You’ve locked yourself in your office. Emails pile up, stakes have never felt higher, and your team is waiting. There’s no more data to collect and things still feel fuzzy. Decision making under pressure is no joke. That’s where emotional resilience comes in.
Emotions run high. You feel the weight of every bad decision you’ve ever made. From picking the not so good meal at dinner last week to the poor stock decision that lost you thousands. Everything comes rushing back.
Having emotional resilience during tough decisions is what separates high performers from low performers. High performers will plant their feet, make a clear and conscious decision, and lead their team forward. Low performers, they wait, delay, and leave their team with uncertainty about next steps.
This blog will:
- Help you understand why your emotions run high
- How to manage those emotions and make a decision
- What clear decision making feels like in the moment.
Decision making is key to high performance. Regulating emotions is key to decision making.
The Science Behind Emotional Resilience
Emotions are key in decision making. Stress, pressure, and anxiety can hijack your good sense by taking advantage of your emotions. Having the emotional intelligence to see the hijacking before making a decision is how high performers win.
What Happens in the Brain Under Pressure
There are two significant players when the brain is under pressure: the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Both play opposing roles when it comes to emotional reactions and decision making:
The amygdala is the emotional center of the brain. It processes a variety of emotions but primarily fear and aggression. Located near the brain stem, the amygdala receives and processes sensory information before other parts of the brain have an opportunity to process the same information.
When the amygdala is highly activated, we get a flood of intense emotions. Fear and anger jump to the for-front and we make rash decisions on a whim. We yell at co-workers, get scared of making wrong decisions, and worry about being fired.
An active amygdala is detrimental to high performance decisions. This leads to the opposing brain region.
The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is logical and rational. It is the last part of the brain that develops, hence why kids and young adults make terrible decisions.
An active prefrontal cortex relaxes the body and makes logical decisions. The prefrontal cortex reacts after the amygdala is already functioning. This means it must override the emotions the amygdala has already set into motion.
High performers tap into their prefrontal cortex to be rational even when the situation seems irrational. This is what allows for emotional resilience to come alive.
Without the appropriate balance between these two brain regions, high performers can lash out, get frustrated, and make quick, trigger happy decisions.
The Cost of Unregulated Emotions
The cost of unregulated emotions can be intense. They are the equal opposite of emotional resilience. At first, you will notice:
- Tunnel vision
- Reactive choices
- Missed opportunities
If the trend continues, it can lead to:
- Missed promotions
- Fighting with colleagues
- Fear of Job security
This happens all the time. The overly emotional executive starts lashing out at subordinates when mistakes are made. The professional football player has a meltdown on the sideline. They spiral, their team loses.
The best performers are able to notice the early sign of unregulated emotions, before it’s too late.
Recognize the Early Signs of Emotional Hijack
Emotional hijacking is intense, which makes it fairly simple to notice. If you are paying enough attention the warning signs will be blaring.
Here is a list of things you may notice:
- Physical signs: Tight chest, racing heart, clenched jaw.
- Mental signs: Black-and-white thinking, urgency obsession, over-defensiveness.
- Emotional signs: Irritability, anxiety, a desire to breakdown and cry
All of these things and more could be your emotions getting the best of you. Be able to spot these signs coming before you hit a breaking point helps emotional resilience win.
I’ve seen decision makers break down because they can feel the weight of the world on them. They get frustrated, then freeze. Next thing you know the decision gets punted to next week. Making their team, family, and dependents stagnant, unsure what to do next.
The Grounding Trifecta: Breath, Body, and Mind Emotional Resilience
Being able to calm the amygdala and activate the prefrontal cortex is a science. Through 3 simple strategies you can reset your emotional brain and calm your senses. The strategies focus on the breath, the body, and the mind.
Tactical Breathing for Immediate Calm
Research has shown that the breath is directly linked to the emotional centers of the brain. Being able to control how you breathe, especially in tough situations, will make them easier.
Here’s a few great ways to breathe for calmness:
When you’re in crisis mode, it will feel like you don’t have time to breathe.
The truth is: You don’t have time to not breathe.
Shallow, sporadic breathing limits oxygen to the brain. Doing this long enough will literally make you dumber. So be smart and breathe, literally.
Body Reset Techniques
The body and the brain are very closely related. Tightness in your body leads to tightness in your thinking. Sitting postures can literally stimulate anxiety. Knowing how to change your body can give you a side door entry into changing how your mind is feeling.
