Emotional Agility Insights Report
Emotional Agility Insights Report
Emotional Agility Insights Report
FOR
Cátia
WHAT IS EMOTIONAL AGILITY?
Emotional Agility is the ability to come to your inner world - your thoughts, emotions, experiences and self-stories - with
courage, compassion and curiosity. Instead of these inner experiences holding you hostage, shrinking your life, or clouding
your interactions, you"re able to learn from them; evaluate the situations you face; be clear-sighted about your options; and
move forward with values and purpose. Emotional Agility is a critical skillset that helps you make real changes in your life,
both at work and at home. It is key to thriving.
Emotional Agility supports the approach described by Victor Frankl who survived a Nazi death camp and went on to write
Man"s Search for Meaning on leading a thriving life in which our human potential can be fulfilled.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and freedom."
My new #1 Wall Street Journal best selling book,Emotional Agility (featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and
selected an Amazon Best Book of the Year) describes a four-part process that is a road map for real behavior change. This
report is similarly organized into those four parts: Showing Up, Stepping Out, Walking Your Why, and Moving On.
Your responses to the quiz suggest that you'll likely see large and meaningful benefits by cultivating your Emotional
Agility across a number of areas of your life. On average your answers indicate that you:
Often get hooked or stuck in your emotions, thoughts and experiences,for example, by bottling them and pushing
them aside, brooding on them and over-analyzing them, or by holding on to self-stories in ways that might not serve
you.
Have some sense of what is important to you and what you value,but do not bring these as effectively and
consistently as you could to the many situations that you face.
Need to make changes to your habits and situation so that you see greater levels of growth and development.
These changes will often take effort and bring discomfort in the short-term, but if they are connected with your key
values of Community, Bravery and Caring you will be rewarded with greater levels of thriving and overall life success.
Showing Up
A key aspect of Emotional Agility is the ability to show up. In this context, showing up means facing into your thoughts,
emotions, stories and experiences with curiosity, kindness, and courage.
Your responses demonstrate that you would make real gains by showing up in this way so that you can start to
recognize and break unhelpful patterns that may impact on your ability to thrive at work and at home.
Through our culture, parenting, or other forces, people often come to believe that there are 'good' emotions (like joy) or 'bad'
emotions (like anger or sadness); 'good' thoughts (like 'Think Positive!') and 'bad' thoughts (like, self-doubt or 'I just can't do it).
This can lead to an unhelpful and unproductive inner-struggle that can hinder our success and relationships.
Research shows that struggling over whether a thought or emotion is good or bad, right or wrong, can:
Our inner-struggles can adopt many different forms. As mentioned, you could benefit from some focus on this area so you
minimize the number of instances in which you get hooked in ways that don't serve you or the life that you want to
live. Key signs that you're hooked are when you:
try to avoid having particular thoughts or rationalize them away (e.g. "I'm unhappy in my job... but at least I've got a
job!").
always try to 'think positive' or be happy.
ignore troubling emotions (like sadness).
blame your thoughts for having 'made you' do something e.g. 'I yelled at him because Ithought he was undermining me,'
or 'I didn't put my hand up for the project because I thought I might fail.'
overanalyze specific experiences (e.g. a past disappointment).
or fight against the reality of the world and your life 'as it is.'
What each person needs to show up to will differ, but in its essence, showing up is about breathing into yourself and your life,
and acknowledging it for what it is. A willing acceptance is a pre-requisite to change.
A critical factor in emotional agility and "showing up", is the ability to be with yourself in a compassionate way. A further
analysis of your responses indicates that you have fairly low levels of self-compassion.
letting go of self-criticism and expectations of perfection (within yourself, your work, your life at home).
recognizing that comparing yourself with others is, almost always, a losing game.
understanding that self-compassion does not make you weak or lazy. In fact, research shows the opposite - that self-
compassion sharpens your edge.
appreciating that self-compassion is not about lying to yourself. People who are self-compassionate are more likely to
face into the truth about themselves and their weaknesses, than those who lack self-compassion.
If you're curious to learn more about the value of "showing up" and its role in a thriving life, see Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of
Emotional Agility for:
How every one of us gets hooked into stories, patterns and ways of being that don't serve us.
Thinking fast and slow.
The four most common hooks.
How our typical strategies for trying to unhook, actually make things worse.
How to cultivate self-compassion.
Choosing willingness.
