Don’t Ignore the Yellow Lights

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The speedometer gets more attention than any other indicator on my car’s dashboard. I generally want to get to my destination as quickly as possible without compromising safety or getting a speeding ticket. 

Focused as the workplace is on speed and productivity, it’s not surprising that businesses have adopted the dashboard metaphor to track the metrics relevant to their functionality and to the people who create it. But how many of the yellow signals—like the “check engine” light or the indicator of low tire pressure—are on the dashboards of business?

Among those metaphorical dashboard lights are those related to emotional awareness. Because they are yellow and not red, we sometimes pay less attention to them. But to ignore them would almost certainly affect the bottom line in a negative way. Here are three reasons why we should learn to give more consideration to emotions, all from The Body Keeps the Score:

  1. Emotions are signals that something deserves our attention (p. 100). Anger, for example, tells us that we need to confront something. It could be someone else’s behavior, a bad process, or something within ourselves. Fear indicates the presence of a threat, which could be real or imaginary. In both examples, it’s clear that emotion alone doesn’t give us clear, reliable information on which to act, which leads to the next point:
  2. Emotions and reason are not opposed to each other. They are simply in some sort of tension, balance, or imbalance with each other. Although they are valuable as indicators of what deserves attention, strong emotions can also hijack thinking. Processing those feelings is a key to clearer thinking and therefore better action. As Dr. van der Kolk writes, “Our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.” He goes on to state: “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention” (p. 64).
  3. Emotions are a source of motivation to initiate action (p. 75). Not only do they point us toward or away from an object. They help us move and do.

The “check engine” indicator on my car’s dashboard often lights up around the time the engine needs an oil change. New lubricant usually results in that light turning off. But I still take my vehicle to the mechanics to perform that simple task because I just don’t know what else they might find.

I journal every day to attend as best I can to the emotional lights on my personal dashboard. It’s certainly a helpful practice. But I know both from personal experience and learning that the effects of emotion can sometimes be so powerful or subtle that they cloud my vision or skew my perception without my awareness. Another person often gives better attention to the complex ecosystem of my thoughts and emotions than I can myself. 

Who else is checking your internal engine?

A Better Process

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Some processes are better than others.

Take the process of spring cleaning for example. In time for yesterday’s vernal equinox, I read Marie Kondo’s book on tidying for some inspiration. I certainly found it, but I also couldn’t help noticing that this inspiration came wrapped in process. Kondo’s approach to tidying is energizing, motivating, and inspiring because her principles and process are so good: sort by type, discard first, et cetera.

To improve my craft as a communicator, I also recently read John McPhee’s book on writing. He too shares a great process. But an extra surprise for me in his book was a passage he offered about editors and writers:

…no two writers are the same…No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

fromDraft No. 4, page 82

If one substitutes “working” for “writing” in the passage above, it could describe most of us. Just as a writer follows a process in which she submits her text to examination by a cadre of grammarians, fact checkers, and guardians of the style guide, most other professionals also have processes through which others check, critique, or correct their work. 

But for how many of those professionals does the process include the kind of “editor” McPhee describes, someone to help them “make the most of the patterns that are unique about them”? In work and life, there seems to be an abundance of critics to help us make our work better, but far fewer who offer the constructive insight, challenge, and encouragement that help us make ourselves better. 

If you could benefit from a conversation with this sort of “editor”, schedule a time to talk. The only thing it will cost you (and me, for that matter) is time. But isn’t time well spent if it leads you to a better process?

A Path toward Purpose

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In a memorable scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight, who has just lost both of his arms, replies quite matter-of-factly to King Arthur that his traumatic injuries are “just a flesh wound.” It’s the knight’s absurd denial of reality that makes the scene so funny. In real life, it’s not funny at all.

Sadly, many people go through life unaware that they have suffered some form of trauma. Physical or sexual abuse of children, for example, can be buried in their consciousness as part of a natural human defense mechanism. And there are countless more who experience emotional trauma both as children and later in life.

One of the lessons from Bessel van der Kolk’s excellent book The Body Keeps the Score is that trauma can rob us of a sense of purpose. If purpose is a connection to something beyond and greater than ourselves, it makes sense that a self wounded and compromised by trauma would have difficulty experiencing purpose, along with the energy and meaning it gives us. If you feel you are lacking a sense of purpose, trauma is one of the possible reasons. 

To connect with a purpose that takes us beyond ourselves, we require some minimal threshold of wholeness and integration. Most people have not suffered extreme trauma and may already be across that threshold. But it is probably safe to say that all of us have been wounded to some degree or another, so for all of us, the path to purpose may very well begin with healing.

If you want to discover or clarify your purpose, a good way to start is with a conversation. I welcome the opportunity to speak with you about purpose, and if I can’t help you, I’ll help you find someone who can.