Many people do not know what an emotional bandwidth is, even if they know, they do not understand the true essence behind it.
Knowing one’s current emotional bandwidth is not only about saying ‘No’ to an engagement. It is about choosing what you feel is right. Setting emotional bandwidth helps in improving the mental health of an organization.
By Sneh Kulkarni
What is emotional bandwidth?
Emotional bandwidth is the ability to honestly catch up on your emotional state. In life, we fool ourselves to be happy when we know we are not in a state of happiness. Humans have developed a tendency of fooling themselves by hiding emotions about what they feel.
Most of the time we do not even realize how our feelings are overwhelmed by our own emotions or by the emotions of others around us.
Emotional Bandwidth
Each one of us has a unique emotional bandwidth. What I feel are my emotional boundaries might not be the same for you.
However, emotions play a colossal role in our day-to-day life. Almost everything we do is a reflection of our emotions. Sometimes we increase our bandwidth in certain situations, and sometimes we might lower it. Setting emotional bandwidth is quintessential for nurturing health.
Take a simple example, where you get up and decide what all you’ll accomplish in your day. Suppose you declutter your closet. Now, as you start your day, you keep on getting more and more work either from your office or from your kids.
By the end of the day, you could not clear your closet. Now in this situation, you might feel guilty about not being able to manage things well, or you may casually do it the next day. However, amidst all this, you could not be emotionally present in whatever you were doing throughout the day.
Emotional Bandwidth at workplace
Even though emotions are the last thing to bring to a workplace, yet emotions play a crucial role in corporate wellness.
● The very first step towards establishing boundaries even at the workplace is to learn to say no when you don’t feel like doing something. Many times, in offices, we come across situations where we either say yes because of peer pressure or senior pressure. However, if you think you are being asked to do anything out of your emotional bandwidth, you should be ready to back out. It will help you maintain your emotional well-being in the workplace and be more productive.
● Second, sometimes we are assigned a particular task. Now, we may try our best to complete it on time. However, there are chances it isn’t completed. A motivated person might take such situations lightly, while some people might hurt their emotions by taking it as a failure. It is because the emotional bandwidth of a person is not the same as the other person.
● Many workers and many people push themselves beyond their emotional capacities for a long time to get things done. I guess we all have done this in time. We somewhere know how we are feeling tired, yet we push ourselves. By doing so, we disconnect ourselves from our bodies and hearts. Most times, it becomes a lifestyle pattern. We get used to suffering emotionally to make the ends meet.
How to manage your emotional bandwidth?
Emotional bandwidth is the ability to know how you are feeling in a moment. Taxing means anything that is physically and mentally demanding Since it has everything to do with oneself, it is you who manage your emotional bandwidth.
● Learn to accept the responsibility for your energy management. In simple words, you should understand and acknowledge the limit to the amount of information that your body can handle.
● Recognize the emotional bandwidth of other persons. It can help you in maintaining and preserving relationships. If you know a specific thing will disrupt the other person’s bandwidth, you would not want to do it.
● Respect your emotional bandwidth. You don’t have to alter your limits repeatedly for others. Process your feelings, but don’t avoid them.
Life is a juggling act. Sometimes we have too many balls in the air and they all come tumbling down. Other times we comfortably juggle what’s there. Emotional Bandwidth describes the expressiveness, or capacity, of a person’s self-report scale usage. If you have control over your emotional experience, it’ll be beneficial for you and everyone around you.
Emotional bandwidth plays a crucial role in the workplace. Stress often triggers disengagement. Though not considered as a critical factor, it can bring a lot of changes to your workplace. Zeromindlab believes that when we incorporate strategies for enhancing people’s emotional intelligence, the work environments we create improves employee engagement, health and productivity.
Engaged employees work harder because they have an emotional investment in creating value for their employer. Zeromindlab specialist from learning and development unit are in a position to incorporate emotional intelligence to create holistic environments that promote the wellbeing and engagement of employees.
