Emotional Agility: from Reaction to Intentional Response
About
Our Mission
HOPE MORE WORRY LESS offers informed ways to prevent stress from spiraling out of control by focusing on intrinsic methods to avoid emotional bankruptcy. The vision is to draw on experiential lessons and apply in similar emotional situations to build resilient personal endurance.
EMOTIONALAgility QUESTIONNAIRE: Does your current circumstance make you anxious about ever realizing your dreams?
- Are inexplicable circumstances challenging your way of thinking and causing you worry?
- Is your battle with a personal weakness stealing your joy?
- Do you spend time mulling over why it is difficult to complete tasks that once came as second nature?
- Is the disintegration of a close relationship threatening your emotional balance?
- Are pressures at work compromising your valued relationships?
- Hasa sudden financial crisis stolen your peace?
- Are you facing health challenges that frighten you?
- Are you reeling from a turn of events you least expected?
- Does the loss of something you treasure occupy your thoughts?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. I would even venture a guess that most of us deal with at least one of these challenges every day. So how would you like to equip yourself with EMOTIONAL AGILITY tools you can start using now to build resilience and transform stress, worry, and anxiety into peace of mind, body, and spirit?
Worry Truth #1 OUR SOURCES OF STRESS INCREASE WITH TIME
wordpress blog: Fresh out of college and filled with ambition, an older and wiser person advised me that my responsibilities would grow with age. I did not understand it then, but I smile at my naiveté when I compare my worries twenty years ago to today. For perspective, try relating your current situation to the biggest challenges you faced at half your age.
Worries, stress, problems, trouble, whatever you wish to call it is part of living as the air we breathe. New ones add on every day whether we are prepared for them or not. How we deal with our worries defines our quality of life and how prepared we are to cope with future uncertainties.
Knowing that the way I deal with stressful situations today could affect me indefinitely, changes how I handle even trivial unpleasantries. Motivational speaker Tony Robins says “it is in the moments of decision that our destiny is formed” If you knew that mundane actions such as arguing over a price label with the grocery clerk could affect your family relationships, you might rethink - in that moment of decision - and walk away even if asserting your point may be justifiable.
If you knew that the emotional price of such an altercation accrues depending on how long it takes to fade from your consciousness, you might avoid it at all cost. It is much like staying away from a tempting “free” service after reading the fine print. Most of us are not fully aware of how we are affected by different sources of stress. At least not until we are later billed a price that leaves us emotionally bankrupt.
Worry Truth #2 UNMITIGATED WORRY LEADS TO DEPRESSION
We cannot wish our worries away. If left unattended, worry can accrue and tip our emotional balance into depression. The World Health Organization ranks depression as the leading cause of disability and risk factor for suicide. In the US, depression is already the leading cause of disability for ages 15 to 44, according to the National Institute for Mental Health. An interesting corollary is that everyone in their lifetime will be exposed to depression. With advances in health and medicine, why is this still a growing problem? Each person’s tolerance for a given form of stress is different. A medical panacea may be the ideal but until one is found, the mental and spiritual undertones associated with emotional strain point to looking within for innate ways to overcome stress.
Worry Truth #3 EVERYONE HAS A UNIQUE WORRY TOLERANCE
From the moment of self-awareness, how we deal with challenges map out our innate responses to different stressors. Experiential examples of personal triumph over difficulty are the most powerful tools to fight future worry. Such profound experiences can be considered Portraits of Hope. Finding the keys to connect these life events is not intuitive. Most of us are unaware that wethem muchless use portraits of hope to avoid potential trouble. Tapping into lessons learned to take an unorthodox path, exercising restraint rather than challenging an argumentative relative, or keeping a secure job rather than gambling on a fast money option are decisions people make each day. Identifying our portraits of hope helps us understand our unique sensitivities and improves the way we deal with new stresses. When we are less prone to willful instincts, we also improve our relationships by being more accommodating. If we can recognize the subtle signs of stress in others, we are less prone to taking their actions personally, just as an offhand comment from a friend who is going through a difficult divorce may not be as worrisome to handle. Adopting another person’s portrait of hope is as simple as putting it into practice. It only takes one successful trial to become yours as well.
Worry Truth #4 MOST THINGS WE WORRY ABOUT NEVER OCCUR
"Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight." - Benjamin Franklin
The good news is that most of the things we worry about never materialize. Rather, the outcomes of actions we take in the face of worry become our future problems. If you agree with this opinion, it is easy to understand how unbridled reaction to stress could spiral into a vicious cycle of problems. The question is how then do we restrain ourselves from reacting to worry in ways that generate more problems?
