OH! Magazine - Australian Version April 2016 | Page 20

TOP TIPS TO

HEIDI
DI SANTO

RESOLVING PROBLEMS

www.heidi.com.au

( Emotional Fitness )

Emotional fitness expert Heidi Di Santo shares her advice
to help you resolve your problems.
ife doesn’t always go to plan. Things
do go wrong and in this article I
want to share with you the most effective
way to achieve a resolution when you’re
confronted with a problematic situation.

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If you confront a person with blame or
anger, their automatic reaction is to become
defensive. They’ll put up their guard as
protection against you and your emotional
outburst; and rather than hearing you and
helping you, they do the exact opposite –
they close down and may even retaliate with
more anger. Approaching a problem with
anger and judgment is like throwing fuel on
a fire; it just increases the chance of conflict
and minimises the possibility of you both
gaining a mutually-satisfying resolution for
the issue.
So when you have a problem, what’s the
best way to sort things out? In my opinion,
it’s all comes down to communication
versus altercation.
Most people want to be helpful and the best
way to illicit this help is to state the facts,
without blame, accusation or emotion, just
like a policeman would when writing a
statement. Doing this automatically
improves your chances of being helped
because it opens the lines of communication.
It creates the best circumstances to get a
resolution. For example, when returning a
pair of shoes, there’s a big difference
between saying ‘the sole has come off this
shoe’ (which purely states the facts) and

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APRIL 2016 ( OH! MAGAZINE )

‘your company is the worst – you sold me
dodgy shoes’ (which is full of judgement,
blame and accusation).

At this point in time, you may be thinking
‘that’s easier said than done’ or ‘How do I
lay down the facts and keep my cool
(because I’m too angry or upset to do this)?’
This is why I’m so passionate about my
work. I help people to take control of their
inner world which, ironically, can mean
allowing yourself to accept, feel and process
all of your emotions. This enables you to
come to a point of peace within so you can
tackle things externally with an even
emotional keel.
Many people push their emotions away.
They say ‘I shouldn’t be feeling this way’ or
‘it’s not good to be so angry or upset or
scared’ and they attempt to suppress their
natural emotions. But this creates stress
within you because you’re forced to deny
what’s actually going on inside. This is when
life becomes hard because you need to
wear your mask and pretend.
Emotions want to be felt, not suppressed.
Anger is not bad, it’s energy to stand up for
yourself. It tells you that your boundaries
have been crossed and provides the
necessary energy to take action. The
problem with anger is that most people
have only seen the ‘aggressive’ side of anger
(as opposed to the ‘assertive’ side of anger).

The aggressive side of anger comes out
when you suppress and deny anger. You
force it down and try to keep a lid on it. But
eventually the anger will surface and it’s
often the people you love the most who are
on the receiving end of your explosion. You
take your anger out on them and they
become the victims of your suppression. If
this happens, you can often feel ashamed
or guilty as a result of your outburst.
Whatever your problem, by honouring and
feeling your emotions in the moment or
soon after, you prevent the external situation
from disturbing your inner peace in the long
term. You’re able to ‘feel your stuff and
move on’. You don’t dwell on things. You’re
able to accept that life doesn’t always go
according to plan, enabling you to let things
go and move forwards. You become
powerful emotionally and you’re able to
resolve issues because you can state the
facts and communicate openly and
effectively.
For more information about taking control
of your inner worl Z