Learning from emotions, thoughts and stories.
Stepping Out
Stepping out is a critical skill that allows us to be more effective in both our personal and professional lives. It is the process
by which we recognize our thoughts and emotions as containing potentially valuable information, but at the same time we do
not allow those thoughts and emotions to drive us, our reactions and our choices. When you step out, you create the space
between the situation and your reaction. So instead of reacting automatically or in ways triggered by your stories, self-doubts
and past experiences, you can respond in a more intentional manner.
Your responses to the quiz show that you will makereal and meaningful gains in your life and relationships by
cultivating skills in the ability to step out. These skills include:
The ability for you - the thinker, rather than the thought to be in charge, and for you - the person, rather than your
emotions to be in charge. In other words, developing the skill that allows you to be centered, reflective and intentional
in your reactions to events around you.
Developing a 'meta view' or the ability to still feel your feelings and think your thoughts but to 'helicopter' above these
in order to make effective decisions.
The ability to recognize when you are holding on to specific positions and ideas in ways that may not serve your
life, and to let go of these.
If you're curious to learn more about the value of "stepping out" and how to cultivate this, see Chapter 5 ofEmotional Agility
for:
Your responses show that while you have some sense of what your values are and what is important to you - you are
experiencing some challenge in bringing these in a real way to your daily life.This can negatively impact you, including
leading you to:
act and make decisions in ways that don't truly reflect who you areand what you want for your life.
struggle to change habits that don't serve you.
be reactive to the moment (e.g. in interactions, health choices, spending decisions, at work), rather than taking the
long view.
be at higher risk for the phenomenon of social contagion,including things like:
comparing yourself to others and trying to keep up with them;
unwittingly and unknowingly absorbing cultural biases that constrain you and stop you from being most effective
"Women can't do X" or "Men don't do Y";
feeling unnecessarily conflicted e.g. about work-life balance.
Watch the gaps: Simply noticing the gaps between your values and your behaviors in specific domains (at work,
home, in your relationships or as they relate to your health and wellbeing) can help you to close them.
Think first: "is my response in line with my values of Community, Bravery and Caring?"
Remember that values are not abstract and intangible ideas. Rather they arequalities of action that you can bring to
every day choices. For example: Is your decision to choose a piece of cake? Or to read emails on your phone during
dinner with your children? Or to shut down in a meeting? - a move that is toward (and consistent with) your values,
or away from (and inconsistent with) your values?
If you're curious to learn more about cultivating the capacity to "walk your why" see Chapter 6 ofEmotional Agility for:
You probably have ideas concerning changes you want to make at work, at home, or that relate to your personal growth,
health, and development. At the same time, however, your responses show you are being only moderately successful
in bringing these to changes about - that is, in moving from a change intention to reality.
Making any change - be this at work, in one's career, parenting, health or relationships, requires some critical areas of focus:
1. A change mindset. This is the belief that positive change is actually possible. Research shows that subtle differences
in our beliefs about change can have a long-term impact across many different areas of our lives.
2. Effective motivations: Trying to make a change based on a h' ave-to' motivation (e.g. to lose weight out of a sense of
obligation to your doctor, spouse, or due to shame) is less likely to be effective than a change based on a 'want-to'
motivation (e.g. to lose weight out of a genuine, internal desire to be healthier.) The type of motivation we have is
critically important in determining whether a change will be successful.
3. Habit tweaks: Understanding how to master the physics of successful habit change.
4. Moving to discomfort: Making the choice to push oneself towards the edge of one's comfort zone as one tries to
develop skills and cultivate relationships.
While all of the above are important, your responses show that you couldbenefit by paying attention to Number 1,
Cultivating a change mindset.
A further analysis shows that for you, also choosing courage over comfort, and pushing yourself in new ways will also
be beneficial (Number 4).
The ability to make intentional change is crucial to our lifelong fulfillment. To read more about this aspect of Emotional Agility,
see Chapters 7 and 8 of Emotional Agility for:
To learn more, check out my new, #1 Wall Street Journal best selling book Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace
Change and Thrive in Work and Life. Emotional Agility has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
and was selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Year. It was hailed by the New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain
as "Essential reading" and by Forbes.com as "a powerful book on embracing your core values, being more decisive, and
committing to meaningful change."
The Harvard Business Review heralded Emotional Agility as an Idea of the Year. Here"s what others are saying about it:
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