Self-Regulation: Managing Your Emotions and Impulses

Self-regulation (also called self-management in Daniel Goleman's framework) is the act of controlling your behaviors, thoughts, emotions, choices, and impulses in a way that contributes to your own well-being and the well-being of others. It encompasses the cognitive and behavioral processes that effectively manage one's emotions, impulses, and behaviors while demonstrating adaptability to dynamic environmental conditions. Self-regulation helps you keep negative emotions in check and think before you react, maintaining your effectiveness under stressful or even hostile conditions.

Key Competencies of Self-Regulation

1. Emotional Self-Control
    The ability to keep your disruptive emotions and impulses in check. This includes:
      • Staying calm and clear-headed under stress, even during a crisis
      • Recognizing and managing emotions that might interfere with performance
      • Maintaining composure when facing challenges
      • Preventing emotional reactions from derailing important conversations

2. Adaptability
    Flexibility in handling change and uncertainty. This involves:
      • Juggling multiple demands effectively
      • Staying focused on goals while adjusting approaches
      • Working comfortably with uncertainty and ambiguity
      • Quickly shifting strategies when circumstances change

3. Achievement Orientation
    Striving to meet or exceed standards of excellence. This includes:
      • Setting challenging but achievable goals
      • Taking calculated risks to improve performance
      • Finding better ways to accomplish tasks
      • Balancing high standards with sustainable effort (avoiding constant "overdrive")

4. Positive Outlook
    Maintaining an optimistic perspective despite setbacks. This involves:
      • Seeing positive aspects in people and situations
      • Persisting toward goals despite obstacles
      • Identifying opportunities where others might see only problems
      • Demonstrating resilience amid change

Why Self-Regulation Matters

Self-regulation is crucial for maintaining composure, making sound decisions under pressure, and demonstrating resilience amid change. Leaders with strong self-regulation can recognize and manage their own emotions, preventing those emotions from interfering with their ability to lead effectively. This skill enables you to pause between a triggering event and your response, giving you the space to choose how you want to act rather than simply reacting on impulse.

Practical Strategies to Develop Self-Regulation Skills

Use the Stop-Breathe-Reflect-Choose Approach
    When you feel upsetting emotions, tell yourself to calm down and think more clearly. Try to relax by taking deep, slow breaths, counting to 10, or taking a brief walk. This creates space between the trigger and your response.

Pause Before Responding
    The number one skill in regulating difficult emotions is to pause, take a breath, and slow down the moment between trigger and response. Even a few seconds can make the difference between a reactive outburst and a thoughtful response.

Practice Mindfulness
    Mindfulness is a proven approach to improving emotion regulation. It involves purposely focusing your attention on the present moment without judgment. This practice calms and focuses you, making you more self-aware and better able to manage your emotional responses.

Use Cognitive Reappraisal
    Actively change your perspective of a situation to shift its emotional impact. For example, view a failure as a learning experience rather than a shameful experience. This reframing can significantly reduce emotional distress and help you respond more constructively.

Develop Body Awareness
    Tune in to yourself and notice: in what parts of your body are you experiencing sensations? Your physical symptoms—such as tension in your shoulders, a knot in your stomach, or tightness in your chest—can be clues to what you are experiencing emotionally.

Keep a Journal
    Regular journaling or guided self-talk can provide insights into your personal emotional triggers and behaviors. Writing about emotional experiences helps you process them and identify patterns, subsequently enhancing your emotional regulation.

Practice Active Listening
    Focus on what the speaker is saying and show you're engaged by paraphrasing and using non-verbal cues like nodding. This keeps you grounded in the present moment and prevents you from reacting prematurely based on assumptions.

Identify Your Triggers
    Pay attention to situations, people, or circumstances that consistently provoke strong emotional reactions. Once you know your triggers, you can prepare strategies for managing them more effectively.

Build Healthy Habits
    Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating all support better emotional regulation. When your body is well-cared for, you're better equipped to manage stress and maintain emotional balance.

Remember: The skills that make up emotional intelligence can be learned at any time, but there is a difference between simply learning about self-regulation and applying that knowledge to your life. Mastery of emotional self-control requires intentionality and practice. Through techniques like mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal, and self-awareness, anyone can develop the skills needed to manage emotions effectively and build greater resilience.

Additional Resources

Here's an article from Harvard Health Publishing:
Self-regulation for adults: Strategies for getting a handle on emotions and behavior

Here's an article from Positive Psychology:
What is Self-Regulation? (+9 Skills and Strategies)