21. Emotional Resiliency: How to Thrive Under Pressure
Have you ever felt dismissed, disempowered, or intimidated in a meeting? What happened and how did you handle it? Now, imagine walking into the same room with total emotional control and mental clarity. What would be different?
In this episode, I explore how emotional resiliency and mental clarity are your secret weapons in high-pressure environments, especially for women in male-dominated spaces. As I rose through the ranks in my corporate career, it was my ability to deal with difficult stakeholders, people who undermined my authority, and those who tried to intimidate me that set me apart.
Join me this week to learn the neuroscience behind emotional resiliency, practical ways to start practicing it, and why this skill set is critical for women leaders. Developing emotional resiliency and mental toughness allowed other leaders to see that I was not only a technical expert but also skilled at navigating politically charged situations, so if you’ve ever felt emotionally overwhelmed in a challenging situation, this episode is for you.
Whether you're leading a team, making big bold decisions, or tackling tough conversations, confidence is the key to showing up powerfully. That's why I created the Confidence Hack, a simple yet powerful tool that has helped tons of women just like you break free from limiting beliefs and step fully into their potential.
Click here to download the Confidence Hack for free now!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why emotional resiliency and mental clarity are essential skills for women in male-dominated industries.
How to recognize and regulate your emotions in high-pressure situations.
The neuroscience behind emotional resiliency and how it impacts decision-making.
My four-step process for building emotional resiliency.
How cultivating emotional resiliency can help you thrive in the face of challenges, both professionally and personally
2 guiding questions to ask yourself as you build the skill of emotional resiliency.
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Women experience increased stress in male-dominated industries - 2021 BetterUp study
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt dismissed, disempowered, and even intimidated? Imagine walking into the same room with total emotional control and mental clarity. What would be different? Today, we're diving into how emotional resiliency and mental clarity are your secret weapons in high pressured environments, especially for women in male-dominated spaces.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, today I have a very important and I would say essential as well as critical skill set for women in male-dominated spaces. It is about emotional resiliency and mental clarity. I'm going to talk to you about the importance of both of these skill sets and how as I rose up the ranks quickly in my corporate career, it was this emotional resiliency and mental clarity piece and my ability to deal with difficult stakeholders, people that undermined my authority, people that intimidated me, people that disempowered me, this was the skill set that set me apart and created a competitive edge for me to continue to grow in my career.
And it was the skill set that allowed other leaders to see that I was not just technically an expert in what I was doing, but I was also very skilled politically with my emotional resiliency and mental toughness.
I haven't really shared much about my background but I do want to share with you that I had a boss that was super intimidating. People would really just melt under the pressure of being in a room with him. He was highly reactive. I even remember somebody's telling me that she was in a meeting with him and some other people and that he metaphorically "drew blood.” She was just like, he just let this person have it.
And I know what some of you might be thinking, wow, it might be super toxic or even an abusive environment, but I didn't look at it that way. I actually looked at this opportunity to have this boss as almost like my greatest teacher, somebody who could teach me how to spar and how to be with highly reactive people.
Because guess what? If you are a woman leader that is advancing quickly, especially in a male-dominated space, whether it's tech or whether it's the construction industry, you're going to have to deal with lots of people. Men typically express their upset more outwardly with aggression, with frustration. And women oftentimes were taught or were socialized to hold back and to be nice and to not express at the same level. They internalize a lot of their stress versus openly express it.
So this dynamic, if you are a female leader and you don't know how to deal with your emotions, can really be limiting in your advancement. And so for me, with my boss, I was like, I'm going to figure this out because guess what? I expect myself to continue moving further and further in my career and I'm going to have more people that have big personalities, that have strong abilities to express. They're commanding, they're controlling, they need to take up lots of space. But if I'm going to be heard and I'm going to make an impact, then it is this piece around my own emotional resiliency and mental clarity that's going to set me apart.
