Labelling Your Emotions

Tools For Helping To Name And Listen To Them Accurately

Once of the most popular and well used tools in the Be Braver toolkit is the emotions wheel. Sometimes we can feel like we are the mercy of our emotions but with the right tools we can have more control than we think.

There are of course thousands of words in the English language alone for labelling your emotions. Very often we only use a handful of them. Yet the power the words we use carries a huge amount of information. Can create opportunity. Or limit it.

Whether it is thinking about your own, or what you think other peoples emotional responses might be (though the best way to know for sure is to do this exercise with them of course), pausing to consider whether you have correctly labeled them offers valuable data and information.

Take sadness. Then frustration, disappointment or rejection. Then think of a situation you have found yourself in. Consider how the courses of action. Who where power, influence and responsibility sits with each. The different types of conversations each might create. The different intentions and outcomes you might seek.

Print the wheel off and have it somewhere handy as a reference tool. Use it as a sensor check.

Another tip is to make sure you aren’t saying to yourself ‘I am frustrated’ ‘I am sad’.

To create space between you and the emotion, so that you would say ‘I notice I am feeling’. This allows space and perspective to observe, sit with and understand the information we want to extract and work with from the emotion.

It prevents it from running wild and us feeling powerless and at its behest.

For further reading on the subject Susan David has done some brilliant work on how our emotions carry data.

The real transformation in this space come when you integrate your emotional literacy with the values work we do in Finding Clarity.

If you want to explore this further as a practice, unpack how this relates to management and leadership, Be Braver designs and develops bespoke training solutions. Fit to the culture, values and behaviours you wish to see in your team or organisation.

Values Grow Your Courage.

Knowing your personal values, or core values is a foundational pillar of practicing a Be Braver mindset.

Value your roots, for the strength and courage they offer you.

Your values are beliefs or principles that guide your actions and decisions.

We liken them to superpowers in Be Braver, or the lenses through which you make sense of the world.

If you don’t yet think you could name them, you’d certainly be able to identify them if you act out of alignment with them, or if someone crosses or conflicts with one of yours.

Being able to operationalise or live in alignment to your own values, offers you joy and abundance. It can be difficult and uncomfortable at times, like any practice. But will also be the way you become the best version of you, help you make sense of the uncertain decisions you have to make.

It seems such an obvious thing to be able to articulate them, yet so many have never paused to take them time to think about it. Many find it transformational when they do. Get very creative about it to - there are numerous ways you can bring them to life visually to act as prompts and reminders about the person you are becoming.

When life present decisions where none of the choices look good, your values will help you find the way. When you have an abundance of options and are fortunate to be spoilt for choice, again looking through your values will offer you a perspective that makes action clearer.

They are the root source of the strength upon which we draw, when we choose courageous actions and decisions.

When we learn to Be Braver in service to becoming our best self.

How to identify your personal values

1. Put some time aside, but don’t expect to bash a list out all out in one go. You’ll need to think, reflect and come back to it most likely.

2. Think about someone you truly admire, what are the values and qualities that are so striking about them? Write down the words that jump out. The values you see in them.

3. Tap in to a time or moment in your life when you’ve felt utterly in your zone. What values were present in that experience? Note down the key words. (We use a prompt sheet in our programme which sometimes can help - you can source one online if you get stuck to get you going)

4. What about a time when something or someone really jarred that you found very testing. What values was this an example of being conflicted?

5. Notice a time when you were faced with a difficult decision. What values guided your decision-making process? Capture those.

6. Imagine you are wearing a philosophers gown and share the values you think are necessary for a fulfilling and meaningful life? Write them down.

7. Cluster the words you have in to themes and look for groupings. Do some mean similar things? Think about what the definition of the words mean to you. So you know what they mean in practice as you define them

8. Aim to define around 10 that are most important to you. These should be the values that if you overheard someone using to describe you, would make you feel were the perfect articulation of the person you are becoming.

9. One last check. Are these really yours? Be 100% there aren’t any here that you think you ‘should’ have here. That might be family, culture, religion, peer groups. These need to be yours, not what you think they ought to be. If there are any that aren’t yours. Remove them. You own you.

10. Sit with them. Reflect on them. Notice how they do or don’t show up in your every day. What is neglected, what if ever present.

This is just the beginning. How you operationalise them - use them abundantly will transform not only your own growth, but what you give and offer to the world and those around you.

