history with.

No one wants to believe that their attitudes and actions are the result of any sort of conditioning, but that’s most likely the case if we’re navigating life lacking sufficient self-awareness and intentionality.

We call this Drifting

Don’t Drift

When drifting we’re unconsciously responding in a particular way to a particular stimulus brought about by external circumstances. We’re being conditioned!

In these instances, we’ve unwittingly relinquished the agency to some external force. This has a direct negative effect on our ability to respond On Purpose.

This has massive implications on our leadership potential and is why we so adamantly proclaim leadership is a way of being, an overflow of your lifestyle.

This process never stops. Our ability to respond effectively tomorrow is directly correlated to the practice of responding specifically today. Every moment is an opportunity to learn a new way to respond to a familiar stimulus.

In theory, at any moment in time, under any circumstances, we can decide within ourselves how all of it is going to affect us. 

But that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of us are not operating anywhere near that level. Not, because we’re incapable of it but because we lack the experience. 

Getting to that level of mastery requires a tremendous amount of dedicated practice.

We refer to this as engaging in the intersection. 

Embracing the space between stimulus and response. 

The antidote to Drift.

As a leader your work should always be focused in one of two directions: internally (self-mastery) or externally (serving others). 

The work we do internally helps calibrate our purpose with our passion making us deeply committed. Over time our attitudes will adjust accordingly.

The work we do externally helps calibrate our intentions with our impact making us highly effective. Over time our actions will adjust accordingly.

In doing this we slowly become the cause of the effects. Improving both in attitude and action.