Video Transcript: Extraordinary Emotional Management Path

Welcome to Session 4, The Extraordinary Emotional Management Path. Now, in the last session, we talked about Precise Communication and we say we're on an extraordinary emotional management path. What are we saying when we talk about that? Well, this path we're on in our ministry, in what we do as a coach, as a teacher, as a lecturer, we're helping people make better decisions, and we're doing that by building and using two building blocks - we're going to talk about those in just a minute - but what we want to emphasize is the fact that each one of us has within us all this ability.  The only way it comes out is for us to practice, practice, practice.  So the things we're going to talk about discussed today, all require practice. 

Let's take a look at this first slide. We look at this, we see that Attention, Needs, Values all fit into the category of ‘Attitudes Shaped By’.  And then we see ‘Behaviors are Shaped By’  Experience, Length of Exposure, Actions, and Habits. 

So, these are the eight ingredients that go into these two building blocks that are going to help us more effectively deal with the emotional management path we're on, and how that is going to be helpful to us, so that we can be helpful to others. 

And you'll notice that there is a picture of a lighthouse.  In ancient times, to very recently, I read about the past 100 years, lighthouses dotted the coastlines around the globe and their whole purpose was to be there to create a safe pathway in the water.  Now, this occurs in the first two paragraphs of your Session 4 handout, and I give you this information and you can use this to help set the stage for these two building blocks. 

So if I look at this first paragraph, and I read some of this to you, I'm going to show you how I would kind of convert it to my own language, as I'm suggesting to you.  In ancient times, to very recently, the last 100 years, lighthouses dotted coastlines around the globe.  Now, when you read that, just like that, it's fine.  They are still used in some places today.  So you give the rationale for why lighthouses were used.  

Most have been replaced with new and better technology.  Lighthouses created a safe pathway in the waters.  Ships plied throughout the world.  New and better ways to make humans safe, can be found in all the advances in how ocean shorelines and bodies of water are sounded. 

Now, that paragraph was read with some enthusiasm.  And it's the enthusiasm that you put into the dialogue that you use when you're teaching this to others will help others be in alignment with your enthusiasm.  And if we want to know anything about enthusiasm, in ‘theos’, our spirit within, is what enthusiasm is all about.  So if you were to read that second paragraph, and this is the way many people might read it, this is the scary part:

“Wouldn't it be great to have a way to shape our sound the depth of an emotional pathway?  Can we make or find a safe passage through the troubled waters of anger management?”

I have to tell you, that that is not going to be anything anyone wants to listen to and it requires us to put some energy and enthusiasm in it. 

Wouldn't it be great to have a way to shape or sound the depth of an emotional pathway?  Can we make or find a safe passage through the troubled waters of anger management? 

So by asking questions, and raising your voice at the end of the sentence, what you're doing is helping this person see something and hear something that they need to see and hear.  And that will help us; take a look at this next slide. And it gives you an example of what that might look like.

This creative emphasis is being used to make this this particular session exciting because it needs to be exciting. And the way it's exciting is to look at what you have in front of you, there.  On your handout, you see what's here on the slide.  And what we're looking at is a way to generate enthusiasm. 

I took the letters of the alphabet, and I gave each letter all 26 a numerical value, and that numerical value is right there in front of you.  And so an A is worth one point, a B is worth two, and you go over to the letter O, it's worth 15 points.

So if you take the word hard work and you write that on a piece of paper, and let's suppose you're teaching a class, and you want to do this as an exercise, you might use a whiteboard or a chalkboard, and you would put the word HARD WORK down. And then you would take your creative emphasis, your scorecard with the numerals attached to each number and you would give the letters and HARD WORK a numerical value. 

Now they're laid right out here for you. And you notice the H is worth 8, A is 1, R is 18, all the way over to the K which has a value of 11.  Added up, it's 98%.  

So what you would describe there is HARD WORK is about 98% of what it takes to be successful, what it takes to change a behavior, what it takes to mend your attitude.  So HARD WORK is not enough. 

And then you take and you write the word KNOWLEDGE down on the board, in the same way, and you ask them to write it on their paper, and then you give them the number value, or you give them something to use to find the number value.  And keep something in mind. People forget what they hear, remember what they see, and understand what they do. 

And we're going to give you an understand what they do here in just a minute.  Just to be clear on the fact that that's how you make this point.  And that's how this transfers information from you to them.  Because it locks it in their head.  And that's where you want it. 

So knowledge has a value K=11, N=14, O=15, W=23, L=12, E=5, D=4, G=7, E=5; equals 96%. So we say 96. And we put a percentage sign behind it.  And we say that HARD WORK is not enough. KNOWLEDGE is not enough.

And then you look at the word ATTITUDE.  And it's right here for you. And it says the A is worth 1, all the T's are worth 20, the I’S are worth 9, the U is 21.  And the D is 4, and the E is 5. So if you add that up, it comes to 100%.  And this is how you achieve in life.  You achieve in life by having the right attitude, by having the emotion attached to the right attitude so that there's a benefit to that. And it brings you the enthusiasm that you need. 

And if we look back at our handout, we look at what attitude means and how important that is to us. Write this in your notes. And I deliberately did not put it in the handout because I want you to have the experience of using your hand to write something out because you own it. Now, I know that computers are wonderful and electronics and technology is bringing this class to you like this but it's so important to write with your hand, so that your hand and eye coordination are there and you're using your hand and eye coordination. 

That's why if you did this, and you did this exercise for yourself, using the alphabet numerically based, as I just did, you'll find that those three things will really stick in your head.  I can work as hard as I want to it won't be enough.  I can gain all the knowledge I want to gain.  It won't be enough.  It's going to require hard work.  It's going to require knowledge and it's also going to require the right attitude.  So here's what I want you to write down and please write this down.

Attitudes are mental habits.  Let me repeat it.  Attitudes are mental habits.

So we get in the habit of thinking positive or negative.  We get in the habit of being optimistic or pessimistic.  We get in the habit, habit of being grumpy or happy.  We get in the habit of using our mental faculty to demonstrate how we are on the outside.  

Do you realize that it's not possible to think yourself into enthusiasm?  You can't say, I think I think I'll get excited.  You can't do that.  If you're going to be excited, you have to put the energy, the ethos, the enthusiasm into the word, and you have to express it through action.  And attitudes lead to mental habits and the mental habit is to decide that you are going to be positive, and you're going to turn the negative thoughts and expressions, we all have them, into more positive thoughts and expressions. 

You don't want to play a game with yourself.  And a lot of people play this game.  Here again, I'm going to ask you to write it down.  This is the way you will remember it.  

Right write the word plum, it’s spelled P-L-U-M, on a piece of paper.  I'll give you a moment to do it.  All right, P-L-U-M, is an acronym.  An acronym is a is a word that's used to make a point. 

Now I use an acronym in the second session, when we talked about fear. And we said the acronym fear, F-E-A-R, was False Evidence Appearing Real.  And we said that fear is healthy. We said that fear can be unhealthy.  So we use the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real, F-E-A-R, to make a point. 

Well, now we have the word PLUM in front of us. We just used numerology to define hard work, knowledge and attitude.  And we assigned them a percentage and we said it didn't add up to 100 to do and be a hard worker.  It didn't add up to 100 to have all the knowledge that you have.  It only adds up when you take the hard work, the knowledge, and you add the ingredient attitude. That's where value is found. That's where our values are found.  And if that is the case, we make better choices.  

And remember, we said in Session 2, and behavior, choices, decisions, and attitude are extremely important.  And now we come here, and we're in the same place right here when we're talking about how valuable that is to you.  So the word P-L-U-M; let's go back there.  And let's look at what we're saying.  P-L-U-M is the game you do not want to play.  The P-L-U-M game.  Poor Little Unfortunate Me. 

You'll find it in people's facial expressions.  You'll find it in the words they use.  You'll find it in the desires that they have, that they try to express to get what they want.  So if you say to someone, “How are you”?  They say, “Well, I'll probably be okay”.  They're asking you to ask what's wrong.

And when you ask them, get ready.  They will tell you, and they'll tell you all the things that are wrong.  And there are times when you have to be a good listener.  There are times when you need to listen because people need to be heard and what is burdening them is a burden to them, and you can't discount it.  But what you can do is help them understand through questions, through listening, through the words that you use, you can help them understand that this too shall pass. This is something you can move beyond.  But you have to be willing and want to do it.  And I want you to be clear that attitude is a mental habit and it is a habit that you have to break sometimes; an old habit and replace it with a new one, and then you get a different behavior. 

All of that goes back to what we described when we said that on a given day, you can manage five things, 7 +/- 2, five things on a bad day; nine things on a good day. 7 +/-2.  On a good day, 7+2 is 9.  On a bad day, 7-2 is 5.  So that 7 +/-2 has a real value to you. 

