Activate!
Lesson Overview
In the previous chapter, you discussed emotional intelligence and its four components. This week’s focus is self-regulation, which means an ability to control emotions. This skill is very important for leaders, as it helps to stay focused and resilient in difficult situations.
In this lesson, you will:
- learn what emotional agility is;
- read about how to be more emotionally agile;
- practice recognizing sequences of ideas;
- and practice critical thinking.
Reflection: Emotional Reactions
Do you sometimes feel like emotions are coming over you and you can’t control them? If we don’t know how to deal with emotions constructively, we can harm ourselves and our relationships. Answer the reflective question below to assess how constructive is your approach in dealing with emotions.
Vocabulary: Emotions
How can we control our emotions? And what benefits does this skill bring us? This week’s article will introduce the concept of emotional agility and explain the process behind it.
Vocabulary
7 min
Here are some words that will help you better understand today’s article. Click on the card to enlarge and follow the arrows to slide through other cards. Complete the activity below if you want to practice these words.
Video: How to Be More Emotionally Agile
Emotional agility is important, but how to achieve it? Turns out, there are steps that you can follow to become more resilient and in control of your emotions.
Video
Practice Task
15 min
Watch the video about emotional agility and complete the task after. As you watch, notice how the new vocabulary is used in sentences. Take notes while listening to help you remember the material better.
To check your understanding of the video’s main ideas, complete the practice below:
Practice: Supporting Details
As you learned from the previous lesson, supporting details make it interesting, engaging, and clear what the author of the text wants to say. There are many types of details, but the most common are facts, opinions, statistics, examples, and explanations. Complete the task below to practice recognizing them.
Language Practice
10 min
Reflection: Getting Hooked
Psychologist Susan David explains that to practice emotional agility, you first need to understand that you are getting hooked on negative thoughts. In other words, you slip back to thinking unconstructively. In her book called Emotional Agility, Susan Davide provides an example of herself thinking about her daughter.
Reflection
3 min
Take a look at the infographic and read it. Click on the image to enlarge. Then, complete the form below with your answers. You can also use the Reflective Diary from your workbook to complete this task.
Lesson Wrap-up
In this lesson, you have discussed the importance of emotions and why they evolved. Humans have emotions because they used to serve as impulses to act valuable for our survival. This lesson is the first in a series of lessons on emotional intelligence. Review the vocabulary from today’s lesson:
- agile
- rigid
- trigger
- underlying
- dwell on
- align with
- investigate
- consciously
- constructively
- empower
The next part of the lesson Build! will focus on how emotional intelligence can be important in a professional context. Before completing this part, visit Language Focus and study its content.