🔤 Stop emotional reactions in 1 minute

A psychologist's tool that helps you master your self-awareness and emotional reactions

Feb 06, 2025

Hey there! I’m Robert. Welcome to a free edition of my newsletter. Every week, I share 1 piece of advice 📖, 1 breakthrough recommendation 🚀, and 1 challenge 💥 to help leaders in tech achieve a growth mindset, transform their communication & influence, and master their emotions. Subscribe today to become the person and leader that people love, respect, and follow.

January 2025, Family Visit

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!"
The argument lasted 30 seconds, but the tension? That lingered for hours.
My little cousins (6 and 8) were deep in it.
The artist cousin, was drawing—completely in the zone, in flow.
The bumper cousin, full of excitement, ran over and bumped her.
The artist’s masterpiece was ruined.
And just like that—BOOM.
The artist snapped.
The bumper’s face fell, lips pursed with quiet guilt.
I watched them both, seeing something deeper than the words.
The next day, I sat them down with the Feelings Wheel—a simple tool to help name feelings.
I asked, "Hey you know what happened last night between you two? Look at this and tell me how you really felt."
Both artist and bumper looked inquisitive, deep in curious contemplation.
And what happened next was incredibly surprising to me.

Most people think emotional intelligence is about “controlling” emotions.

But my research, therapy, and life experiences have shown me that’s wrong.

The key to emotional intelligence isn’t control—it’s awareness.

Only from awareness, can come greater control and power.

If you don’t know what you’re feeling, how can you best control yourself?

Here’s the reality—your ability to name emotions, in the moment, is the single most powerful emotional skill you can develop.

This Week’s ABC

Advice: 60 seconds to emotional self-awareness.

Breakthrough: 10 quotes to help you ground yourself in emotional moments.

Challenge: A 5-minute exercise to help you label and process your emotions this week.

📖 Advice: Self-Awareness in 60 Seconds

“Without communication, no real understanding can be possible. But be sure that you can communicate with yourself first. If you cannot communicate with yourself, how do you expect to communicate with another person?”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

For years, I was terrible at identifying my own emotions.

Like many men, I was conditioned to suppress my feelings—to see them as weakness. (Thanks toxic masculinity and patriarchy!)

I thought emotions were either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

Then therapy flipped the script for me.

I realized: emotions aren’t good or bad. They’re just data.
And that data is invaluable.

Then I went to therapy, and learned skills in emotional intelligence that have given me a better life: better opportunities, deeper relationships, more fulfillment.

That was a less mature version of me that classified feelings as “good” or “bad”. I’ve grown a little bit since then.

I’ve learned: feelings are feelings.

There is no good or bad to them.

The building blocks for emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Framework starts with self-awareness.

Why?

Because your level of self-awareness determines how well you:

Show up for yourself, your team, your loved ones
Manage difficult conversations
Make decisions under pressure
Deepen your relationships
Control your emotional responses

Life is full of change and hard moments that test you.

In those emotionally difficult moments, it will feel much easier to react and lash out.

It will be much easier to do that, and say something you'll regret later.

Been there, regretted that.

Every time I have given in to this impulse, I have deeply regretted it.

We don’t always know what we’re feeling.

Emotions are complicated.

So, we may tend to react.

Then things like pride and ego get in the way of sorries and progress.

Then I discovered the Feelings Wheel to make it all easier.

Credit to Calm for the modern look, and Dr. Gloria Willcox for the original tool

Originally created by psychologist Dr. Gloria Willcox, the Feelings Wheel helps you name exactly what you’re feeling.

I’m actually convinced this tool just makes you a better human the more you use it.

All humans are emotional beings.

The better you can emotionally regulate, the more effective you can be in the relationships you show up to.

You cannot regulate without self-awareness.

I’m a hyper optimizing type of person and I think of this as minimizing time to understanding of feelings (of yourself, and of others).

Better emotional regulation = better version of me.

Sign me up.

Just gotta put in the work to gain the skills.

The Feelings Wheel & Self-Awareness in 3 Steps

Stop and Assess: When you feel emotionally flooded, stop and look at the Feelings Wheel.
Name to Tame: Name all of the emotions that feel closest to what you’re experiencing.
Write and Reflect: Write it down, then think about “What do I need?”

Only you know the true answers to what you feel and what you need.

You have power and control. Exert it.

Personally, I like imagining my inner child visually in my head (Little Robert) and asking him, “How are you feeling? What do you need?”

Self-awareness is a skill you can never get too good at.

This is how you shift from react mode to respond mode.

Naming feelings, gives you power.

NOT naming feelings, takes your power.

According to Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, naming emotions activates the prefrontal cortex, which sends signals to the amygdala to calm down, thereby reducing the stress response.

Amygdala: “EVERYTHING IS NOT OKAY.”
Prefrontal Cortext: “Hey there bud, it’s okay. Here’s a hug.”
Amygdala: “Oh. Okay. Everything’s okay.”

→ Putting feelings into words LITERALLY disrupts and reduces activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to stress and fear.

Takeaway: Naming feelings is something you can actively do in your control to be a better leader of yourself and to those around you.

So being a better person is completely within our control.

Sweet.

🚀 Breakthrough: 10 Quotes On Emotions

I find it handy to keep quotes and reminders around me for when I’m off center.

Here are a few of my favorites…

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
–Viktor Frankl

RT: Damn. It’s almost too good.

"Anger is a necessary emotion. The thing that we need to get away from is labeling emotions good or bad. They just are".
—Brené Brown

RT: This woman is amazing.

“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
–Daniel Goleman

RT: 100% true from my personal experiences.

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.”
–Dale Carnegie

RT: Are you a victim, or a fighter?

“We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.”
–Marshall B. Rosenberg

RT: Shoutout to his great framework, Nonviolent Communication

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
–Maya Angelou

RT: PREACH.

“There’s no retreat more peaceful and untroubled than a man's own mind...”
—Marcus Aurelius

RT: Make it so.

“Emotions are not inherently good or bad; they are just data. What matters is how we act on them.”
–Chade-Meng Tan

RT: Gotta love the engineering take.

"Feel deeply. Think clearly. Live fully."
–Robert Ta

Had to do it.

My Story

Back to my little cousins…

The artist looked at the Feelings Wheel, and said "Annoyed. But also sad. And maybe… hurt?"
The bumper spoke up, "I feel guilty..."
Then I asked if they love each other.
“Yes.” rang out in unison.
Their faces softened and they smiled at each other.
They felt understood.
I shared with them that I feel these things too, and what’s important is to understand each other’s feelings.
I sent the Feelings Wheel to their mom and told them whenever they don’t know how they’re feeling, go to the Feelings Wheel.
The artist smiled real big and pointed to the yellow section of the wheel, “When you showed me this, I felt amazed.”

My heart melted. (‘:

My little cousins are so cute.

I am so grateful I got to spend time with them for Lunar New Year.

💥 Challenge: Use The Feelings Wheel

This week, use the Feelings Wheel.

Here it is again.

That’s it.

The more you practice, the faster emotional clarity becomes second nature.

Next week we’re going to go over my go-to journaling protocol to get healthily get through emotionally difficult experiences.

Stay tuned.

You got this!

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