With regular reflection and paying attention and to you values, you will be able to begin to make decisions that align with your beliefs and lead a more authentic and fulfilling life. You will start to be able to do uncomfortable and courageous things.

To take risks, face fears. You will begin to be braver.

How Can I Be Braver?

How Do You Become Braver?

You’ve been brave before. You know you can Be Braver again. 

But you are stuck.

Procrastinating. Avoiding the questions that hold the answers you need.

You don’t want to feel uncomfortable. Go through the messy bit to get to the good bit. 

Feel alone. A bit embarrassed or ashamed perhaps that you think or feel like this. Haven’t wanted to share it.

So you keep your head down. Hope someone or something comes along out there and it all sorts itself out. Wait for the universe to present a solution or hope for circumstances to change.

Well we all know there are no heroes in most of our lives. That if you want to stand a chance of meeting one you are going to have to #beyourownhero.

Which also means as you get to design your own costume which can be a lot of fun.

Most of the things we want to make happen in life do so because of a decision or a choice that we made. Not someone else.

Our circumstances might not have been our own design. But where we go next very much is.

You have never been stronger than where you are today. You might not feel it. But it is true.

Today you have the most amount of knowledge, experience and wisdom to draw upon than you have had at any other point in your life. You are in the best position you have ever been.

Your struggles are your strengths.

Today is the best day to Be Braver.

You need to do 4 things to Be Braver.

Be Clear.

Be Confident.

Be Connected.

Be Courageous.

Have all 4 of these attended to, connecting and working together - and you will have everything you need to create change, live fear-lessly and lead courageously.

In a way that feels purposeful, meaningful and motivating.

Learning to Be Braver is a pathway to learning to live fear-lessly and lead courageously.

Be Clear. Find Clarity. 

Identify and understand your values and vision. Essential for moving forward authentically. The lenses to make sense of difficult moral and ethical decisions. The motivators for creating change.

Be Confident. Know Confidence

Examining your own experiences and competences to build confidence, and to keep building on it. Be able to appropriately appraise your abilities, limitations and strengths. Separate out your beliefs about your competencies and skills from the reality.

Be Connected. Create Connection.

Understand how you connect to and read the environment around you. With your emotions, with others, with networks and communities. There is an abundance of resources and information to strengthen your confidence and sharpen your clarity. Question what you see and where you are.

Be Courageous. Choose Courage.

Understand your relationship with risk. Personally and professionally. Know what your version of resilience looks like in the face of adversity and failure. Be ready to take values-aligned action. Fear-lessly. To know when it is right to choose courage. So that when called upon. You will be able to. Over and over again. With less fear.

Choosing to Be Braver doesn’t guarantee success any more than avoiding it guarantees doom and gloom. But your chances are undoubtably far greater - courage always rewards in unexpected ways.

It does guarantee that you will be stronger, more courageous, authentic for it. You will be who you are becoming. That you will have pride in your actions and decisions.

That you don’t regret the things you didn’t do, but are proud of things you did.

So as you think about who you want to be. Who you are becoming. Are maybe frustrated because you feel stuck, think you are your own worst enemy.

Remember. You have been brave before, you can be braver again. That in becoming the person you want to be, the only hero you will ever need is the one that you will be.

Be Curious. To Be Braver.

Be Curious. To Be Braver.

As this Meta-analysis suggests programmes, like the Be Braver Practitioner programme that seek to raise curiosity can have the effect of increases in #creativity, #innovation, life satisfaction, life meaning, #performance and job satisfaction.

In Be Braver - we start with curiosity to explore how we gain the #clarity pertaining to our role, vision, values and ambitions so we can apply this to both personal and professional contexts.

Driven by this unique blueprint, we seek to critically appraise what this shows us in respect to our confidence as a leader, our skills, competences and beliefs about the self and others.

Creating #connection comes from a place of curiosity about the world, environments and emotional connections with have to the abundance of resources and relationships available to us.

To build on our vision, to support making values aligned decisions. To grow confidence.

Clarity, confidence, and connection fuel our commitment in the moments where we need to choose courage - it is our curiosity to see what we find on the others side of our courageous values- aligned decisions that can make all the difference as to whether we listen to the risks of avoiding or the risks of taking action.

Stay curious.

Ask yourself the difficult questions.

Choose courage.

Be Braver.

If you really want to ask your self the questions that can make the biggest difference - try our Be Brave questionnaire

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12144-022-03107-w.pdf