And it really did. It made a huge difference. And not only did people notice that on my leadership team, people even beyond that did. I remember a senior leader that was kind of at the board level telling me, you have made a significant impact on this person. Like she noticed my level of leadership, my ability to stand my ground, and my ability to influence this boss of mine that a lot of people were quite frankly scared of. And it was through this skill set of emotional resiliency and mental clarity that I was able to show up.
So I was able to stand my ground. I was able to regulate my emotions. And I have to tell you that it was a process. It was very messy and in the beginning I didn't know how to deal with my emotions and in the beginning I kind of wanted to run away but I didn't allow myself and I had a lot of people in my life rooting for me.
And so today's episode is on emotional resiliency and mental clarity. I'm going to talk to you about what it exactly is, the neuroscience behind it. I'm going to give you four practical ways to start practicing your emotional resiliency. And this episode, I do want you to underline it and I want you to listen to it over and over again.
I especially want you to listen to it when you have been disempowered, intimidated, maybe somebody asked you a question in a meeting and you started to cry when you've been emotionally overwhelmed. I want you to come back to this episode and listen to it because this is the way. This is your competitive edge and it is a skill set that you can learn.
There's nothing wrong with you we are human women being in big spaces dealing with complexities and having emotional resilience and mental clarity is your path forward to continuing to expand your career and opportunities ahead of yourself.
But learning the skill is going to take some time. You're not gonna do it overnight. But I promise you, if you dedicate to yourself and you see this as a skill set that is worth learning, then you will learn it quicker. You will integrate it and it will support you in the boardroom, it will support you when you feel like your leadership's being undermined. It will support you when someone's trying to intimidate you and it will support you throughout your life and your career.
Emotional resiliency and mental clarity is everything. So even beyond the boardroom, it's important for parenting, it's important in relationship, it's just important for you to know your capacity. And oftentimes people don't know their emotional capacity because they've never been tested and they've never learned the skillset. So let's dive in. I wanna share some scenarios with you and go deeper into this very important subject that I feel very passionately about.
Scenario one, picture this. You're in a meeting with a group of senior leaders, all men. You present a great idea, but it's dismissed without consideration. You start to feel a familiar flood of frustration. Your body temperature rises, your heart races, and your mind goes blank. Instead of responding confidently, you shrink back into your chair, avoid eye contact, and mentally replay the dismissal over and over. By the end of the meeting, you've said nothing, feeling disempowered and small.
Scenario two. Now, imagine this instead. The same meeting, the same dismissal, but this time you take a deep breath. You feel the frustration rise, but instead of letting it take over you, you acknowledge it, you regulate it, and you respond with calm authority. You ask a clarifying question, reframe the idea, and continue the conversation with confidence.
By the end of the meeting, you've not only made your point, but you've also demonstrated your leadership. Your emotional resiliency gave you the ability to bounce back and your mental clarity allowed you to stay focused, intentional, and effective. So this is really the game here, your ability to bounce back, to have emotions rise in you.
So I always tell my clients, like, we're not thinking we're going to be robots, but it's more having this relationship with your emotions so that they don't take over, you know, your ability to think with mental clarity. You're not overwhelmed by the emotion, you've had practice with them.
You know, sometimes my clients come to me and they say, oh my gosh, I mean, didn't feel like I was super powerful in that moment, but you know, somebody came, they said something, a man was trying to intimidate this woman. He's like, you know, I didn't like what you did, kind of threatened her about pulling out all of the business. And she was like, I was a little bit in shock. I could notice what he was saying. I stood my own ground. I didn't start crying. So she was proud of herself there. And she thought about other things that she could say.
I also explained to her that the more that this happens to you, the better able you're going to notice your emotion, your frustration in the moment, but also the more you're going to be able to regulate yourself and get to that calm authority and bounce back. So I always tell my clients like this is a process. You know, oftentimes we think we're just going to learn something logically and be able to do it perfectly. But this truly is a process of understanding our emotions.
But it's super important because according to this 2021 BetterUp study about women in male-dominated industries, it really talked about the stress women feel. They feel about 28% more stress than men. Men feel about 11%. And this is why it's so important to build this skill set, to have this emotional resiliency and mental clarity.
