TODAY’S RAISING LUMINARIES EPISODE IS ALL ABOUT HELPING OUR LITTLE LEADERS DECIPHER THEIR EMOTIONS.
This is a key piece of becoming a solid leader and it might sound silly, but most adults can’t do it. So, you might pretend you’re listening to this for your kids, but this episode might be for you, too.
Let’s raise them up right!
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
[1:29] Identify It and Verbalize It
One of the most powerful pieces of advice I got in the process of raising kids came from the wisdom of generations ago, my grandmother. She had seven kids of her own, and one of the key pieces in managing having seven children was helping them identify and verbalize their emotions.
How often does your child have a meltdown of some kind, where they’re just coming off as angry or they’re coming off as sad but they can’t fully verbalize exactly what they’re feeling?
Emotional intelligence is something that we have to develop and nurture. Not learning to define our emotions and not having an understanding of how to sit in that emotion, work through it and come out the other side is something that can haunt us all the way into adulthood. How many emotionally inept adults do you know?
[3:33] Unearth It and Name It
There’s a movie called Inside Out. If you haven’t watched it and if you haven’t shown it to your kids yet, I highly recommend it. The whole premise of it is it breaks down each emotion, talks about the purpose of that emotion and how to work through that emotion. That’s what we need, even as adults, and what our kids need.
At an early stage of parenthood, I learned that when your child is frustrated or having a tantrum, ask them, help them unearth what it is that they’re actually feeling. Help them give it a name, because when they give it a name, they take back the power of that emotion.
[4:50] 30 seconds
If you allow your emotions to pass through you, if you allow them to be felt – they come and go in 30 seconds. But oftentimes, because we don’t process it and we don’t even understand what it is specifically, it lingers and the body keeps the score. Eventually, this turns into health issues, anger issues, emotional issues, and so on. So helping your child specify the feeling and giving them a space to actually feel it is so critical.
[5:20] A Critical Differentiator
Leadership is loaded with different emotions. If you think that someday you will elevate above the feelings that come with all the struggles, wins and pressures that come with being a leader, you’re missing the mark. New level – new devil. Once you step into your next level of leadership, you damn well better expect even more pressures, even more stressors, even more emotions to come your way. But when you’re equipped to handle them, to identify them, to work through them, then you can get to the other side of them and make the conscious choice of how you want to resolve it.
Our kids are the same way. They’re going to encounter so many things in their lives, whether it be in school or in sports or in whatever activities they take on, or in relationships with friends or eventually with a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever it might be. They’re going to face so many emotions and we can’t protect them. We have to teach them how to identify it and how to work through that emotion, and then make a conscious choice of what they’re going to do with it. So, deciphering the difference between those emotions and then actually honoring them, speaking about them, and working through them, is going to be a critical differentiator in the growth and elevation of your child.
RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:
