As I was sitting on my flight out of Dhaka and reflecting on the 4 full days of 9 hours each that I spent on my feet inspiring over 100 souls, I was moved from within to share my experience in my next blog. At that point I received an AHA (a term we used for an inner learning that happens to us when we are open to inspiration) about the power of emotions.

I was fortunate to learn about the power of emotions from my beloved guru, Omar Khan when I first attended the life changing learning experience, ‘Mastery of Self’ many years ago. Up to that point I knew that I was emotional and I felt it is weak to be emotional.

I recounted many incidents in my early childhood where I was bullied by schoolmates, ridiculed, insulted and laughed upon. I remember going to a safe place and crying to ensure that I was not seen by them and be more ridiculed. Sometimes I could not hold my emotions in front of them and it was visible in my voice as I responded. Nevertheless I excelled in sports and scouting while being an average student despite this improvement area and it helped me to make progress in life.

Perhaps it is the culmination of these experiences that prepared me to totally accept the teachings of Omar Khan and later make it a powerful factor in vocation of helping people and organizations to find a better way to live and work.

The idea that people get motivated when they feel good, when they feel valued, when they are appreciated, when they are engaged, when their needs are met is so obvious, so simple and so powerful but it had to presented in a manner which deeply penetrated my soul for me to start seeing the obvious and doing the required.

Emotion is Energy in Motion. The Chinese word for energy is Woolee, which means patterns of living energy. Therefore when energy is in motion we can influence it to form the patterns that create positive energy. We can use that energy to create positive results.

I am blessed to meet many participants at my ‘playshops’ (the term we use to replace ‘workshop’ as play creates positive emotion and energy and my learning experiences are designed to make it fun, engaging and relevant) and I learn so much from them.

I was conducting two such play shops in Dhaka, Bangladesh over the past 4 days, one of them was for the public which had participants from many organizations and the other one for a leading information technology company. While all the participants were great learners, with the right mindset to absorb the new learnings to take a quantum leap in their lives, there were some who needed more help while there are others who were into the transformation from the first minute.

One of the participants in the later session, who had been told she was extremely emotional by her boss, was concerned wondering whether it was a negative aspect. She was one those participants who were engaged from the start and used every opportunity to speak with me to achieve a greater understanding of the learnings in relation to herself. She was highly energetic, extremely creative, refreshingly inquisitive and amazingly intelligent.

As we discussed her bosses comment, I was able to briefly explain that emotions can be controlled looking at them positively, using it as a resource and using its energy for success. When emotions tend to create negative behaviours such as anger, frustration and stress, we can manage the situation and make it positive by using a tranquility anchor and stress relieving techniques. See my blog on stress relief by clicking on …..

A tranquility anchor is a physiology that automatically triggers a feeling of calm. The one of the best ways to create it is to press your thumb, index finger and middle fingers together in both hands separately when you are in a peaceful situation such as meditating, listening to soft relaxing music, sitting by a tranquil beach etc. This connects the physiology of the fingers together with the emotional state of being peaceful. Once you repeat this many times over a few days or weeks it becomes a resource you can use to calm down. Thereafter when you are in a potentially stressful situation or a possible loss of temper, you bring the fingers together and you will feel a sense of calm washing over you.

Another method is to step out of your self and see the situation from another person’s point of view. You can watch a depiction of you, watching a depiction of you being criticized. This will help you to take the contents of the criticism and not allow the negative emotion to cloud it.

Positive emotional helps us to have empathy, to build relationships, to understand people totally, to able to respond appropriately, to make high quality decisions, motivate and inspire others and overall to grow towards our potential together. While negative emotions can be detrimental to this, the mindset and tools recommended earlier in this blog helps manage them successfully.

The percentage of women in top management and CEO positions are growing rapidly, they hire more women in to their organizations, and those organizations are more successful than others. This is because women have more emotional energy than men. While this is great news, it is important for men to be courageous to use emotions in leading their organizations to success so that we can all work towards making this world a better place for all of us.