I was probably in my early 30s when I really began to understand emotional agility. During my 20s I had experienced the highs of life, taken risks, and survived.

But there was always resistance. I wanted to control everything including how I felt about myself and others. The more I wanted it, the tighter my grip got. I wanted to create the perfect relationship with myself. Instead, I felt overwhelmed and frustrated.

Don’t get me wrong, change is a good thing when it comes with love, self-compassion, and an appreciation that we are enough right now. Change is a good thing when we appreciate that we all make mistakes, that we are always learning and growing and that our evolution is the emerging story of our life. Change is good, when it is not forced or done under duress.

But my relationship with self, came from a place of deficit, of self-loathing and constant disappointment in myself – that I couldn’t be the perfect mother, wife, daughter, sister, colleague, leader, and woman. So, the changes I tried to make were manufactured, laborious, and impossible to maintain.

Following a major depressive episode, I worked with a psychologist and began doing my own research to understand more about what was going on for me and how the patterns of my past were influencing my present self. I began to understand that I was ignoring the emotional messages and signposts I was giving myself. I was relentlessly pursuing the ideals and life that others had in mind for me. It was the first time I realised that the script’s others had written for me and the ideals I was trying to live up to – were not serving me at all.

In fact, I was denying myself the opportunity to grow and develop because I was constantly punishing myself for not achieving the unachievable. I was living life on autopilot. It was the textbook definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. It’s something I now affectionately call the goofy loop!

Emotional agility is the practice of using your feelings as information to help guide you rather than trying to change or control your emotions. Emotional agility can help you step back and make decisions based on your values and goals instead of reacting on impulse.

The idea is to make use of the emotions you experience. It’s about acknowledging that we don’t have to have more “positive” emotions or stop the “negative” emotions we experience. Rather, the goal is to accept our emotions and make good use of them, rather than trying to change them.

An example is anger. Whilst most of us have been conditioned to believe that anger is a negative emotion, when we change the lens we view it through and ask why am I feeling angry? Perhaps someone has breached a personal boundary. You can then use this emotional information to understand more about how you want to respond and what you might want to change. You may use this anger to help decide to respectfully stand up for yourself. You may use this anger to discuss the issue with the person and you may use the emotion of anger to get your needs met.

In her book, ‘Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life’, author and psychologist, Susan David outlines the four steps to practicing emotional agility.

1. Show Up for yourself and the others in your life you care about. Notice your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours – and here’s the important part…. without judging them! There is no right and wrong to what you are experiencing. It simply is what it is.
2. Step Out by separating yourself from your thoughts and feelings. It is incredibly helpful to think of your emotions as an experience – they are not you. They are actually very separate from you. Going to a concert is an experience, but you are not the concert. Our emotions are the same. You will experience sadness, but that does not make you a ‘sad’ person.
3. Walk your why is about defining your values and goals in life. We easily overlook understanding what we really believe in. We tend to blindly take the beliefs we have been taught, told and interpreted through our childhood experiences directly into our young adulthood. We may tinker around the edges but generally we do not take time out to check and challenge how the emotions we experience fit with what we really care about. We can create a lot of personal power when we use the insights we gain from our emotional experience and combine them with our values and goals. For instance, feeling irritated or angry in a relationship may mean it’s time to set stronger boundaries with the other person.
4. Move on by making gentle shifts and tweaks which move you towards your values. The motivation to change will be different for everyone, but generally you will seek it out because a habit or behaviour is causing you problems, or you want to consider a situation from a different perspective. Noticing your emotions can point you in the right direction to get you closer to your goals.

When we are emotionally agile, we are better able to manage our thoughts and feelings in a way that supports our well-being and helps us make clearer decisions. It’s important to practice self-compassion along the way.

This means treating ourselves, with kindness and understanding, and acknowledging that it is normal to struggle with difficult emotions. By developing emotional agility, we can find clarity in the midst of our emotions. This can help us make better decisions, improve our relationships, and lead a more fulfilling life.