Why Warm Up Our Emotions?

Professional athletes are proactive and warm up emotionally and physically. If you exercise physically, then you probably know it is important to warm up or risk injury. Also, If we jump out of bed and go to work, we first need to fuel our bodies with food or we become sluggish in a few hours.

Emotions Need To Warm Up, Too

I have found the same thing with our emotions. They need to get ready, to warm up for the experiences ahead and the stresses and marathons of the day. We also need to fuel them. If we don't warm up and fuel them, certain melt downs and disasters are probably soon to happen maybe to coworkers, customers or bosses. Beware of cold emotions coming at your customers. You will quickly lose them.

So, what to do?

The 3 Steps:

1: What values are not being met right now? (see list at website below)

EX. Maybe sleep, completeness of a report, ease with your customers, understanding from you boss, support from employees.

2: Imagine the values are being met. Visualize a short movie how it might look for one value to be met. Take 30 seconds or more to do this. Visualize specifics, as athletes do. Take one value at a time. One may be enough to restore your energy.

EX. A: I visualize my employee handing his assignment in early. Expand this into a thirty second movie, all positive.

B: I visualize my boss talking to me with respect and consideration. Again, Expand this into a thirty second movie, all positive.

The longer you stay in the visualization the more energy you will receive.

3: OPTIONAL: Think of strategies to meet these unmet values? EX. A: I'm tired and need some rest so I will go to bed at 9:00PM instead of 11:00PM.

B: For support and ease, I will call a meeting with employees to discuss the new project and ask their input.

Try this exercise now if you can, when you wake up or stopped at a red light, before a business meeting, especially before you meet with a customer or boss. If you warm up your emotions the risk of emotional injury to yourself or others is minimal. Try this exercise and notice how calm you become and how much easier your day will become. You can teach this exercise to your employees and coworkers. Watch employee retention rise and your customer satisfaction soar.

I set an alarm and do the 2 steps hourly during the workday. It does make a difference for an easier workweek.