As we continue in our second or third lockdown depending on your definition you might be feeling “lockdowned out” it certainly appears for many that the effect of successive lockdowns is cumulative with many people going to reporting this second series of lockdowns being harder than the first.

There’s no question having to make change around childcare, supporting family, working from home, household budgets and reducing income is challenging.  Layer this with changes to your job, only meeting your work colleagues virtually by Zoom or Microsoft Teams (with or without video), and uncertainty and fear around loss of work, loss of livelihood or loss of business, and the challenge only increases.

This all represents a significant change from the way things were prior to March. It’s clear that this is a particularly testing time for many of us.

Observing our learners and seeing how people vary in their responses, does really bring home to me that at least a proportion of how people feel is relating to how they are currently thinking and responding to the situation.

I’m not for a second saying that many people don’t have very challenging issues to work through.  What I am saying is that how people are thinking about some of those situations is making a difference to their sense of experience. I don’t know about you but I’m certainly feeling more tired right now.  I put this down to the energy expended managing the sense of uncertainty and regulating my background angst around Covid and economic uncertainty.

This has certainly recalled Daniel Golemans Emotional Intelligence framework for me. We have worked with this for many years as I expect many of you have.

Emotional intelligence is the capacity to recognise our own feelings and those of others and to manage emotions effectively in ourselves and in our relationships. It is much more than just having empathy or being more sensitive. It is working out how to be more aware.

In the last 10 years many of Golemans findings have been borne out in neuroscience . Research shows that emotional intelligence is a learned capacity which can contribute to effective performance at work and greater satisfaction in life as well.

I do want to point to 2 simple things that science suggest can be helpful in times of uncertainty and complexity.

STRATEGY 1: Slow down and reflect

First make some time in a busy life to slow down and reflect on what’s happening. Refection opens a different perspective and creates a gap between you and your thoughts which helps you better process and manage your emotions. This relates to all four domains of the Emotional Intelligence framework.

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship Management

A common coping strategy with uncertainty and complexity for conscientious people with drive is to double down on work.  This is what Eduardo Briceno calls being in the performance zone. Great for ploughing through the work, less effective for breadth of thinking, learning and improvement and sense making. Reflection kick starts us into the Learning zone.

How you reflect is less important than just doing it. Write a journal, have a reflective conversation with someone you trust, review your week as you run or listen to music. Reflection can be incredibly useful in fact it’s critical if people are going to be able to sense make and make different decisions going forward.

STRATEGY 2: Generate Awe

Secondly I want to point to a much simpler approach that could be helpful for some people and it’s about generating what is sometimes called awe. Awe is a positive emotion triggered by awareness of something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understandable — such as nature, art, music, or being caught up in a collective act such as a ceremony, concert, or political march.

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, PhD, an expert in emotion has said “Experiencing awe can contribute to a host of benefits including an expanded sense of time and enhanced feelings of generosity, well-being, and humility.”

A recent study published September 21, 2020 in the journal Emotion demonstrated that older adults who took weekly 15-minute “awe walks” for eight weeks reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives.

Keltner commenting on this study said, “What we show here is that a very simple intervention — essentially a reminder to occasionally shift our energy and attention outward instead of inward — can lead to significant improvements in emotional well-being.”

One thing it is still possible to do even in lockdowns is to get outside and connect to the outdoors. In New Zealand we are extremely fortunate we’ve got more than our fair share of inspiring landscapes. Taking a bit of time to get outdoors can help put things in perspective and again help to mage our emotions and process our thinking.

These 2 simple strategies won’t make the huge challenges go away.  They can however help lighten the load,  support your resilience, develop your emotional intelligence, and positively impact on your performance.

Looking for further resource?  Find my sources here:

Emotional Intelligence In Leadership https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_45.htm

When performing gets in the way of improving | Eduardo Briceño | TEDxManhattanBeach

https://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner

https://neurosciencenews.com/awe-walk-emotional-wellbeing-17063/

By Graham Hart