By Daniel Bobinski, Th.D.
You’ve probably had those days when your inbox is flooded, your boss drops a last-minute project on you and three different colleagues need something ASAP. Said another way, chaos happens. Although we can’t control when chaos descends around us, we can control how we respond to it, and that’s where our power lies.
Let me share how something I read 40 years ago completely changed my perspective. William Glasser’s book “Control Theory” (now published as “Choice Theory”) tells us how we can positively impact our mental, emotional, and physical health when we make proactive choices.
What follows is how Glasser’s perspective matters to your daily work life.
In terms of physiology, your body mostly runs on autopilot. Your heart beats, your lungs breathe, and your digestive system processes that cup of coffee without you having to think about it. No conscious choices are required in these activities. But what many people overlook is that how our bodies function is impacted by our emotions.
Emotions are a bit more complicated. We may get frustrated when a colleague takes credit for our work or we get anxious before a big presentation. Emotions tend to just happen. We have some control here, but not much. However, you need to know your emotions are impacted by your thoughts.
We have more control over our thoughts. When a project goes sideways, sometimes we automatically jump to worst-case scenarios. But a different choice is thinking about how to make things right. That’s because we have more control over our thoughts than our emotions.
Finally, we need to know that our thoughts are impacted by our actions, and we have total control over our actions. Outside of reflexes (like pulling your hand away from a hot coffee mug), we have complete control over what we do. We choose to speak up in meetings. We choose to help team members or stay late to finish a project.
So there’s the chain reaction. Your actions influence your thoughts, which affect your feelings, which impact your physiology. This means if you’re feeling nauseous because you’re stressed about a deadline, if you change your actions you will shift your thoughts, which will, in turn, transform your feelings which then impacts your physiology.
Let’s say you’re overwhelmed by a massive project and getting stress headaches. Rather than dwelling on how impossible the project seems (a thought) and feeling anxious about it (emotion), you could choose to divide the project into smaller tasks and tackle just one segment (an action). This action leads to the thought, “I’m making progress,” which creates a feeling of accomplishment rather than anxiety. You may then notice your stress headache fading away.
The key is to make proactive choices instead of reactive ones. When you consciously choose healthy actions you create better thoughts, which creates better feelings, and ultimately you have better physical well-being.
Bottom line, what actions you choose in the face of chaos will impact your mental, emotional and physical health. And those choices are always up to you.
– Daniel Bobinski, is the author of the best-selling book “Creating Passion-Driven Teams” and the owner of Workplace Excellence. Also a certified behavioral analyst, Daniel consults and conducts training on workplace effectiveness and leadership development. He can be reached at danielbobinski@protonmail.com or eqfactor.net.