The world, especially the corporate world, is tough. Women in male-dominated industries face unique challenges. We're more likely to be dismissed, interrupted, or underestimated. But here's the thing, self-empowerment starts with emotional resiliency. When you build this skill, you stop reacting to the world around you and you start shaping and sharing your responses with power and clarity.
So how does this relate to the brain? I oftentimes will teach people the neuroscience behind this because they don't understand why they have this push and pull mechanism within themselves. Part of them is like, I am excited, I want to do this thing, and then I start doing it, and I start having emotions, and I start backing down. I want to explain how this is a normal function of your brain.
So we've got two big parts of our brain that I always like to tell my clients about. One is that limbic system. It is the oldest part of our brain. It's where we feel emotions. It's connected to all of our body, and it is really geared towards survival. Its main goal is to keep us alive, look out for threats constantly, and that is what it's there to do.
Then we've got this prefrontal cortex. This is where our mental clarity really lies. This is where when we are in the boardroom dealing with a high-stake situation or question. This part of our brain allows us to think critically, resourcefully. It allows us to process very complex problems and distill it in a way that is clear and you're able to share it with other people.
But this prefrontal cortex, this is really the key that you should understand and acknowledge. If your emotions are too high, your critical thinking is low. And that literally happens because that survival brain is moving and saying, something's not okay, we need to take over.
And when we're not feeling safer, we're feeling too many emotions that they actually overwhelm us, it actually doesn't allow that prefrontal cortex where our mental clarity, our highest level thinking is working. This is when people literally say, I went blank. I froze. I don't remember what happened.
What actually is happening in that moment is your limbic system is taking control. And some people call it an amygdala hijack. That part of your brain is actually hijacking the rest of your brain and instead of reacting with calmness, with self-awareness, and being regulated, you don't know how to react because you don't have all the access to your brain and you're really just flooded with emotions.
When we practice emotional self-awareness and regulation, we build stronger connections between the emotional and rational parts of our brain, leading to better decision-making. So the more that you work on this muscle, the more you have relationships with this emotion, the less that emotion is going to take over you.
One of the things that I was working on with one of my clients is she often, when she noticed or feels rejection is going to happen and she's like unconsciously looking for it in different ways in people's mannerisms and tones, their body language, she steps back because she is overcome almost with that emotion and she wants to avoid that emotion.
So instead of really going for sharing her idea boldly, bravely, you know, she actually kind of takes a proverbial step back and is, okay, well, I tested out that idea. This person doesn't seem like they like it, so let's move on. And so by avoiding that emotion, she's not building the resiliency around it. And so we've been really working together on this piece.
So let's dive into the four-step process of emotional resiliency that I teach my clients. And it is really about recognizing your emotions, regulating your emotions, understanding and expressing your emotion, and of course, bouncing back. These are all of the steps. So I really break it down into four steps for my clients.
So the first step is emotional self-awareness. This is your ability to recognize emotions. It is your ability to have that awareness about you have to know when you're getting triggered or experiencing strong emotions before you can do anything about it. So the first step is learning to tune into your body and how you're feeling in real time and naming that emotion.
I have a whole episode on emotions and learning how to name them and what the five primary emotions are that I teach are fear, joy, sadness, hurt, and anger. And so as you start learning this and building that self-awareness, I want you to go to that episode and listen to it so that you can start recognizing it and acknowledging it in your body. This again is the first step to emotional resiliency.
So an example is in a meeting instead of letting frustration take over you, you actually acknowledge it in the moment. You're like, wow, I notice I'm feeling angry. My jaw is tightening. My body temperature is rising. And just having that awareness will bring you more present in the moment.
And as you have more and more awareness over it, you're going to be able to regulate that emotion, which is the second step. Emotional regulation. Once you're aware of the emotion coming, the next step is to regulate it. The process of bringing emotions into balance so they don't overwhelm you.
It's like putting your hands on the wheel of your emotional car. You're driving, not the emotion, right? So I always tell my clients, it's not about getting rid of the emotion. It's not about being super positive or only being in positive feelings and joy. It's about having and welcoming that emotion into your house, but not allowing that person to come into your house and break everything, right? It's like, oh, come in.
What ends up happening in the meeting, instead of letting that frustration escalate and basically you shutting down or having that reactive response, you use techniques like deep breathing or cognitive reframing, which is really about reframing what's happening in the moment to calm down and regain control.
So what this might look like is if I'm in a meeting and I start to feel angry, and in the past I might feel so angry, I leave the meeting not saying anything, just being angry, right? But this time, if I notice my anger, I take a deep breath and I ask myself, why does this matter to you? What are you afraid of? So that's where I start having a conversation with myself and I start noticing that emotion and that will regulate that emotion.
And then the third step is the emotional intelligence piece, which is really understanding and expressing the emotion. So emotional intelligence is about understanding why you're feeling what you're feeling, and the next step is expressing it in a constructive way. It's not about suppressing the emotion at all, but it is about channeling them to be productive, to be influential, to be purposeful.
So you understand that whatever dismissal or whatever is happening in the meeting that you're in and you're feeling triggered of being undervalued, but instead of reacting emotionally, you express your point with clarity and assertiveness. So it may sound like this, John, I understand that you don't agree with my approach, but what I do want everybody here to know is how these steps, this project is going to impact our operations and our bottom line. So let me walk everybody through that, and then we can get back to what the best approach is.
So I want you to just notice in my tone, I am noticing myself, maybe John dismissed me, but instead of allowing myself to shrink away, I come back to the table, I affirm that I am valuable, that what I have to say is valuable and I keep going.
This is emotional resiliency at work and mental clarity. If I am able to control my emotions in a way where I regulate them, acknowledge them, but then again, use them, use my frustration to get back into the game, to be able to influence and to be present to what's happening. This is using that emotional intelligence in that moment.
All right, and then the next one is around really like emotional resiliency as you build these skills. The resiliency is the end game. It's the ability to recover quickly from emotional hits and keep moving forward.
Listen, for all you women in male-dominated spaces, you know that part of the journey, you can think about it as like the corporate warrior's journey, you're gonna get hits, you're gonna feel hurt, this is part of the game. Somebody's not gonna like what you have to say, somebody's gonna cut you off, somebody's gonna dismiss you, Somebody's gonna try to disempower you. You have got to learn how to cultivate this emotional resiliency. If you want to not burn out, if you want to feel energized and alive, and if you want to continue growing in this male-dominated space, this is a critical, essential skill for you.
So it doesn't mean that you don't feel frustration or disappointment, it means you don't let it define you or derail your action. So for an example, even if your idea wasn't accepted immediately, you stay resilient. You keep contributing and bouncing back from that moment, knowing that your worth is not tied to one person's reaction. This is the power of emotional resiliency. You get hurt, you say, ouch, you keep moving into it. You keep getting back on that field.
So thinking about it like an athlete, you don't just get hurt and you stay on the sidelines for months and months. Your job here is to continue having a relationship with your emotions. And as you continue having that relationship with your emotions and yourself, you're going to strengthen your mental clarity and your mental toughness. All right, those were the four steps. I know that they might sound simple, but truly embracing the skillset for yourself will have you taking more risk, will have you being ever more present, will have you maybe feeling really messy, feeling emotions that you haven't allowed yourself to have, but this is the way to emotional resiliency and mental clarity.
So I have a couple of questions that will help you reflect on this and will help you digest what this episode is all about more and more. So firstly, how do I typically react when I feel dismissed or disempowered? What impact does that have on my career and leadership?
You want to go to school on yourself and just notice the impact that not having emotional resiliency is having on you if you are allowing that dismissal or disempowerment to stop you. You want to see where that happens in your life because this is where you can interrupt the pattern.
The next question is what would it look like if I handled challenges with emotional resiliency and mental clarity? How would my career or relationships shift? I want you to visualize this for yourself. If I didn't go blank, if I didn't leave that meeting totally disempowered, how would I have actually showed up?
And then lastly, what small step can I take today to build greater emotional self-awareness and regulation? I'm going to direct you back to my episode on emotions because the first step is having that awareness and being able to name the emotions that are coming up for you. The more you're able to do that, you can move on to that next step of being able to regulate them and then using it with emotional intelligence and your path to emotional resiliency.
So I encourage you to go to school on yourself and give yourself this tool that is going to not only be a competitive edge for you in high pressured environments, but when you cultivate these skills, you will not only handle tough situations with grace, but also rise as a leader who can thrive no matter what challenges come your way.
And this is both professionally and personally, because life happens. Things are going to happen. And this is a skillset that is going to keep you staying the course. It is going to have you being intentional, purposeful, and confident, no matter what comes your way.
All right, and that was this week's episode. If you have questions, you have feedback, please leave it in the review. I'd love to hear from you. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, emotional resiliency and mental clarity is everything. All right, have a great rest of your day.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, today I have a very important and I would say essential as well as critical skill set for women in male-dominated spaces. It is about emotional resiliency and mental clarity. I'm going to talk to you about the importance of both of these skill sets and how as I rose up the ranks quickly in my corporate career, it was this emotional resiliency and mental clarity piece and my ability to deal with difficult stakeholders, people that undermined my authority, people that intimidated me, people that disempowered me, this was the skill set that set me apart and created a competitive edge for me to continue to grow in my career.
And it was the skill set that allowed other leaders to see that I was not just technically an expert in what I was doing, but I was also very skilled politically with my emotional resiliency and mental toughness.
I haven't really shared much about my background but I do want to share with you that I had a boss that was super intimidating. People would really just melt under the pressure of being in a room with him. He was highly reactive. I even remember somebody's telling me that she was in a meeting with him and some other people and that he metaphorically "drew blood.” She was just like, he just let this person have it.
And I know what some of you might be thinking, wow, it might be super toxic or even an abusive environment, but I didn't look at it that way. I actually looked at this opportunity to have this boss as almost like my greatest teacher, somebody who could teach me how to spar and how to be with highly reactive people.
Because guess what? If you are a woman leader that is advancing quickly, especially in a male-dominated space, whether it's tech or whether it's the construction industry, you're going to have to deal with lots of people. Men typically express their upset more outwardly with aggression, with frustration. And women oftentimes were taught or were socialized to hold back and to be nice and to not express at the same level. They internalize a lot of their stress versus openly express it.
So this dynamic, if you are a female leader and you don't know how to deal with your emotions, can really be limiting in your advancement. And so for me, with my boss, I was like, I'm going to figure this out because guess what? I expect myself to continue moving further and further in my career and I'm going to have more people that have big personalities, that have strong abilities to express. They're commanding, they're controlling, they need to take up lots of space. But if I'm going to be heard and I'm going to make an impact, then it is this piece around my own emotional resiliency and mental clarity that's going to set me apart.
And it really did. It made a huge difference. And not only did people notice that on my leadership team, people even beyond that did. I remember a senior leader that was kind of at the board level telling me, you have made a significant impact on this person. Like she noticed my level of leadership, my ability to stand my ground, and my ability to influence this boss of mine that a lot of people were quite frankly scared of. And it was through this skill set of emotional resiliency and mental clarity that I was able to show up.
So I was able to stand my ground. I was able to regulate my emotions. And I have to tell you that it was a process. It was very messy and in the beginning I didn't know how to deal with my emotions and in the beginning I kind of wanted to run away but I didn't allow myself and I had a lot of people in my life rooting for me.
And so today's episode is on emotional resiliency and mental clarity. I'm going to talk to you about what it exactly is, the neuroscience behind it. I'm going to give you four practical ways to start practicing your emotional resiliency. And this episode, I do want you to underline it and I want you to listen to it over and over again.
I especially want you to listen to it when you have been disempowered, intimidated, maybe somebody asked you a question in a meeting and you started to cry when you've been emotionally overwhelmed. I want you to come back to this episode and listen to it because this is the way. This is your competitive edge and it is a skill set that you can learn.
There's nothing wrong with you we are human women being in big spaces dealing with complexities and having emotional resilience and mental clarity is your path forward to continuing to expand your career and opportunities ahead of yourself.
But learning the skill is going to take some time. You're not gonna do it overnight. But I promise you, if you dedicate to yourself and you see this as a skill set that is worth learning, then you will learn it quicker. You will integrate it and it will support you in the boardroom, it will support you when you feel like your leadership's being undermined. It will support you when someone's trying to intimidate you and it will support you throughout your life and your career.
Emotional resiliency and mental clarity is everything. So even beyond the boardroom, it's important for parenting, it's important in relationship, it's just important for you to know your capacity. And oftentimes people don't know their emotional capacity because they've never been tested and they've never learned the skillset. So let's dive in. I wanna share some scenarios with you and go deeper into this very important subject that I feel very passionately about.
Scenario one, picture this. You're in a meeting with a group of senior leaders, all men. You present a great idea, but it's dismissed without consideration. You start to feel a familiar flood of frustration. Your body temperature rises, your heart races, and your mind goes blank. Instead of responding confidently, you shrink back into your chair, avoid eye contact, and mentally replay the dismissal over and over. By the end of the meeting, you've said nothing, feeling disempowered and small.
Scenario two. Now, imagine this instead. The same meeting, the same dismissal, but this time you take a deep breath. You feel the frustration rise, but instead of letting it take over you, you acknowledge it, you regulate it, and you respond with calm authority. You ask a clarifying question, reframe the idea, and continue the conversation with confidence.
By the end of the meeting, you've not only made your point, but you've also demonstrated your leadership. Your emotional resiliency gave you the ability to bounce back and your mental clarity allowed you to stay focused, intentional, and effective. So this is really the game here, your ability to bounce back, to have emotions rise in you.
So I always tell my clients, like, we're not thinking we're going to be robots, but it's more having this relationship with your emotions so that they don't take over, you know, your ability to think with mental clarity. You're not overwhelmed by the emotion, you've had practice with them.
You know, sometimes my clients come to me and they say, oh my gosh, I mean, didn't feel like I was super powerful in that moment, but you know, somebody came, they said something, a man was trying to intimidate this woman. He's like, you know, I didn't like what you did, kind of threatened her about pulling out all of the business. And she was like, I was a little bit in shock. I could notice what he was saying. I stood my own ground. I didn't start crying. So she was proud of herself there. And she thought about other things that she could say.
I also explained to her that the more that this happens to you, the better able you're going to notice your emotion, your frustration in the moment, but also the more you're going to be able to regulate yourself and get to that calm authority and bounce back. So I always tell my clients like this is a process. You know, oftentimes we think we're just going to learn something logically and be able to do it perfectly. But this truly is a process of understanding our emotions.
But it's super important because according to this 2021 BetterUp study about women in male-dominated industries, it really talked about the stress women feel. They feel about 28% more stress than men. Men feel about 11%. And this is why it's so important to build this skill set, to have this emotional resiliency and mental clarity.
The world, especially the corporate world, is tough. Women in male-dominated industries face unique challenges. We're more likely to be dismissed, interrupted, or underestimated. But here's the thing, self-empowerment starts with emotional resiliency. When you build this skill, you stop reacting to the world around you and you start shaping and sharing your responses with power and clarity.
So how does this relate to the brain? I oftentimes will teach people the neuroscience behind this because they don't understand why they have this push and pull mechanism within themselves. Part of them is like, I am excited, I want to do this thing, and then I start doing it, and I start having emotions, and I start backing down. I want to explain how this is a normal function of your brain.
So we've got two big parts of our brain that I always like to tell my clients about. One is that limbic system. It is the oldest part of our brain. It's where we feel emotions. It's connected to all of our body, and it is really geared towards survival. Its main goal is to keep us alive, look out for threats constantly, and that is what it's there to do.
Then we've got this prefrontal cortex. This is where our mental clarity really lies. This is where when we are in the boardroom dealing with a high-stake situation or question. This part of our brain allows us to think critically, resourcefully. It allows us to process very complex problems and distill it in a way that is clear and you're able to share it with other people.
But this prefrontal cortex, this is really the key that you should understand and acknowledge. If your emotions are too high, your critical thinking is low. And that literally happens because that survival brain is moving and saying, something's not okay, we need to take over.
And when we're not feeling safer, we're feeling too many emotions that they actually overwhelm us, it actually doesn't allow that prefrontal cortex where our mental clarity, our highest level thinking is working. This is when people literally say, I went blank. I froze. I don't remember what happened.
What actually is happening in that moment is your limbic system is taking control. And some people call it an amygdala hijack. That part of your brain is actually hijacking the rest of your brain and instead of reacting with calmness, with self-awareness, and being regulated, you don't know how to react because you don't have all the access to your brain and you're really just flooded with emotions.
When we practice emotional self-awareness and regulation, we build stronger connections between the emotional and rational parts of our brain, leading to better decision-making. So the more that you work on this muscle, the more you have relationships with this emotion, the less that emotion is going to take over you.
One of the things that I was working on with one of my clients is she often, when she noticed or feels rejection is going to happen and she's like unconsciously looking for it in different ways in people's mannerisms and tones, their body language, she steps back because she is overcome almost with that emotion and she wants to avoid that emotion.
So instead of really going for sharing her idea boldly, bravely, you know, she actually kind of takes a proverbial step back and is, okay, well, I tested out that idea. This person doesn't seem like they like it, so let's move on. And so by avoiding that emotion, she's not building the resiliency around it. And so we've been really working together on this piece.
So let's dive into the four-step process of emotional resiliency that I teach my clients. And it is really about recognizing your emotions, regulating your emotions, understanding and expressing your emotion, and of course, bouncing back. These are all of the steps. So I really break it down into four steps for my clients.
So the first step is emotional self-awareness. This is your ability to recognize emotions. It is your ability to have that awareness about you have to know when you're getting triggered or experiencing strong emotions before you can do anything about it. So the first step is learning to tune into your body and how you're feeling in real time and naming that emotion.
I have a whole episode on emotions and learning how to name them and what the five primary emotions are that I teach are fear, joy, sadness, hurt, and anger. And so as you start learning this and building that self-awareness, I want you to go to that episode and listen to it so that you can start recognizing it and acknowledging it in your body. This again is the first step to emotional resiliency.
So an example is in a meeting instead of letting frustration take over you, you actually acknowledge it in the moment. You're like, wow, I notice I'm feeling angry. My jaw is tightening. My body temperature is rising. And just having that awareness will bring you more present in the moment.
And as you have more and more awareness over it, you're going to be able to regulate that emotion, which is the second step. Emotional regulation. Once you're aware of the emotion coming, the next step is to regulate it. The process of bringing emotions into balance so they don't overwhelm you.
It's like putting your hands on the wheel of your emotional car. You're driving, not the emotion, right? So I always tell my clients, it's not about getting rid of the emotion. It's not about being super positive or only being in positive feelings and joy. It's about having and welcoming that emotion into your house, but not allowing that person to come into your house and break everything, right? It's like, oh, come in.
What ends up happening in the meeting, instead of letting that frustration escalate and basically you shutting down or having that reactive response, you use techniques like deep breathing or cognitive reframing, which is really about reframing what's happening in the moment to calm down and regain control.
So what this might look like is if I'm in a meeting and I start to feel angry, and in the past I might feel so angry, I leave the meeting not saying anything, just being angry, right? But this time, if I notice my anger, I take a deep breath and I ask myself, why does this matter to you? What are you afraid of? So that's where I start having a conversation with myself and I start noticing that emotion and that will regulate that emotion.
And then the third step is the emotional intelligence piece, which is really understanding and expressing the emotion. So emotional intelligence is about understanding why you're feeling what you're feeling, and the next step is expressing it in a constructive way. It's not about suppressing the emotion at all, but it is about channeling them to be productive, to be influential, to be purposeful.
So you understand that whatever dismissal or whatever is happening in the meeting that you're in and you're feeling triggered of being undervalued, but instead of reacting emotionally, you express your point with clarity and assertiveness. So it may sound like this, John, I understand that you don't agree with my approach, but what I do want everybody here to know is how these steps, this project is going to impact our operations and our bottom line. So let me walk everybody through that, and then we can get back to what the best approach is.
So I want you to just notice in my tone, I am noticing myself, maybe John dismissed me, but instead of allowing myself to shrink away, I come back to the table, I affirm that I am valuable, that what I have to say is valuable and I keep going.
This is emotional resiliency at work and mental clarity. If I am able to control my emotions in a way where I regulate them, acknowledge them, but then again, use them, use my frustration to get back into the game, to be able to influence and to be present to what's happening. This is using that emotional intelligence in that moment.
All right, and then the next one is around really like emotional resiliency as you build these skills. The resiliency is the end game. It's the ability to recover quickly from emotional hits and keep moving forward.
Listen, for all you women in male-dominated spaces, you know that part of the journey, you can think about it as like the corporate warrior's journey, you're gonna get hits, you're gonna feel hurt, this is part of the game. Somebody's not gonna like what you have to say, somebody's gonna cut you off, somebody's gonna dismiss you, Somebody's gonna try to disempower you. You have got to learn how to cultivate this emotional resiliency. If you want to not burn out, if you want to feel energized and alive, and if you want to continue growing in this male-dominated space, this is a critical, essential skill for you.
So it doesn't mean that you don't feel frustration or disappointment, it means you don't let it define you or derail your action. So for an example, even if your idea wasn't accepted immediately, you stay resilient. You keep contributing and bouncing back from that moment, knowing that your worth is not tied to one person's reaction. This is the power of emotional resiliency. You get hurt, you say, ouch, you keep moving into it. You keep getting back on that field.
So thinking about it like an athlete, you don't just get hurt and you stay on the sidelines for months and months. Your job here is to continue having a relationship with your emotions. And as you continue having that relationship with your emotions and yourself, you're going to strengthen your mental clarity and your mental toughness. All right, those were the four steps. I know that they might sound simple, but truly embracing the skillset for yourself will have you taking more risk, will have you being ever more present, will have you maybe feeling really messy, feeling emotions that you haven't allowed yourself to have, but this is the way to emotional resiliency and mental clarity.
So I have a couple of questions that will help you reflect on this and will help you digest what this episode is all about more and more. So firstly, how do I typically react when I feel dismissed or disempowered? What impact does that have on my career and leadership?
You want to go to school on yourself and just notice the impact that not having emotional resiliency is having on you if you are allowing that dismissal or disempowerment to stop you. You want to see where that happens in your life because this is where you can interrupt the pattern.
The next question is what would it look like if I handled challenges with emotional resiliency and mental clarity? How would my career or relationships shift? I want you to visualize this for yourself. If I didn't go blank, if I didn't leave that meeting totally disempowered, how would I have actually showed up?
And then lastly, what small step can I take today to build greater emotional self-awareness and regulation? I'm going to direct you back to my episode on emotions because the first step is having that awareness and being able to name the emotions that are coming up for you. The more you're able to do that, you can move on to that next step of being able to regulate them and then using it with emotional intelligence and your path to emotional resiliency.
So I encourage you to go to school on yourself and give yourself this tool that is going to not only be a competitive edge for you in high pressured environments, but when you cultivate these skills, you will not only handle tough situations with grace, but also rise as a leader who can thrive no matter what challenges come your way.
And this is both professionally and personally, because life happens. Things are going to happen. And this is a skillset that is going to keep you staying the course. It is going to have you being intentional, purposeful, and confident, no matter what comes your way.
All right, and that was this week's episode. If you have questions, you have feedback, please leave it in the review. I'd love to hear from you. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, emotional resiliency and mental clarity is everything. All right, have a great rest of your day.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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