Towards Emotional Agility

After exploring the concept of Emotional Mastery presented by Fred Kofman yesterday I happened upon the concept of Emotional Agility from Susan David, Ph.D. Wow. Mind blown.

“Emotional agility - being flexible with your thoughts and feelings so that you can respond optimally to everyday situations - is key to well-being and success” (P. 5).

Her work is wildly popular starting with her authorship of an HRB article, followed up by a Ted talk, and most recently publishing an indepth book on the topic.

In this model the four skills are:

1. Recognize your patterns

2. label your thoughts and emotions

3. accept them

4. act on your values.

In both models/frameworks there is a process of :

1. acknowledging emotion (don’t stuff it nor react to it)

2. observing it (objectively, it’s data)

3. making values based choices on how to proceed (response)

Source: David, Susan PhD. (2016) Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Penguin Random House.