Control Can Be Dangerous or Impactful

by Rick White, President 180BIZ                                                            (Estimated Read Time 3 minutes)

It's funny how we're all looking for control. I had an ex-wife that wouldn't get on a plane. When I asked her why she said it was because she couldn't control it. She explained that in a car she can control it. I asked her, “Do you think that magic yellow line in between is going to stop someone from coming over and hitting you?” Control is an illusion. What I want to talk about is one of the few things you actually can control. It's one that we do a horrible job at and that's emotional control.

Be aware of your emotions!  Make it safe for your team to learn and grow.

We must make it safe for our team to learn and grow. Part of learning and growing is being able to make mistakes. And it's funny how I'll talk to a shop owner and on this hand they want their team to grow. They want them to learn. They want them to do better and be faster. But on the other hand, they want everything perfect. Well, perfect isn’t going to happen because everyone makes mistakes.

Think about emotional control. You must become aware. Be aware of your emotions. Every once in a while stop and look around. Take a temperature check of what's going on inside of you. And once you're emotionally aware, you can do something about it. You can say, “Hey, am I focused on the best thing? If it's the best thing and it's causing problems, what else can it mean? That perspective change can be everything. Be emotionally aware.

Regulate your emotions and take care of yourself.

Once you're aware, you then need to regulate, take care of yourself, and bring it down. Regulate that energy, the emotions you bring to an interaction.

Now, here's another thing. It's a dangerous thing. It's called emotional masking. That's where we try to put something over what we're feeling. We try to hide it. That doesn't work. You might say the right words, but your tone, your body language, everything about you oozes out what you're feeling. And guess what happens if you mask it long enough? That's when we have blowups, and that is really dangerous. Why? Because it doesn't make it safe. It isn’t safe for your family, it isn’t safe for your team, and they start backing up. They end up retreating. You don't want that.

Don’t mask your emotions or expect others to mask their emotions.

This is something I've been working on for a long time. I thought by masking my emotions I was being aware. But it's not. Being aware is the first step. Regulating is the second step. Then you start to be aware of others' feelings, and what they might be going through. That's huge when you think about what others might be going through. Now you can manage how you show up. You can set boundaries. You identify your triggers. Realize that you have a choice in how you show up. This is one area you can control. In other words, if you wake up in the morning thinking, “Man, what's going to go wrong today? What am I going to have to deal with today? What fires am I going to have to put out today?” What do you think your day will look like? But what if you got up in the morning and thought, “Man, I'm alive another day. What difference can I make today?”

Will you spend or invest your emotional pennies?

We each have a hundred emotional pennies a day. Be very intentional about how you spend them or how you invest them. When you're spending them, it's always an emotional reaction. When you're investing them, it’s always going to be growth, accomplishment, and relationship. Yes, you're going to use those pennies up, but they're going to feed your life.

You can control the way you see things. You can control the way you react to things. You will still have emotions. Don't try to make emotions go away. That's an issue for some of us. I was brought up that you didn't have emotions and that's a generational curse. I'm really working hard to break that so my children don't feel that way. My sons particularly don't feel that way. I want them to be able to have emotions. I want them to know it's okay. Emotions are just our way of interpreting where we're at in our environment right now. They're indicators. They're not drivers. That's the important thing.

Please share this video.  We have our Shop Owner’s Round Table, on the second Thursday of every month, 7 p.m. Eastern, and we would love you and your friends to drop by. Shop owners only. And then we have our upcoming Pocket Business Genius webinar on the second Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. 

God bless. stay safe, have some fun, and go make some money.  Take care.

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