The Space Between Emotion and Reason: How Equanimity Transforms Leadership
How do you practice having a reasoned response instead of an immediate (often angry) reaction to events or what people say and do?
You can start by practicing equanimity.
Equanimity is the space between our raw emotions and logic where we access our humaneness — where we can observe without judgement or prejudice what we are feeling in response to reactions to events.
With equanimity, we observe WHAT we perceive of events (the data) and what that MEANS (the drama) through our emotions and feelings.
Equanimity is how you find peacefulness at the centre of discord.
For leaders and change-makers, it’s easy to start the day worrying about how you’re going to fix it.
When things go wrong it is incredibly challenging (and sometimes it even feels impossible) to respond from a place of loving-kindness and acceptance for the other person as a human being deserving of respect. As leaders, it can be a struggle to maintain the emotional integrity to offer an alternative solution that improves the situation and elevates the humanity of the interaction.
