 Welcome to the 19th session of our course, Yog and Positive Psychology for Managing Career and Life. In today's session, we are going to discuss yogic interventions for managing emotions. You perhaps can recall that in last few sessions, we are looking at yogic processes or yoga based practices as interventions at different layers of self. So, Mekos, Mano Mekos, Vijnana Mekos, there are different interventions we can draw from the yogic tradition and yoga based practices. For today's session, we are going to look at yogic interventions for Mano Mekos and that aspect of self which is related to our emotions. Emotions we all know is the juiciest part of life, that is what makes life interesting and how to manage emotions is a very important factor in terms of our managing self and managing career. So, we are going to look at yogic interventions to manage emotions or to be precisely called in the Indian tradition Mano Mekos. This is the time for little bit of revision. In the initial sessions, we talked about two sets of competencies, one set which are required to be in any profession and another set which are required for anyone to grow well in any profession. These two sets of competencies were well identified in the first session of this course. If you remember, the set of competencies which are required to grow in any profession are about cognitive competencies and along with that are the emotional intelligence related competencies and social intelligence related competencies. When we connect that with managing life, we get the similar picture. Managing life is also about managing our emotions, our thoughts and managing career is also about managing our emotions in the day to day interactions, building our network, managing our relationships at work because that is the foundation for motivating ourselves and others, leading ourselves and others, building team, leading teams, understanding organizations and leading organizations. So, self management skills and career building skills, they are pretty overlapping to each other and there are some discipline specific skills and there are some generic specific skills and those generic skills, we are looking at emotional intelligence and social intelligence. Let us take a short quiz. Markets are driven by and you to think answer to this question. What is the answer to the question? Markets are driven by investors' mood. Leadership is based on and the answer is trust. Uptake of any technologies is linked to the customer. Some technologies can be very good, but customers may not pick it up, customers may not adopt those. What makes people, customers to adopt some technology and that is engagement and pleasure involved in the technology. Regulations are driven by what kind of laws are passed, what kind of regulations are formed, they are driven by which factor, they are driven by activism. There can be hundreds of things on which regulations can be passed, laws can be made, but priorities naturally flow towards those regulations and those laws which are promoted by activism, activism by government of the day or activism by the social groups. Pivot of service experience or service and experience in any customer provider and client interaction and that is understanding and connecting. Elections are won by conviction and sentiments not only driven by hard data, but election results are majorly influenced by the flow and direction of sentiments. Communication performance is driven by motivation. Relationships are formed by human needs, love and respect and answers to all these questions ranging from mood, trust, motivation, human needs, love, respect, etcetera. What is commonality in all these answers? The commonality is that all these are emotions. Life is majorly driven by emotions, it makes life juicy, makes life interesting, it also makes life complicated, but scientifically speaking emotions are data, emotions, what is the functionality of emotions? The functionality of emotion is that organism get a feedback and feedback result into some physiological activity. Feedback received from environment that feedback can be about the threat that can be about some pleasurable experience all those feedback result into some physiological activities that stimulate some activity that is primarily emotion. Emotions that is why can be traced back to some or other part of the body actually all the emotions are connected to some biomarkers, some neurotransmitters, some physiological indicators. So emotion perform motivational communicative regulatory function within and between individuals. The origin of behavior lie in personal biological and social heritage. When reading emotions like data, we can say that emotions are data, emotions are the information about what that organism is making or concluding about the environment, when you see what others are feeling that is information, what their motivations are, what they are leading to, what is occupying a lot of their energy and at the same time if you do not show any emotion that is a signal that you lack passion, you know and you are incapable of really connecting to the challenges of the moment. So emotions have very important role in the evolutionary process in relationships and managing ourselves. Emotional intelligence is becoming very popular term these days. Emotional intelligence is valued, it is recognized as a very important factor in success in being successful at job, in career, in relationships and all walks of life. What is the simplest and elegant definition of emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence is defined by Brackett and his colleagues as the combination of two factors, combination of energy and pleasantness. According to the energy and pleasantness, we can at some or other quadrant of this 2 by 2 matrix. So let us stay with this matrix for some time and think about who are the public figures, who are the leaders, who have natural tendency to be in some or other quadrant of this energy pleasantness matrix. We can think about some personalities and I am not going to tell about those, you need to think about and look at the examples around yourself or pick up the people whom you are familiar to or you are following. Many of them have tendency to remain at high energy and low pleasantness block. Many of them have a natural tendency to be in the low energy and low pleasantness block. Many of them are very highly pleasant, but not very energetic and some of them are high on both on energy as well as pleasantness. Let us look at this block of high energy, high pleasantness and reflect what kind of leaders, teachers, managers, bosses we admire most. We invariably admire people who are high on both, who are high on energy and high on pleasantness. Think about what is the term in your mother tongue about all of these blocks in this 2 by 2 matrix. I am recording this lecture in Mumbai and in Mumbai there is a term Bindasth that is invariably used in the general conversation and that actually conveys the idea about a person who is high on pleasantness, who is not very anxious, he is actually fun loving, high energy and still pleasant person. So please think about some word in your mother tongue for example in Bangla Utsahi or Sanskrit word is also Utsahi they represent high energy, high pleasantness. So we can think about terms for different blocks in your mother tongue to understand the essence of this matrix. The question is since we want our leaders, teachers, managers to be at high energy, high pleasantness matrix, where do we, where am I located in this matrix and if I am not located in the high energy and high matrix what is my strategy to be there. You can take this assessment, you can identify the number based on your judgment, based on your reading about yourself and think about how I can move towards plus 5, plus 5 in this matrix. So what is this strategy? Strategy is first to recognize what is your general emotional disposition that is why the first term is recognition or recognize emotion. In general what is my emotional disposition? In general what is the emotional state I live and in particular at a particular situation I am feeling that has to be recognized that is the first step. After recognition we can understand the emotions clearly. When we understand it we can label that emotion. From recognition to labeling our awareness cycle gets over until I am aware of the emotion I cannot manage it. So the first three step ensure that I am aware of the emotion. When I am aware of the emotion I can strategize how to express emotion. For example anger if I experience it instead of just suppressing it instead of just ignoring it it is important to convey what is for example we look at ourselves and recognize that I am feeling angry. If I am feeling angry about something about in in in certain situation I need not to act out of anger but I need to understand and label the emotion or if I am feeling disgust or if I am feeling guilt or if I am feeling affectionate. In all these emotions we need to first understand and label this then we can express it appropriately. If it is anger it is not to be acted upon it has to be expressed. It is one thing to start shouting in the anger it is another thing to tell the person that you have done this this and that makes me upset please let me know if I am missing out something or if my anger is unjustifiable. In the second case we are expressing emotion but we are not acting upon emotion when we express it we give time to ourselves to regulate the our action regulate our words about that emotion. So, the acronym ruler R U L E R that is for these five steps and that is advocated by that is explained beautifully by Brackett and his colleagues.