Topic: Missing Work Due to Emotions

In the last week, I have spoken with no fewer than five Thinking Lab members who have found that an upsetting issue (involving another person) was bad enough that they lost at least a half a day of work. This is very demoralizing when it happens, and can easily make you feel like a victim of outside circumstances.

The primary emotion in these cases is often despair. It seems there is no way to achieve your values. This is always false.

But being caught up in disvalues and impossibilities prevents you from seeing, in principle, what values are at stake. You lose sight of the source of your internal conflict, and what you can do to change this situation to act to gain and keep your own selfish values.

In this class we'll discuss:

• Tactics to calm you down when you are that distressed
• How to embrace your frustration and anger with other people as a means of shifting the situation
• Why you need to identify the deep selfish values in conflict
• How to ensure reflection isn't a diversion that extends the crisis instead of moving you forward

As we'll see, the key is always to take action toward real world values.

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