Like a glitter jar, your emotions can’t be forced to calm down and settle to the bottom – in this blog, our Senior Facilitator Paul Gapper explains about the importance of ‘thought awareness’ and how to manage feelings of anger, frustration and stress at work.
Whenever I run a course on well-being and resilience, I take along a glitter jar. It’s a tool used with children to help them calm down when they are upset. Like a snow globe, it is a jar filled with water and glitter glue and more glitter. It is shaken and then the child watches as the glitter settles.
The reason I use it on courses with adults is that it is a good way of talking about emotions. Somebody sends us a ‘rude’ email. Our internal glitter jar gets shaken up. If we then respond from that disturbed state, the reply is likely to be poorly judged.
In the session, I shake up the jar and challenge the participants to force the glitter to the bottom. Of course, it cannot be done. Yet we think we can force ourselves not to feel stressed or angry: ‘I shouldn’t be stressed!’ ‘Other people seem to cope!’ ‘I’m not annoyed!’ Each statement another shake of the jar.
What’s more, if I go back to the original email when I feel calmer, I find that that wasn’t what they said! My interpretation was clouded by the feeling it provoked.
So, what do we do? Very simply: create the conditions necessary to allow the glitter to settle. Take a breath, stand up, go and talk to someone, create a dummy email and then put off sending it. In the short term it can be the difference between dealing with the original problem and creating a new one. Thinking from the clear water that gradually gathers at the top of the jar often presents a more creative solution.
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