Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Emotional Fitness; For life & not just work life




 An article in the newspaper prompted me to ask this question to self; Emotionally Fit? My answer was ‘somewhat’. Anyone who read the article would have asked themselves the same or similar question. Being an instructional designer (a person who designs & creates Training courses) my obvious thought was why not create a training program “Being emotionally fit; For life& not just work life”. While I would eventually design the training program to be offered to various clients, the question constantly knocking my head is “Why do people react differently to same situation”. As a reader of my blog you can definitely help me, Please Do!

In my quest to seek the answer to this question & my research, I stumbled upon a concept “Rashomon effect”. Wikipedia explains it as “the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it. A useful demonstration of this principle in scientific understanding can be found in an article by that name authored by Karl G. Heider and different movies like Vantage Point
Emotional fitness I believe is an output of our upbringing together with the faith & trust that our parents embed in us. They say when you see something, you start seeing more of it. I have been seeing a lot of emotional stress around me in friends, colleagues, family and even people I have met lately. The need to find my emotional fitness level is growing & growing and the search is on (I will let you know as soon as I find the way to find one’s fitness level).

You may choose to do your own self assessments to see where you stand. One of the ways I am familiar with is scenario analysis, A technique often used in training sessions to help learners reflect upon their behavior in a situation or what they would have done if they were in the same situation.
How you handled an emotionally stressful situation – by breaking down into tears, running away, calmly handling the situation or any other way, you would be able to fairly judge your fitness level.

Few things that may help you deal emotional situations better;

Imagining yourself calmly handling the situation (Power of positive imagery)

Work on your physical fitness level (agree or don’t, a fit body has only emotions to fight in a situation like this)

Deep breathing or meditate

Create a fighter’s mindset
Get yourself a Pet 
And my quest for finding/ creating a tool to test emotional fitness continues; Once I find it I will share “Sharing is Caring"



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