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Emotional Agility

In 'Emotional Agility,' Susan David explores how emotional rigidity can hinder personal and professional success, advocating for a more flexible approach to emotions. She outlines four key steps—show up, step out, walk your why, and move on—to help individuals unhook from unhelpful emotional patterns and embrace change. The book emphasizes the importance of emotional agility not only for personal well-being but also for fostering resilience in children and enhancing workplace dynamics.

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1K views

Emotional Agility

In 'Emotional Agility,' Susan David explores how emotional rigidity can hinder personal and professional success, advocating for a more flexible approach to emotions. She outlines four key steps—show up, step out, walk your why, and move on—to help individuals unhook from unhelpful emotional patterns and embrace change. The book emphasizes the importance of emotional agility not only for personal well-being but also for fostering resilience in children and enhancing workplace dynamics.

Uploaded by

ajinkyan3709
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Emotional Agility

Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive


in Work and Life
Susan David, PhD
©2016 by Susan David
Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
ISBN: 978-1-59240-949-5
Estimated reading time of review: 5 minutes

Review
By Katie Fleming
Many of us suffer from emotional rigidity. We find ourselves “hooked” by thoughts, feelings, and behav-
iors that undermine our confidence and ability to lead productive lives. Our rigidity often stems from
our need for control and order to claim the lives we want to lead, but it tends to leave us with feelings of
depression, remorse, and anxiety instead of lasting contentment.

Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David believes there’s a better path, one she calls emotion-
ally agility. In her book Emotional Agility, David explains that introducing new actions, “loosening up,”
and living with more intention are some of the keys to leading a happy, positive, productive life that
supports our well-being and brings about success. Leaning into her own experiences as an executive
coach and psychologist, she shares why rigidity comes so easily to us and shows us how to “unhook”
from those unhelpful responses as we lead our lives, perform in our work roles, and parent the next
generation.

What Do Emotions Have to Do with Our Success?


We all experience emotions that lift us up, empower us, and help us find the confidence we need to take
on challenges. We also have emotions that overtake us, cloud our judgment, and cause us to “lose it” in
the moments that matter most.

David tells us that we may have an innate desire to protect our best interests, but this second set of
emotions can trip us up and keep us from attaining the things we want most in our lives. It’s these emo-
tions that many people battle with for years on end, either by trying to smother and suffocate them or
©2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 1
Emotional Agility Susan David, PhD

allowing them to stay at the forefront of their minds without fully processing them. We may respond to
them with rigid reactions, self-defeating dialog, or blockades that prevent us from opening up to others
or inviting them into our lives.

It’s all too easy to make space for these mindsets, believing in the protections they provide and the ease
with which they help us classify our experiences. But instead of delivering order to our lives, they fuel
our discontentment, foster an inability to connect with others, and make it harder for us to flex when it’s
needed to achieve our goals.

How We Get Ourselves “Hooked”


David asserts that the emotions, thoughts, and behaviors we allow in our lives become our narratives, and
with them, we script stories for ourselves that are anything but neutral. Instead, our stories emphasize
our opinions and can take liberties with what’s true or real. These stories encourage us to accept passing
thoughts as facts, which can later affect how we respond to the people or circumstances we encounter.

Our problems often start when we allow our “internal chatterbox” to sound off unchecked. It may assign
blame, cling to ideas that no longer fit our circumstances, or promote what David calls wrongheaded
righteousness that’s built on our insatiable need for justice, vindication, or recognition that we’re right.
Often, that chatter blends with our memories, visual images, and symbols, confusing what’s happening
right now with past events or possibilities. We respond, and our emotions set in as we reflect on our
choices. More blame and negative self-talk can take over, leaving us feeling anxious, full of dread, and
depressed.

New Strategies to Help Us Unhook


Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. David suggests that we learn ways to unhook from the autopi-
lot thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that don’t serve us. The solution isn’t to kill off those feelings, bottle
them up, or brood. None of those responses will help us feel the stability or contentment we crave and
can, instead, cause our hooks to embed more deeply. David recommends we take four steps to unhook
and find a healthier, happier way of living.

First, we need to show up. David encourages us to face our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors with
kindness and curiosity. Doing so will allow us to explore how they work in our lives and whether they
distort the outcomes we experience.

Second, she tells us to step out by detaching from our thoughts and emotions. Here, we can practice
labeling them as they arise and witness how they drive our responses.

Third, she coaches us to “walk our why” by naming what matters to us and embracing our long-term
values and aspirations. This work can help us spot better paths to our goals and how our go-to responses
may keep us from achieving them.

Fourth, she shares that we must move on. We can do this by making tiny tweaks to drive change and
by being purposeful in finding our sweet spot of challenge without teetering into either overwhelm or
complacency.

All of these moves require agility, a response that’s counter to our longing for control. David says loos-
ening up, calming down, living with more intention, and choosing how we’ll respond to our emotional
warning signals are the keys to leading psychologically healthy and happy lives.

©2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 2


Emotional Agility Susan David, PhD

What Emotional Agility Looks Like at Work


Our fledgling emotional agility can be put under strain when we test it in the real world. Often, we
must address a new set of root causes that fuel our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. These might
include lacking full awareness of the situations we’re given to deal with, having unrealistic expectations
of others, exaggerating others’ behaviors to suit the narratives we create for them, and resisting the
need to correct our assumptions, even as they’re proven invalid.

New efforts to show up, step out, walk our why, and move on are needed so we can identify what’s driv-
ing us and understand how our narratives are helping or hurting our professional goals.

David argues that building our agility at work is especially important because our professions can play a
significant role in our purpose and identity. It can also contribute to our sense of empowerment, ability
to connect with colleagues, and access to meaningful work and challenges. She coaches us to use our
newfound emotional agility to make the most of the jobs we inhabit, even if they aren’t perfect, so that
we can live fully and learn from what’s happening around us.

Steps We Can Take to Raise Emotionally Agile Children


Another reason that it’s important to address our emotional rigidity is that it can have damaging effects
on our children. Our wish to protect them from all inconveniences often results in overparenting. This,
in turn, can prevent young people from learning how to adapt and respond to hardships, being open to
new ideas, and believing that love doesn’t have to be conditional on their compliance.

David believes that parents must teach emotional agility and give their children the space to practice it.
This practice can create a solid foundation for the flexibility and resiliency they need to succeed, thrive,
and adapt through a range of circumstances.

Bottom Line
In Emotional Agility, Susan David expertly explains the drivers of our emotional rigidity and the steps
we can take to break free from them. She backs her practical wisdom with stories from her life and the
lives of others to show that the work we must put in can pay off in big, impactful ways. Much more can
be said about how we can put emotional agility to work in our lives, specifically in interpersonal sce-
narios and with people with whom we hold our deeply embedded hooks. Still, this book is an excellent
guide for taking on the important work of embracing agility and living with more intention.

About the Reviewer


Katie Fleming is a professional writer from Ohio who specializes in content creation for small business
leaders. She’s also the cofounder of www.owneractions.com, an online platform that helps entrepre-
neurs work through the challenges of starting, growing, and exiting their ventures.

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