Why emotional fitness is a vital leadership skill

There is one very important relationship that lies at the very core of having the courage to be you. This very specific relationship makes the world of difference. This relationship is not with a person. This is the relationship we have with our minds. More specifically within our mind, is the quality of our relationship with uncertainty. Our relationship with uncertainty will massively determine whether we journey well or continue to struggle and linger in a psychological world void of inspiration, purpose and meaning.

Our mindset, which is also known as our personal philosophy, or our psychology, is made up of a complex series of correlations. Think of a correlation in this context as a formula or equation where we create or design a connection between two ideas which operate independently of each other. For instance, most people correlate uncertainty with fear. Uncertainty and fear are two independent ideas which have been linked together via a story. To be clear, this takes nothing away from the very real experiences of fear we have all had in our lives. The point is, that if we continue to correlate uncertainty with fear, we will continue our unresourceful relationship with uncertainty, which means more than likely we will continue having great difficulties navigating the new and the unknown.

This correlation (also known as a belief) is a manufactured interpretation influenced by past personal experiences, blended with what we have been told by trusted and influential people in our lives. It is a purely subjective interpretation of experience. When we believe something for long enough, it hardens into ‘fact’, which most people will never question again. Having the courage to be you means questioning some of the ‘facts’ we may have in our personal philosophy which have not been serving us well. Becoming emotionally fit helps us transform the relationship we have with our thoughts and all their entangled correlations.

I am often inspired by nature and the lessons offered by nature on how to live. One such offering is that everything is either growing or dying. Growth, as we will explore more deeply later, is a perpetual need of the human spirit. One of the fundamental requirements for all growth is uncertainty. This means that without uncertainty, we cannot grow. If we stop growing, we begin dying. This applies to everything from our technical skills to our emotional relationships and life overall. Uncertainty is therefore a requirement of life! Without uncertainty, we would stop growing, and when we stop growing, we begin to die. Nature teaches us that it grows when it meets with an obstacle. We have grown into who we are today to the degree we have been exposed to uncertainty.

As you may be gathering by now, how we relate to uncertainty will go a long way in determining our emotional fitness. Becoming emotionally fit means we are becoming more deeply aligned with who we are. It takes courage to realise our true potential. How emotionally fit we are, reflects the degree to which we have the courage to be ourselves, and hence, the courage to be you. So how do we do this? How do we transform, evolve, and expand our relationship with uncertainty?

This is quite a question. There are many roads to home. One of those roads is to embrace the emotional fitness formula into our lives. To be clear, this formula doesn’t make uncertainty easier, otherwise, it would not be uncertainty! The emotional fitness formula gives us the psychological resources which empower us with clarity and direction whenever we are navigating life’s inevitable challenges. This formula can be powerfully utilised in almost any stressful or difficult situation.

The emotional fitness formula has five principles for mastering uncertainty. , which all play a significant role in helping us navigate the unknown. Each of these principles are designed with one purpose in mind – to provide us with as many avenues to certainty as possible. This is crucial because the more avenues or access we have to certainty the more uncertainty we can handle. The more we can handle, the more we can grow. The more we can grow, the richer and more meaning-driven our lives become.

• Core Principle 1: Identity [Know who you are]
  This is the single most powerful force in the human condition. This is because we will do almost anything to remain consistent with how we see ourselves. This consistency brings certainty in the form of clarity. We will do anything to defend our identity if we perceive it is under attack. We cannot perceive our world outside of our identity. Our identity is how we define ourselves. More specifically, it is what we allow ourselves to be defined by. Identity is our self-concept. Our identity is what we believe we are worthy of, not worthy of, what we deserve, don’t deserve and so on. Most life crises of any kind are identity crises. Solve the identity crisis and you go a long way in solving the experience of most other crises.
• Core Principle 2: Life Stages [Know where you are] 
  By ‘life stage’, we are not talking about age or linear time. Here our focus is on where we are on the actual ‘ambition to meaning’ road. There is nothing wrong with the ambition-driven world. The insatiable thirst of the ego for ‘more, more, more…’ in the ambition-driven world, is never satisfied. Entering the meaning-driven world we move away from an ego-centric existence to a heart-centric existence. This means we become more accessible, transparent, and real. In the meaning-driven world, we no longer have anything to prove or defend. We stop the chase for more. We stop living life fast and start living life deeply.
• Core Principle 3: Values [Know where you are going]
  This is our emotional compass which directs us towards our deepest desires. Our values determine our standard of behaviour. When we compromise or violate (not follow) our emotional compass we will feel it. We will feel emotionally unwell. Having the courage to be you means becoming loyal to what you stand for (values), at the risk of being misunderstood. Our values are not to be found ‘out there’. They are to be discovered within. Values have also been described as emotional states we want to experience on a consistent basis. Values are felt deeply, especially when we live in alignment with them. This special emotional compass connects very closely to our fourth core focus point – our Emotional Flexibility.
• Core Principle 4: Emotional Flexibility [Know how to get there]
  Emotions don’t respond to facts. They respond to our interpretations of the facts. Emotions are manufactured and fabricated. We are meaning-making machines in a world that has no meaning. Emotions are also hugely influenced based on our spectrum of perception. I have always been fascinated with how two people can be looking at the same thing and both have completely different experiences. Both believe they are right. This is a crucial behavioural fact to grasp. It is what keeps our economical world spinning. Every market on the planet exists because of this behavioural fact. Think about it, at any given moment in any market, there is somebody who believes the stock will go up and in the same instant you have someone who believes it will go down. Where the balance of numbers is spread on this broad spectrum of perception, will determine whether the market goes up or down!
• Core Principle 5: Perspective [Know what matters most] 
  Our perspective is our worldview, our philosophy, and our psychological purview of life. It is very important that we have a clean and healthy perspective we can lean on in difficult times. Has anyone ever said to you something along the lines of “…. hey, you just got to get things into perspective!”? In challenging times, how clean our perspective is, will go a long way in determining how well we handle uncertainty.

An emotionally fit perspective is one that can have instant access to gratitude and appreciation. When we have clarity of mind, which means, we know who we are, we deeply understand what psychological life stage we are at, we know what we stand for, we have a great handle on our emotions and we have a clean perspective, we become incredibly well equipped to handle whatever life throws our way.

This is an edited extract from “Courage To Be You – Your Guide To Mastering Uncertainty” by Joe Pane.

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