Q: I’m curious, how do you suggest leaders begin their emotional rehabilitation or training process? It would be great to hear your insights on this topic!

A: The first step toward emotional rehabilitation is (in my opinion) to take ownership of one’s feelings. We cannot take control of something that we refuse to take ownership of. The first line of my post, where I expose the cancerous thought “I can’t help how I feel.” is the antithesis to the solution.

In a cliche statement, the first step toward solving a problem is admitting that there is a problem. So being willing to take responsibility for one’s feelings is definitely the first step. (I have been surprised at how many people have contested this very point in some of the comments on this string and others. To quote Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right!” If we do not believe that we can control our feelings, then we never will.)

Once we have taken ownership of the feelings we have, the next step is to identify which ones are conducive to the life we want. Essentially doing an inventory and asking ourselves, “Which of these emotions are helping me achieve what I want in life?” Emotions are not in and of themselves bad. The problem is that, if we do not control them, they will lie to us. We have to determine which one are rooted in truth and which ones are rooted in conjecture, or outright lies.

Once we have taken ownership and inventory, then it is time to truly rehabilitate. For those who are Christians (like me), we would be familiar with the phrase, “Renew the mind.” Others might be more touched by the Native American idea of feeding our inner wolves. Either way, the concept is that we starve out the unprofitable emotions and feed those that we identify as worthy of keeping. We do this through controlling our thoughts.

If we have feelings of hatred or bitterness, we starve them out by intentionally thinking of love and forgiveness. If we have feelings of inadequacy we starve them out by affirming our value, and actively seeking reaffirming evidence. The goal is quite simply to focus on that which is good, pure, lovely, etc, so that our emotions will follow suit.

For those who think this is oversimplified, I would challenge you to find someone who is clinically depressed and maybe even suicidal and observe them when they have just entered a new relationship. 

To the outward eye, they are almost magically healed! Of course, there are still chemical imbalances that often need to be addressed, but for some reason, things seem to literally get better overnight! Why? I submit that it is because they are no longer (at least during the “puppy love” stage) focused on the negative and are thinking about all sorts of romantic and positive things. And their emotions follow suit.

Unfortunately, many of them eventually return to feeding the negative thoughts, and thus they end up right back where they were. But how did their emotions change so much? Because their thoughts did!

So, we take ownership. We take inventory. We take control (by feeding/starving the emotions). And lastly we take assessment. In the final step, we repeat the process. We acknowledge that there are probably other things that we need to take ownership of, more inventories that we need to take, and more control we need to exercise. As we continue to assess what is working and what is not, we continue to grow. And that is the journey of emotional rehabilitation….or at least the one that I have been on, and it is working pretty well for me!