Worry Truth #5 A MINIMUM AMOUNT OF PERSONAL ENDURANCE IS REQUIRED EVERYDAY
“I am so stressed” is a phrase I often use and have observed others use as well, but the statement alone gives no indication of how close anyone is to their tolerance limit. A person’s personal endurance measures their ability to handle additional stress. Think about moments when you were really under pressure. What were the peculiar things you observed - nervousness, forgetfulness, twitching or a racing heart. Whatever it is, we all have unique exhibitions when we are close to our limit. If we tap into our outward reactions, we can gauge when our personal endurance is low. Everyone needs a minimum amount of personal endurance to function and to remain serene at the end of the day. Being attuned to our responses to normal stress suggests doling out our personal endurance as judiciously as our withdrawals from our bank accounts. Think of personal endurance as a savings account of hope from which we make withdrawals to pay for removing emotional trash from our consciousness generated by stress. A pile up means too much emotional junk and a low personal endurance means we are close to emotional bankruptcy and cannot afford to clean out the junk. Our clogged emotions are easily choked and depression drifts closer. When our personal endurance is low, any argument or altercation becomes quite frivolous.
Books & Articles
Reverse Overthinking with Emotional Intelligence - Published by Hope More Worry Less Inc.
Start doing more and overthinking less—break the cycle of ruminative thoughts, worry, and anxiety and live the happy, purposeful life you were meant to enjoy.
Do you find that overthinking frequently ruins what normally should be a positive experience?
Picture this. You’ve just made a work presentation, and everyone was enthusiastic about it—but your boss said they needed more information about one idea in your action plan.
Instead of focusing on the fact they congratulated you, you start to worry about why they didn’t just go with your idea. What was wrong with it? Why do they need more convincing? Will you even be able to find the information they’re looking for?
That’s exactly how overthinking can throw a spanner in the works of what should have been a brilliant workday.
Overthinking makes you fixate on one situation, thought, or interaction, leading you to view yourself and others pessimistically and taking your mind away from the things that really matter.
It stops you from achieving your goals because it leads you to place all your energy into things that do not have the life-changing importance they seem to suggest.
When you’re used to worrying, judging yourself harshly, and second-guessing all your choices and actions, it can seem like there’s just no way out.
“This is just the way my brain works,” you may say to yourself, and you may see overthinking as a crutch you use to appease your anxiety about yourself, your work, and your relationships.
Except far from being a source of support, it is actually an impediment to your success and happiness. It wastes hours of your day—and after all, leaves you as confused as when you started.
The good news is that breaking free from the binds of overthinking simply involves applying a small but powerful set of Emotional Intelligence strategies every time repetitive thoughts and emotions take hold.
This book highlights these strategies, freeing your mind from overthinking through 5 practical Emotional Intelligence strategies you can start practicing from day one.
Within its pages, you will discover:
● Why you overthink and how rumination can lead you to a downward spiral, resulting in anxiety and harmful habits
● Powerful mitigation strategies that create a more stable environment – one in which overthinking no longer has what it needs to thrive
● How to fix distortions (the harmful filters that cause you to see the negative instead of the realistic aspects of life) – and how to reframe them into
more useful ways of thinking
● Why the answer to dealing with things you cannot change is radical acceptance – stop wasting energy and start investing in the things that
matter
● How to establish healthy relationships by setting boundaries and steering relationships in a positive direction
● How you can rewire your reactions by nipping negative thought loops in the bud and creating positive sensory memories – leverage your brain’s
innate neuroplasticity!
And much more.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “If I don’t overthink, I’ll lose control over things.”
Yet it is precisely this need for control that is keeping you imprisoned in an endless cycle of regret and worry.
Achieving the peace and positivity you seek is possible if you address repetitive, negative thoughts in a proactive, positive way with Emotional Intelligence.
Immigrant Silent Struggle
My worries will be over if only I can get to America! This was all Kwesi Asamane dreamed about while battling frustration and turmoil in Ghana. Beating impossible odds, he arrives in America on a partial college scholarship. Every inch of progress requires exhausting battles and idealistic views about America are replaced with cynicism. Mentally spent and alienated, he reaches for the simple life he once knew, but returning to Ghana is no picnic. Expectations are unreasonable and traces of assimilated culture suddenly surface and make him appear foreign to his people. He returns to America tormented by not being who he was – until tragedy triggers a catharsis.
An Immigrant's Silent Struggle Award Winning Newsweek Article
New York Association of Black Journalists (NYABJ) Award-Personal Commentary