“Emotions creep into the decisions that we make, which are part of the way we behave”

With September being the suicide awareness month, in this episode of Mrigashira, Charu Raizada speaks to Dr Nandini Chatterjee Singh, Senior National Project Officer, UNESCO MGIEP, to understand how social emotional learning, or SEL practices could help find constructive ways to deal with emotions and interact with one another in respectful ways. Continue reading to become more emotionally aware, learn to practice compassion for ourselves and others, as well as engage with compassion in complex systems and work environment.

Listen to the podcast here:https://open.spotify.com/episode/56LgDLfTjY5JVi2mPcMEAg?si=HZZURNgsSPygLYZrAgZjBQ&dl_branch=1

What are social emotional learning or SEL practices and why do they become more important for us in our day to day lives, both professionally and on a personal level?

If there’s one thing that this pandemic has highlighted is the importance of face-to-face interaction. And that brings to mind what is it that faces and people do to us that becomes so important for us to think about it. That's a realization that we need to have, and this permeates our daily lives, whether we are at work or at home. The social aspects of humanity are linked to emotional aspects of life and emotions are related to reward, motivation, feeling sad, and almost make the purpose of life more relevant and important.

If you think about it, humans make close to 30,000 decisions in a day, and every decision that we make in a day has an element of emotion of feeling linked to it. So, whether we like it or not, emotions creep into the decisions that we make and these decisions are part of the interactions and the way we behave in life. And therefore, social and emotional learning needs to come into play. If we are consciously aware of the emotional states we are in, and that's something that I call emotional awareness, we will be able to take decisions after some thought. We'll also be able to respond to people rather than react to people. And if we are able to respond to circumstances, to people, and to what is happening around us, in mindful manners, we will be able to behave in a way which is more flourishing, and which is more in conduction with people around us.

Top most things to do to stay calm in our day to day lives?

So, I think it is important for usto regularly engage in what we call reflection. When you have maybe a disagreement with somebody who's connected to you, whether at the level of a friendship, or a family member, and if it ended on an unhappy note, it leaves a dissonant feeling within you. In most circumstances, we try and brush it away, and hope that it will die a natural death. But dissonance and this is something again, we know from the neurosciences, are associated with negative memories, and negative memories are represented most strongly in the brain, as compared to positive memories. What we need to do instead is to consciously evoke positive memories, or positive associations that have happened, and bring them to the forefront so their memories become stronger. So that’s one, to constantly engage in reflection, and to try and arrive at a positive association that can help resolve the situation.

The second is to also think about the whole notion of engaging in social and emotional learning, not just to lead more productive lives in terms of economics and finance, but also to lead more meaningful lives of whatwe have now started to call flourishing. Here, the framework that we have started to use is something that we designed in house, it is called the EMC framework. And the idea is to build empathy, mindfulness, compassion and critical inquiry. And the core of this is that in order to flourish, you have to ensure wellbeing not only for yourself, but also for the other. The other can be a family member, can be your colleagues in office, can be even a stranger on the road or somebody whom you meet in the metro train. Emotions are contagious. So, if I see you in a happy state, there is a very strong possibility that you are a friend and that I will also resonate with your happiness. So, if we are able to build positive emotions around us, those around us will also begin to benefit from it. And therefore, bringing in this social emotional learning into an everyday life and an everyday space becomes important, not just for yourself, but also for all that's around you.

More than 46 per cent of private sector employees report high stress levels because of their work. Can SEL practices help reduce stress?

It is important to understand how we can begin to thrive so that the environment is such whether it's in the classroom or in the office, where you want to put in your best, and you are also encouraged and surrounded byfeelings or discussions that encourage you to do that.  And a quality that I want to talk about here - that is something that we specifically inculcate, is self-awareness. So, how to be in touch with yourself. And to give a very simple example, if you're having a conversation with somebody and you don't agree and without realizing, if you're not self-aware, you might actually begin to find the volume of your voice begin to rise. And that volume is already an indication that your emotional state is changing. Now, if you are self-aware, you will begin to monitor that volume. Because after some point in time, the volume or the amplitude of the voice rather than the semantics begins to speak to the biology of the other person. So, the other individual begins to already hear you getting angry, without your words explicitly saying so, we call these articulatory gestures, these are things that begin to happen in our conversations. So, you often come away thinking, I didn't mean to be angry, I didn't mean to be rude. But something other than my words conveyed it. Therefore, learning to read emotions, whether it is in the face or in the voice becomes an extremely important competency. So, emotion awareness, and emotion recognition, are both very useful skills to have over here.

A second thing was that about being mindful, and I don't want to talk about mindfulness in terms of being in touch with your breath or engaging indeep breathing, but also to ensure that when you are participating in a conversation, you are in there in the present, and your mind is not wandering somewhere else. So, you are having a conversation, but you're actually thinking about something else. Those are again, not great situations for relationships to flourish. A third point which we have found to be very helpful and beneficial in building good relationships is active listening. When we converse with each other, even before the first person has come to the end of the first sentence, we have already started to think about our own response. Then our attention is caught up with formulating our own response, rather than paying enough attention.

Many of these are our competencies that we think we have already acquired along the way, and think we are able to practice them and implement them in our daily lives. But these constantly need work. And if we are able to decide for ourselves that I will make every conscious attempt to reflect before I speak, to listen actively and carefully before I respond, and to pay attention to the interaction that's happening with me or around me, I think stresses will automatically take care of themselves.

Three examples or three activities that you have found to be very useful in maintaining calm during the pandemic?

One of the things we have been advocating, and this is, again, supported by the science is that if we are able to find at least three times in the day - spend five to seven minutes with yourself away from technology. You can listen to music, just stare into space, watch the birds, go for a walk, watch the flowers, and spend a little time listening to yourself. It's very therapeutic.

Second thing we have found very important and helpful is to engage in gratitude once in the day. So, to be thankful for family, for food, for friendship, for a job, for not having got COVID, for having recovered from COVID – a number of things. Engaging in gratitude over a period of time activates a specific region in the brain, which helps the brain to be kinder and calmer.

Thirdly, do an act of kindness. This could be kindness for yourself, we call it self-compassion, compassion to others, do something else for somebody else, and also gratefully receive compassion from others. And it could be something as simple as you know, not making a nasty comment when you wanted to. Making a cup of tea foreveryone, when you are going to make one for yourself, asking an Uber driver about how their day was, helping somebody cross the street. Doing an act of kindness activates reward pathways in the brain, similar to eating a good meal, eating a bar of chocolate or feeling happiness after a win. So, if you are able to activate those pathways in your brain, they are going to put you in a happy state of mind. And that itself takes care of the stress to a large extent.

*Edited for length and clarity

(Mirgashira is a podcast for Indian PR and Communication professionals anchored by RadhaRadhakrishnan and Charu Raizada. To listen to all episodes visit https://www.mrigashirapodcast.com/)