Emotional energy exchange enitiative - interacting with yourself and others better!
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
One Minute Summary:
The best relationships are mutually positive sum; this is where:
1. you give others energy AND the act of giving others energy gives you energy.
2. Others give you energy AND the active of others giving you energy gives them energy.
I believe there is no upper limit on much value you can give someone… And no upper limit to what someone can give to you, so let's give each other lots :)!!
One key way to add value is to help each other manifest and propagate good energy, remove bad energy and support each other emotionally at the right times.
In short:
What emotions do you feed yourself?
What emotions do you feed to others?
What emotions do others feed to you?
Jingle: let’s set up an ‘Emotional energy exchange enitiative’... a mutually positive sum one! I’ll try and make your life good, I’d appreciate it if you tried to help make mine good too!
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Overview
Model and elaboration time:
Foundation layer = L1: Emotional Energy
Middle layer = L2: Verbal Communication
Top Layer = L3: Output
Comment:
IMO your Emotional Energy will affect your Verbal Communications, and how you Verbally Communicate in turn affects your Output (eg a project you are working on).
You are always communicating to yourself and others on an emotional level whether you are conscious about it or not.
I believe the goal should be:
To yourself: overall you are 1. Emotionally self sufficient and 2. Have sufficient emotional regulation abilities.
With others: overall you have emotionally mutually positive sum interactions with others (at more than the positive sentiment override level)
Emotionally mutually positive sum interactions with others = 1. You add emotional energy to their emotional tank * 2. You help regulate others * 3. The process of doing this ‘support / growth’ adds energy to your tank.
Please note that sometimes this will mean showing someone how to grow emotionally. Other times it will be supporting them. See ‘Helping Humans Handbook’ on ‘Push vs Support vs Intervene vs Leave alone’.
If you can do this well I think you’ll have a much better relationship with yourself, with others and others with you. One way to look at this is that you are effectively caring more and better, yay! Caring is cool!
We can help each other with our emotional energy:
Doing this makes a better emotional environment for everyone.
Do you want to get better at problem solving? Do you want others to help you get better at problem solving? Well I think you want to focus on improving your emotional energy and having others help you as well. Honestly I feel that 33% of time should be spent on improving ‘L3: Output’ (eg problem solving), 33% on ‘L2: Verbal Communications’ and 33% on ‘L1: Emotional Energy’.
This means that:
1. We let each other know what emotional energy we think the other is exhibiting
2. We help others with their emotional energy (eg 2.1 Tell them to lift: you are being draining, quit it! Or 2.2 Support them: you are being draining, wanna talk about what’s on your mind? Or can i take something off your plate?)
3. We try and figure out what emotional energy we want to create and then how to manifest this (eg inspiring, supportive, playful purpose, thoughtful disagreement, fruitful frustration, etc)
4. We figure out how to propagate this energy.
If we can do this well it will mean:
1. We are better
2. Others are better
3. We enjoy interacting with each other better
4. We care about each other more… and better
Riddle:
Question: What does 4x betters + 1x more give you?
Answer: good. Haha. this made me laugh.
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Winston Churchill. Please help me change!
Questions to ask:
What energy do you want to manifest internally?
Do you know what energy you exhibit to others?
Have you confirmed that your perception of what you emotionally exhibit to others reality?
What energy do others exhibit? Is this the type of energy you think that we want at Edrolo?
In the last week, have you tried to grow someone from an emotional energy point of view?
In the last month, have you offered emotional support to someone?
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Details
The impetus / background:
I’ve been at a health retreat and one of the things I did was ‘equine therapy’.
This is therapy with horses.
Now i’ve spent basically no time with horses in my life. If you know horses this isn’t new news: horses are freaky emotionally perceptive.
The only way you can communicate with them is through your emotions. You can’t talk to them, you can’t give them a project you have done.
It got me thinking about the world from an emotional energy specific lens :).
Then I thought about this TED Talk. Emotional contagion is a real thing!
Then I made this model :)
Foundation layer = L1: Emotional Energy
Middle layer = L2: Verbal Communication
Top Layer = L3: Output
Comment:
IMO we are all communicating on the emotional energy level at all times.
For me, at Secondary School and University I was basically only getting feedback on ‘L3: Output.” How did I go on that test, did I get a good grade for that project, etc
I wasn’t getting feedback about ‘L2: Verbal Communication’ in Secondary School… except being told to be quiet. I talked a LOT.
When I started work post University I realised that ‘L2: Verbal Communication’ was very important and started to actively work on improving my comms.
Secondary School and University were basically single player games for me, work has been a multiplayer game. IMO to do well at a multiplayer game you need to ‘L2: Verbal Communicate’ well.
So I’ve been proactively thinking about ‘L2: Verbal Communications” in one form or another for 12+ years.
I’ve thought about ‘L1: Emotional Energy’ but honestly not to the extent of ‘L1: Output’ or ‘L2: Verbal Comms’...
I honestly think that emotional energy / state is the foundational layer. Ie emotional energy massively affects the other two! So if energy is not good then everything else isn’t good.
IMO this is the summary of this HBR article, that ‘emotional energy / mood’ is the most important thing.
