being aware of what is happening in your emotional circuitry, and the sec-
ond key is waiting long enough for the border patrol to help you out of the
situation. Your brain is designed to help you through these situations, if you
restrain your initial impulse.
“When an emotion triggers, within moments the prefrontal
lobes perform what amounts to a risk/benefit ratio of myriad pos-
sible reactions, and bet that one of them is best. For animals, when
to attack, when to run. And for we humans... when to attack,
when to run—and also when to placate, persuade, seek sympathy,
stonewall, provoke guilt, whine, put on a façade of bravado, be
contemptuous, and so on... through the whole repertoire of emo-
tional wiles.” —Daniel Goleman, Emotional IntelligenceTHE ONE-MINUTE EMOTIONAL MANAGER
Our emotional systems are designed to feel and navigate the correct
course through our feelings. We have problems when we respond without
restraint. This impulsivity soon becomes a pattern of public performance
that is repeated over and over to the same poor reviews, resulting in both so-
cial and self-condemnation. In the next chapter, “Six Seconds of Sabotage,”
I offer ideas on how to manage that critical time frame between the amyg-
dala getting hijacked and the border patrol making the official arrest.
A switch in the left side of the prefrontal lobe has the ability to turn off
negative emotional surges. We simply need to allow the initial rush to pass,
giving this switch time and permission to activate. This switch is like the cor-
rective parent that reprimands childish tantrums and suggests more ap-
propriate responses. The success of the reprimand hinges in large part on
the history of training with the child. If we have a history of spouting, vent-
ing, reacting, and making hair-trigger responses, the child—amygdala—
will be more difficult to train.
Responsibility follows awareness in the necessary disciplines of emo-
tional intelligence. In the case of restraint, responsibility is defined as ac-
cepting actions and reactions as something we are responsible for. Restraint
is an area where many people try to avoid or resist responsibility, because
they have ample opportunity to point to those who provoked the negative
emotions and place the blame on their shoulders. As long as people look
outwardly for excuses, they lack the discipline to restrain self-sabotaging
behaviors.
Assuming that we accept responsibility for what we do and say when
our amygdalas undergo a temporary hijacking, we must install a short-term
58 SELLING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE