Avoid the Emotional Hijack

"You suck at your job!" 


Rarely, people say this to you.  Most of the time, if you're a good performer, you're just saying this to yourself. You're facing a challenge & stuck, frustrated.  You insult yourself and take shame. 

When you're faced with a challenge, you want to win.  You want to grow from that challenge. 

But, often, when challenged, many of us get emotionally hijacked.  Instead of facing that challenge, winning, and growing, we instead take that challenge as an existential threat to our identity... A threat to who I am at my core.  "I AM A LEADER!"  If I fail here, I am no longer who I thought I am! 

Ok, you're above that, right?  Maybe not.  Think of the last 3 times you were over emotional?  How many of those times fit the above profile?

When you face that challenge, you don't need an emotional overload, an emotional hijack to motivate (and derail!) you.   If you give in to the emotional rage, you're likely to be blind to the real solutions, and you're likely to piss off the people around you, creating ripple effects of team damage that will need much energy to repair later.  (Trust takes a long time to build, and far longer to rebuild after you get hot-headed with your team.)

Here's a well-proven trick to beat that!
It's a simple exercise:
1)  Get a blank sheet of paper.
2)  At the top, write "WHO I AM"
3)  Start listing ALL of the things that define you.  List things you've done in the past too, as you often still have those skills & capacities.

For example, here's mine, in clusters:

• Family:  Husband, father, brother, son, uncle, cousin, godfather, pinzan, ninong, tito, etc
• Work:  Leader, manager, director, project manager, engineer (software, mechanical), trainer, scrum master, product manager, inventor, sales engineer, account manager, etc...
• Hobbies:  Gardener, jazz piano player, chess player, juggler, curious reader, idea creator, debator, etc.
• Misc:  Occasional plumber, electrician, oh yeah, friend too, and playful jokester at times.

Just write down everything that defines you.  Don't forget, "student".  We all were dedicated learners for a good chunk of our lives, and let's not forget that we still have that identity & capacity to learn!

Now, when either a person, or a situation makes you feel like you're lousy at your job, you can realize that this is no existential threat.  Even if you failed today, you are so much more than just one thing.  So, go fix the problem.  Learn from it.  But, don't let yourself think that failure is a total failure of your identity. 


This is a proven method to keep your cool, and face challenges with the right level of passion, where you embrace the challenge, learn from it, grow, win, but all while not getting hijacked by your emotions.