Cool I thought. Let’s go blog about this and develop some thoughts :).
Indulge me in a bit of a jaunt - I like this model:
This is one lens to look at the world through and it’s one that I’ve heard psychologists talk about a lot.
There are many versions of this model, the above attributes are not exhaustive.
Basically get biological, social and psychological areas right = have a good life.
I think what we and others say emotionally (ie your emotional energy) can make a massive positive or negative difference in social and psychological areas. Ie if we get better at ‘Emotional Energy’ we get better at life.
I would like to hopefully be great on all levels of this model “L1: Emotional Energy => L2: Verbal Communication => L3: Output”
This blog is to explore the “L1: Emotional Energy” level and see how I can hopefully ‘level up’.
With yourself:
Goal: overall you are ‘1. Emotionally self sufficient’ and ‘2. Have sufficient emotional regulation abilities’
Model 1:
Model 2:
Emotional Outcome =
1. emotional self awareness (what am I feeling)
* 2. why am I feeling this (see Helping Humans Hard Fun and Storied Model blogs)
* 3. ability to change stimulus / story about stimulus / response to stimulus
* 4. ability to regulate emotion (eg to get good at experiencing the good emotion, eg to not have the bad emotion take a wrecking ball to everything)
IMO you need a good outcome in all 4 variables above to be in a good place internally!
What is truly truly crucial is that IMO a lot of the time you are only partially aware of your Emotional Energy. And sometimes the Emotional Energy you think you are exhibiting isn’t what someone else is receiving.
Details:
Sufficiency typically means “positive sentiment override” or better. Ie emotional self sufficiency = 75%+ of the time you are energised with less than 25% of the time being drained. If you work for 4 hours where 3 are energising and 1 is draining you don’t care about the draining hour because of the 3 energising hours, you have “positive sentiment override” for the 1 draining hour because of the energising 3.
I think everyone has good and bad days, if I have one draining day a week then I’m a happy boy, ie i’m not down about having 1 bad day a week.
Also bad = draining. Good = energising. bad != negative emotions like sadness, frustration, etc.
I think emotional health is feeling all emotions in a healthy way. Not ‘only feeling “good” emotions.’
“The loss of sadness. How psychology transformed normal sorrow into a depressive disorder.” is a very interesting book.
Sadness done well is energising. If you have lost something you have cared about you should feel sad. It’s reminiscing about the good times and how you won’t have more of them, it can teach you to treasure things :)! So done well :( = :). Hahahahah!
Sadness done well = sumptuous sadness
Sadness done poorly = sucky sadness
Frustration done well is energising. It is a signal that something isn’t good enough and you need to fix it. So it gives you the motivation to do something to fix the source of frustration.
Frustration done well = fruitful frustration
Frustration done poorly = f@#$ing frustration
You can do good emotions badly as well. Let’s say something good happens at work but you don’t take a second to ‘celebrate’. You just charge on by and you then don’t let yourself experience the goodness that could have been.
Good done well = glad goodness
Good done poorly = gone goodness
Examples:
Read ‘Designed vs Default expectations’ and see the ‘Storied Model’.
Good life = 1. Doing the right things * 2. Doing things right.
I personally find that ‘2. Doing things right’ is harder than thing the right things to do.
With others:
This is the part I’m most excited about. Yay!
This is you with others
And others with you
Model time:
How you affect others = 1. what do they do to your energy + 2. What energy do you put out
1. what do they do to your energy = 1.1 remove downside + 1.2 support + 1.3 add upside.
Sometimes need to amp someone up
Sometimes calm down as too jacked
Sometimes tell them to stop being negative
Sometimes offer support.
Sometimes tell them they are walking past something they shouldn't. They need to get annoyed about this and fix it.
2. What energy do you put out
It shouldn't be one thing. It should be what it needs to be.
Sometimes inspiring, hurting, frustrated, calming, caring, put in primary emotions
Comments
Most of the time at work I want to be conscious about the energy I'm putting out.
If you get this energy thing right you have this beautiful mutually positive sum dance with everyone!
Sometimes the other pulls in the opposite direction to you, sometimes they ameliorate, sometimes amplify further where you are heading, other times they teach you something totally new that you weren't aware of.
It's ballet, it's poetry.
What is crucial is that we are actively helping shape ourselves AND others. “Hope is not a strategy.” I expect you to help me learn where to improve More than that, please try and actually change me!
Good people add value. Bad people take value. It's not about necessarily saying everyone should be energetic, constantly have one mood. It's being exactly what is needed for that moment, sometimes affecting others and other times others affecting you! Yay!
Basically if we get this right we’ll all:
1. Become more aware of our emotional energy
2. Figure out what emotional energy we should be manifesting for different situations
3. Be able to manifest and propagate the energy we want for that specific situation
4. Improve our emotional sufficiency and regulation
5. Improve others emotional sufficiency and regulation
In short:
I’ll try and make your life good, I’d appreciate it if you tried to make my life good too.
I’ll try and improve your emotional energy (which means exhibiting all types of energy in a positive sum fashion, not just being eg positive), I’d appreciate it if you tried to improve my emotional energy.