Body resets can be done in 2 ways: Relaxing or moving.
Relaxing is done through stretching, dropping your shoulders, shaking out tension, and changing your posture. The goal is to find where you are holding tension and let it release. However, if you are new to mindfulness, this can be very challenging.
Moving, on the other hand, is very simple. Get up and do something. Walk around the block, do as many push-ups as you can, bounce on one of those mini-trampolines. Anything to get you out of a stagnant thought process.
Both of these strategies work. Moving is more fool proof than relaxing however, relaxing covers more bases. Relaxing can be done in a meeting with your CEO and stakeholders. It would be a bit awkward for you to drop down and give them 50 in the middle of the meeting.
I won’t stop you though.
Build a Decision making Buffer Zone
As a high performer, you probably move fast. You think faster, move faster, and answer questions faster. It’s probably one of your biggest strengths.
However, emotional decisions are not a strength. Fear and anger give terrible advice. If you’re not able to pause and notice them, you’re in trouble.
To take yourself to the next level you need to learn to slow down when emotions are high. Rather than yelling back or running away from conflict, pause.
Step back, observe, and reframe. Instead of going back with a statement, ask questions.
Questions move you from the defensive to clarification. It disarms your emotions and gives you a few seconds to think while they clarify their statements.
The ability to slow your brain down and lean into what you know, the facts, is the secret of the best performers. Relaxed decision making is powerful. It cuts through the noise to see the clear best decision.
When you see the early warning signs of emotional hijacking, step back. Pause for at least 5 seconds before moving forward.
Long-Term Practices to Boost Emotional Clarity
High intensity situations can come out of nowhere. One minute you’re having a great day, the next, your contract falls through or the product stops working. To be calm during high intensity situations, emotional clarity must be practiced daily.
Why does Decision making mater at all? Check out what makes decision making important.
Daily Cold Exposure for Emotional Confidence
When in high stress situations, your nervous system often acts like it is going to die. Your palms get sweaty and you enter a fight or flight mode. The goal is to make sure that you survive. This is an impossible situation to be making long term decisions in.
Cold exposure can artificially stimulate those same modes. Acting as a controlled life or death situation. When in cold water, your nervous system activates your amygdala immediately.
This creates an opportunity. You know that the cold water will not kill you. You can take deep breaths and relax. This helps you get familiar with your stress response and how to manage it.
Over time, this will train your body to have a more controlled response to intense stimulus. Rather than letting the stimulus take control and your emotions flailing, you can slow down. Having control in intense situations is how high performers win.
Mindfulness Practices to Curb Emotional Hijacking
Being able to notice your emotional temperature is step one in boosting emotional clarity. Letting the world drag you from one emotion to the next is a mistake. You are not in control when emotions drive you.
Mindfulness is about being able to observe your mental and physical states. While observing, you’ll be able to recognize when you feel angry, sad, happy, and any other emotion. You can then decide if it is the right time to make a high stakes decision.
Making important decisions from a happy state is often more powerful than an angry or fearful state. You are willing to make bold predictions that with the right execution pay off. The highest level performers are able to relax and notice their emotional states before moving forward.
What Clear Decision-Making Feels Like
Decision making is uncomfortable. There’s many unknowns and it’s impossible to know how well it will work before you make the decision.
In a perfect world we would be able to see the final outcome before we make the decision.
Clear decision making is the closest you will get to the ideal. When you are clear in making the decision, you’ll be able to see much more than when you are an emotional wreck.
This leads to thoughtful trade-offs, focused intent, and ownership of the outcome. Clear decision making is powerful and can be easily defended under the tightest scrutiny.
Emotional decision making feels rushed. You’re basing it on gut reactions, biases, and relieving discomfort instead of making clear decisions.
The best decision makers make sure they are in a clear decision making space. Sometimes, that means relaxing in the moment. Other times, it means taking a breather before action. Either way, they make the decision from a place of calm, not clutter.
Learn more about Biases: Confirmation Bias and Its Cousins
Clarity Is a Skill, Not a Trait
Many people look at high performers and believe that they were born with something they were not. That’s actually not the case. They have just trained themselves to be exposed to uncertainty and stress more than others. Building emotional resilience in the process.
Oftentimes, they will have a coach. Someone who can help them push them out of their comfort zone. Making them notice their emotions and make high stakes decisions with ease.
Learn how the forge can help you make clear decisions:
