Are You Dealing with the Feelings?!
(An excerpt from The Perfect Parent…)
When my son was in the fourth grade, a friend shared some horror
stories about her child’s experience with a certain fifth-grade teacher.
Naturally, this created an impression in my mind, and alarm bells
rang when I found out the following year that my son would be in
this teacher’s class. Suddenly I was besieged by negative emotions and
fears. But there was no other option, because there was no other class
available. I did not want to taint my son’s thoughts and feelings about
this teacher, however. So almost every day I would beat around the
bush, trying to gauge his opinion by asking him some indirect ques-
tion: “How is Miss X?” I would ask. Or, “Is she a good teacher?” “Is
she nice?” “Do you understand what she is teaching?”
A month into the school year, my son asked if I had met Miss X
yet. “No,” I answered. “So how come you don’t like her?” my
smarty-pants wondered.
No matter how much we want to conceal our thoughts and feel-
ings, they will always influence our expressions. We can’t help it.
Our thoughts and feelings are intertwined with our comments and our
actions. Together they can help us move forward—or they can push
us backward. But if we sort out and lighten the weight of those feel-
ings, we can shift from thinking negatively to thinking positively.
This will guide us in responding positively as well, which will bring
communication back into balance.
My son had seen right through my doubts and reservations about
Miss X. The next day, however, I came up with a great idea: I called a
close family friend who also taught at that school and casually asked,
“What do you think of Miss X?” Her response? “She’s a great teacher.
Very experienced, very patient. Both my kids have been in her class. If
Navin has her, he’ll do well. It’s a good fit.”
This was the opposite of what I heard before, and it was information that
came from a trusted source—information that could have saved me a great
deal of worrying. Why hadn’t I thought to call that friend earlier? Because I
was too wrapped up in my emotions to think clearly! So then, what made me
call her now?
I had turned to that wonderfully effective tool: Dealing with the Feeling.
In his research on emotional intelligence, Dr. Daniel Goleman has
written that the emotional brain responds to an event more quickly
than our thinking brain. It is obvious, then, that in order to think
clearly and make decisions, we need to manage our emotions when
they overtake us unexpectedly. Dealing with the Feeling lets us do
just that.
How do you deal with the feelings? Learn more on Roma’s previous blog article
on the subject.
Want to find out more? You can purchase The Perfect Parent by Roma Khetarpal
on Amazon to discover more ways of dealing with the feeling!
The post Are You Dealing with the Feelings?! appeared first on Tools of Growth.
