Leader, Lead Thyself: Healing Brings Emotional Power
“With all vigilance guard your heart, for in it are the sources of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
I’m hopeful that, as a culture, we’ve finally reached the point where healing through therapy and coaching is viewed positively rather than critically. Whether or not we have a diagnosed mental illness, many of us (if not all of us) have experiences or struggles that require healing.
It’s perhaps especially important for leaders to work on this healing, because we impact other people. I use the term “leaders” loosely here, to include not only managers and executives but parents and informal leaders—anyone with any kind of influence over another person.
In fact, Dr. Julia DiGangi, a neuropsychologist and researcher, defines “leadership” as “your ability to use your own energy to influence your own life … how you steward your life at work, at home, in parenting, in your relationships, and on social media.” Her new book, “Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power” (out this Sept. from Harvard Business Review Press), shares insights from neuroscience to help leaders build their emotional power and connect well with the people they work and live with.
DiGangi defines emotional power as wholeness—as understanding and working with our negative emotions and believing that we have value as human beings. She writes that it is impossible to live without pain, and the sooner we accept that reality, the sooner we can heal from emotional pain and transform it into emotional power.
Understanding Yourself
DiGangi’s framework consists of eight “neuroenergetic codes,” or “blueprint[s] explaining how you can harness your brain’s energy to create specific improvements in your life and the lives of others.” The first five are about understanding your own emotional power:
Expand your emotional power.
Build your power pattern.
Harness your emotional energetics.
Master uncertainty.
Rewire your source code.
In each of these first five chapters, DiGangi walks readers through how to harness their emotions, rewrite harmful patterns (often learned during childhood), and reclaim their power as a leader.
Ultimately, her message is an empowering one: Technically, it’s your emotional response to a situation, not the situation itself, that causes pain. While you can’t always change a situation, you can take control of your emotion. That control comes from your self-worth, which DiGangi writes is “the connection that there’s still something energetically good about you regardless of any situation.”
As Catholic women, we know this to be true: We are the daughters of God, made in His image and loved so much that He took human form and died for us. “But a big part of the reason our sense of worth can feel so shaky is because we don’t engage ourselves in meaningful reflections about who we are and how we matter outside of the things we do!” DiGangi writes.
I don’t know what DiGangi’s faith is, if she has one. But to me, this sounds like a call to prayer.
Connecting With Others
The final section of DiGangi’s book is dedicated to connecting with others:
Quit commanding.
Unleash your magnetism.
Build a relationship from the future.
She writes, “Every single relationship ‘problem’ on the planet comes down to difference, the complicated duality between independence and dependence.” We’re caught between our innate need for connection and our desire to always be in control. By healing that desire for control, we can better connect with the people we live and work with.
“Your leadership—your energy to affect your life and the lives of those who depend on you—is your greatest power in this life,” DiGangi concludes. “In a life where you—through not an ounce of your own volition—energized a human body to live a human experience atop a strange ball floating through a dark universe that astrophysicists now believe is endless, what has happened to you that cannot be redeemed?”
Or, as St. Paul tells us, “In [Jesus] we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us” (Ephesians 1:7-8).
What cannot be redeemed, indeed?
Taryn DeLong is a Catholic wife and mother in North Carolina and serves as co-president and editor-in-chief of Catholic Women in Business. Her writing has appeared in publications such as FemCatholic, Natural Womanhood, CatholicMom.com, Radiant Magazine, and Live Today Well Co. She enjoys curling up with a cup of Earl Grey and a good novel, playing the piano, and taking walks in the sunshine with her family. Connect with Taryn: Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • LinkedIn • Blog • Substack