Emotional agility by Susan David

Emotional agility by Susan David

Who is Susan David and why is she important for us?

Susan David is an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist, best-selling author, keynote speaker and one of the top management thinkers.

From her early years, Susan was exposed to life’s difficulties. She grew up in apartheid South Africa and lost a father to cancer as a teenager. The need to adapt to such a tough reality planted a seed for the concept of emotional agility in her.

Emotional Rigidity versus Emotional Agility

What would you pick, staying the same no matter what, or being open to change and adapting when situation calls for it?

Although many of us consider ourselves the latter, the truth is we often play the poster child for emotional rigidity. And we don’t even realize it!

Emotional rigidity means getting stuck in emotional, behavioural, and thought patterns that do us no good. Emotional agility, on the other hand, means being able to perceive those patterns and change them in a way that is in accord with our values.
Sitting with our sadness, accepting our imperfections, renouncing the false positivity – these are all examples of agile responses to everyday stressful situations. The alternative, ignoring the difficult, can sound alluring, but it also means missing out on all the growth and learning we can achieve!

«Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience disappointment that comes with failure.»