100 The 4 proven steps for handling emotions under pressure
No. 100 – 15 Dec 2024
Welcome to the 100th edition of the True Progress Newsletter, a weekly newsletter on conquering fear, cultivating inner control, and upgrading resilience.
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Insights
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Your emotions don’t define you—your response to them does. The space between event and reaction is where mastery lives.
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Habits rule our emotional lives, but habits can be rewritten. It starts with noticing your automatic responses to situations and events.
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“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose.”
Challenge
The Emotional Mastery Minute
Goal: Train your brain to create space between triggers and reactions.
Identify a trigger: Think about a recent moment that made you feel stressed or reactive.
Pause: Close your eyes for 60 seconds. Take 4 slow breaths, inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 4, and exhaling for 4.
Reframe: Ask yourself: What’s the story I’m telling myself about this event? What’s another way to see it that creates less negative emotion?
Act as your best self: Decide what action your most confident, composed self would take.
Stop letting your conditioned emotional responses run the show—start seizing more opportunities.
Systems
Keep Your Mental Toolbox Ready
Just like your home occasionally needs repairs, so does your mind. Both thrive on regular maintenance and the right tools to stay in good shape. Do you have reliable emotion regulation techniques you can turn to when life throws you a curveball?
Here’s a simple system:
Write down your top three go-to strategies for managing emotions and keep them somewhere visible—on your desk or in a place you’ll frequently notice.
Choose one technique to help you prepare for an upcoming challenge, another to use in the heat of the moment, and a third to help you recover and reset afterward.
Preparation before desperation makes navigating life’s obstacles far easier.
Book Recommendation
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
This book completely changes the way you see your own mind. It dives into the two systems that drive how we think: System 1, the quick, automatic reactions, and System 2, the slower, more deliberate thought processes.
It helps you catch yourself in the act—recognizing when you’re relying on gut instincts that might steer you wrong or when you need to slow down and think things through. It’s full of moments that make you reflect on your habits and decisions.
Till next week,
— Carlos & Stef
