Do you wear your emotions on your sleeve?

It’s Australian Open time again and we are into day 6 (as I write this) of the 2-week treat. I have not watched many matches due to my schedule, but I did watch one spectacular match on Thursday evening (Malaysian time).

It was Andy Murray against Thanasi Kokkinakis. What a match it was. Incredible performance by both. The match lasted 5 hours and 45 minutes. I caught it part way as Murray, who was losing, went on to win the match.

Both men were full of skill and emotion. There was a lot of shouting (mainly at themselves), the breaking of a racket, and their body language said it all. I was full of emotion too. I was anxious for Murray and excited about his potential chance of winning given his past injuries. I was tired but I could not sleep. The match was too captivating. The match ended at 1.20 am (Malaysian time), 4.20 am (Melbourne time).

I stayed on to watch Murray’s interview with a sports journalist. The interviewer asked Murray specifically about his emotions. He noted that at times Murray did not look happy and if that was the case. Murray replied, ‘that is when I am happy inside’. The interviewer, Murray, the crowd, and I laughed. Murray went on to say that he wore his emotions on his sleeve. And that got me thinking.

Murray was visibly upset at times and shouted (at himself). Both men were. Kakkinakis was a little arrogant in the beginning when he thought the match was nearly his. Kakkinakis got visibly more upset as the sets progressed. The arrogance gave way to a combination of despair, anger, frustration, and more. This is what I could see. But only he would know the emotions he was feeling. Incidentally, he broke his racket earlier in the match by hitting it on the ground.

Murray too was visibly feeling many emotions. Anger and frustration at times were very visible. But he managed to navigate them and win the match.

In Emotional Literacy, we say that an emotion either serves us or doesn’t. Emotions are not good or bad, but are there for a reason. And emotions are energy. It is what moves us to action. No emotion, no corresponding action.

Whether we choose to act on them is entirely our choice. And sometimes we make this decision in a nanosecond. In highly competitive grand slam matches, with high stakes, emotions can run high. Feeling them and ‘releasing’ them (shouting, breaking rackets) allows the energy of the emotion to be expended. Thereby reducing its grip on us. And that’s what both men were doing.

But other players navigate these emotions without visibly showing much emotion. Roger Federer comes to mind when I say this. He seemed to have honed his skills in tennis and ‘controlling’ his emotions. He did not shout much and seemed more in control.

Is the latter better than the former? Context matters AND ……

It depends on which part of our brain we are using!

In tennis, especially grand slams, where the pressure to win is intense, it can trigger the competitive spirit or the limbic brain. Here, we wear our emotions on our sleeves. Hence the outbursts that we see. It is still a choice but instinctual and reaction based. Federer may have learned to engage his higher order thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, which can look at both sides of the coin with level-headedness even in a competitive environment. Responding rather than reacting. But this takes practise.

I am making assumptions here as I do not know the players personally. I am going by what I observe and the science behind their behaviour.

Emotions are a core part of us, and we cannot do without them. But in the everyday context shouting and breaking things may not serve us (even if we feel like it). Also, emotions get a bad rap because people do not know how to deal with the discomfort they feel when others get ‘emotional’. This is typically aimed at ‘negative’ emotions with limbic activation. And because of this, we would prefer for people to not bring their emotions to work or wear them on their sleeves.

It is ultimately to save us from dealing with the discomfort. Funny, isn’t it? Our emotional ignorance can potentially make us ineffective because we lose crucial information that could make a difference. What we should be aiming for instead is to engage our sage brain, the prefrontal cortex, to enable more intelligent, emotion-rich conversations. By helping people articulate and verbalise what they are feeling without limbic activation. This requires language (emotional literacy) and access to our sage brain. With practise, you can access both on demand.

If you wear your emotions on your sleeve and want to change that, start with accessing your sage brain. More on this next time.

In the meantime, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com