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Are you comfortable getting vulnerable for a minute?

Can you recall the last decision you made? Did you recently decide to start looking for a new job or go out for a promotion? Was it the decision to close on a house you had been looking at for some time? Perhaps you made the decision to say “no” for the first time in a long time. Maybe you decided to cheat on your new meal plan and eat an extra cookie after dinner.

Now that you have the decision in your mind — how much did your emotions influence you?

In my book, Let Go of the Guilt: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Take Back Your Joy, I go into detail about how we can stop our emotions from sitting in the driver’s seat. Whether it’s guilt, anger, or joy, we’ve all made decisions during a heightened state of emotion. And while it can come to benefit us (like when we follow our hearts and end up with a great partner), there’s plenty of times when we wish we could hit rewind (like when we send a rude email to your coworker). If we would have made a different decision and given ourselves the space to calm down to a steadier emotional state, we’d be experiencing a different consequence.

But there is a second step we should take when interacting with our emotions. We should name the emotion we’re experiencing, or as it is called by researchers, affect labeling. When we call the emotion what it is — guilt, anger, sadness — we take back our power, and we’re able to hold the emotion rather than be consumed by it.

In today’s video, I am going to share how you can usher in affect labeling and give way to your most ambitious growth goals. You deserve to hold power over your life, and learning to emotionally regulate is one of the most vital steps.