What is Emotional Sabotage?
When, in reaction to the emotional circumstances around you, you become sensitive and reactionary, when you should be stable and sober-minded.
Instead of taking ownership, you begin blame-shifting or scapegoating.
When you sense anger, anxiousness, and sorrow and succumb to those emotions (Illustration - Being tossed by the waves), instead of learning from them, discerning a path forward, and driving toward the goal (Illustration - Being a ship that navigates the waters).
“Passions”
As a body-soul, composite being, your body (feeling) and the mind (reasoning) can be at odds with one another. You are made of parts and are passible (affected by the passions [a more classically grounded word than “emotion”]). Want proof? Think about the last time you were hungry.
You first got hungry. Your body had a physiological reaction. Being provoked by those feelings, you then made a choice. You either: 1) Consciously chose to be driven by that feeling to consume food. 2) Refrain from consumption, and wait for another opportunity (maybe for a healthier option).
Either way, the interaction between feeling and reasoning was present and show these different parts at work.
Key Point
You are not 100% what you feel.
Knowing this and then shaping your actions to do what is needed is the difference between virtue and vice, being a leader or being sabotaged, or in the case of this season… enjoying the Holidays or not 😉
Strengthen Your Nerve
The following points are taken directly from Joe Rigney’s Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, which you will find in the Top Picks section below.
1️⃣ Take responsibility for yourself - Don’t shift the blame. Even if whatever is addressed is not your “fault,” now it’s your opportunity to steward it well.
2️⃣ Grow in self-awareness - Pay attention to your passions, reluctances, hesitations, anxieties, frustrations, moods, and snap reactions.
3️⃣ Calibrate standards to what is true - As it pertains to virtue and vice, God’s word is the standard. Love what is good, hate what is evil.
4️⃣ Increase tolerance for emotional pain - Don’t avoid situations where sabotage could happen, they actually are training grounds (Illustration - Bodily stress at the gym is what builds muscle).
5️⃣ Be willing to be slandered - Having a knee-jerk reaction to being called names or false news is not mature.
6️⃣ Make sure the slanders are actually false - Be humble, search yourself according to #3.
7️⃣ When slandered, resolve to not respond in kind - Be patient, absorb the infraction, don’t get swept away in the sabotage of the moment.
8️⃣ Root all resistance to sabotage in a sincere desire to glorify God - If you don’t have the highest, ultimate goal to resisting sabotage, you’re not going to make it.
Pro Tips - In the Moment
What do I do when sabotage is coming on, when I sense anxiousness, anger, despair, etc.?
Breath & Pray - Most moments, even when you’re getting information delivered to you, can be received while you control your breathing and silently pray.
Walk - If you get the chance to remove yourself and take a walk, this can be incredibly helpful to not only center yourself, but get the brain in-gear to problem solve.
Meditate on Scripture - Reviewing a memorized verses that fits the occasion, or singing through fitting Scripture, is a great way to “get above the water you’re treading,” so to speak.
🌟 TOP PICKS
Leadership & Emotional Sabotage - Simple 100 page summary of how to maintain control amidst surrounding emotional sabotage.
The Sin of Empathy - Learn the difference between sympathy and untethered empathy, the counterfeit of compassion.
The Logic of the Body - For those who want to go deep on the classical model of the “passions.”
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In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty - Proverbs 14:23