And when you get up, and there will be mornings when you are playing the P-L-U-M game….  I'm not going to get up.  I'm just going to go back to bed and I'm going to put the cover over my head.  And it’s in those moments when you have to decide, how does this align with what do I want to accomplish? How does this align? 

So when you get angry? And you will.  I get angry.  We all will.  It's a human part of who we are, we have to say, “How am I managing this anger? How am I dealing with this? Am I doing a better job than I did the last time I got angry?  How quickly have I gone from feeling so sorry for myself, that I am not willing to change a behavior or make an adjustment to my language, make an adjustment to my thoughts that I can't manage this more effectively

The more effectively we manage it, the better off we will be. 

So I'm going to suggest to you that you take these three or four paragraphs at the top of this handout, and put this in your own words. And I would suggest that you use the metaphor, the picture that you just saw with the lighthouse that will help you make this point that what we're trying to do on the ocean, they were trying to mark the spots that were danger.  They were trying to mark the spots where a ship could flounder and be in trouble. 

And so this spotlight would be there so they could see where they could be in relationship to the land.  And the sounding that happens in the depth means that they're looking for enough water to keep the boat afloat.  Keep in mind that if your boat is on a muddy bottom, and you try to push it, you're going to have to wait for the tide to come in to lift the boat and make it easy to maneuver. 

But as long as that boat is stuck in the mud, it will be almost impossible to move.  Even the smallest boat you've ever seen or been in will be stuck in a muddy bottom and will be very difficult to float again until there's enough water underneath to lift it up. 

And so the lighthouse was there as a safety measure and technology there today is a safety measure.  And yet accidents still happen.  Yet, malady occurs.  And when it happens, we have to recognize we're on an emotional process, an emotional path, and we have to manage it effectively. 

The biggest mistake I think people make in trying to manage anger is trying to control somebody else.  You can't you can't control you.  You can't control your thoughts.  But you can manage them.  Don't think of the color blue?  Then what color do you think about?  Don't think of a dog running up a hill on a hot summer day.  And what do you see?  This dog.  Do this.  Tell me, what does your dog look like?  

Now, there are hundreds and thousands of you that are going to see this lesson.  And when you hear me ask that question, your dog comes in your mind.  And whether you like or dislike dogs is not important.  If I said to you think of a dog, you will think of a dog.  But all of you will think of a slightly different dog.  

And if I were to say to you don't think of a dog running up a hill on a hot summer day with his tongue hanging out, guess what you will think about?  You'll see dog, spotted are one solid color, a large dog, a small dog, a little tiny dog riding up running up a hill, you will see a dog with short legs, long legs, it doesn't make any difference what your thoughts are there your thoughts.

And I'm simply saying to you if you can't control your thoughts, just imagine how difficult is to try to control somebody else's thoughts.  But you can do what I'm going to describe here to kind of bring this to closure here in this little session on Extraordinary Emotional Management Paths. And here are the lessons we've talked about. And then I'll give you the little hint at the back.

You want to make each session as exciting as you can.  And you do that by using word expression that speaks to your heart.  And we know biblically that our heart and our mind are supposed to be connected and when they are, we do a better job. 

But if it's all heart, we're making mistakes.  More mistakes than we would if we have our heart and mind connected.  If it's all about the mind and the things we think about, and our heart’s not connected, when we're going to make bigger mistakes.  We'll make mistakes, period.  When the heart and mind are connected, will you make mistakes?  Sure, but fewer.  Because you'll be seeking that inner Holy Spirit to help you through challenging situations.  And when you do that, there'll be a real benefit to it. 

So you want to avoid the plum game.  What is it? Poor Little Unfortunate Me.  How do you do it?  You stop trying to control things and you do this, instead... write this in your notes:

My job is to manage the moment.  My job is to manage the moment.

When you do that, and you do that well, all your hard work, all of your knowledge, your attitude and your behaviors all come together to be the best self that you can be.  And when you're the best self that you can be, you're the best pastor, you're the best minister, you're the best coach, you're the best social worker, you're the best example of Jesus teaching that you can possibly be.

That's where you want to land on that emotional path. And when you're there, everything's more joyful.

My job is to manage the moment and stop playing the plum game and forget about trying to control anyone other than managing your moments.  And by manage your moments, you will have more of an impact on everyone in your sphere of influence. 

Thanks for being with me for this session.  I look forward to seeing you next time.