Strategic Discipline Blog

One of the biggest obstacles to change is something most of us don’t even realize:

We can become addicted to emotions.

I didn’t know this either—until I went through Change Your Mind. Create New Results training. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. This insight doesn’t just impact personal growth—it’s critical to how we lead, work, and build healthy business cultures.

We typically think of addiction in terms of substances—alcohol, drugs, gambling, even sugar. But emotions? Yes. Emotional addiction is real, and it can silently run our lives.

My Story: Sugar and Emotion

Here’s a personal example. Every evening, after dinner and my walk, I sit down to relax—news, sports, the usual. Almost like clockwork, I crave something sweet.

That might not sound like a big deal, except I’m diabetic. Even though I walk over two miles a day, my weight fluctuates because of this pattern. I always chalked it up to habit—until I realized the craving was tied to a deeper emotional loop.

I’m not addicted to sweets. I’m addicted to the feeling that leads me to seek them out.

Understanding

In the training, we learned that the end product of any experience is an emotion. When you have a strong emotional reaction, your body creates a chemical response. The longer that emotion lingers, the more your body memorizes it—and the harder it is to break free.

This lingering effect is called the refractory period, and it’s where emotional addiction begins.

If you replay a painful or stressful event in your mind, your brain and body respond as if it’s happening again. Over time, your body gets used to that chemistry. You start living by the emotions of the past—angry, anxious, resentful—even when nothing new has triggered them.

Eventually, you don’t just feel the emotion. You become it.

How It Shows Up at Work

Think of how this plays out in the workplace.

A team member feels slighted by a comment. They carry that feeling for days—it becomes a mood. If they carry it longer, it becomes a temperament. Eventually, it becomes part of how they see the world—and how they interact with others.

They’re not reacting to the current moment. They’re reacting through the lens of the past.

The same goes for managers. Maybe you’re holding on to frustration with an underperformer. Or replaying a decision someone else made that you disagreed with. If you’re living by that emotion, you’re not leading from the present. You're reacting from old wiring.

Breaking the Pattern

Ask yourself:

• Is there an emotion I keep falling into—even when I don’t want to?
• Do I justify my behavior because of how I feel?
• Is there a past event I keep reliving?
• Do I blame others for how I feel?

If the answer is yes, you may be addicted to that emotion.

Until then, notice your emotional loops. Awareness is the first step to freedom.

Call to Action

Challenge your team, your business, yourself. Contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting to challenge, inspire, and ignite purpose and passion in your business!  

Create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

The key to change lies in shortening the refractory period—the time you spend in emotional reactivity. And that’s what we’ll explore in next week’s blog: what the refractory period is, and how learning to shorten it will increase your emotional intelligence and personal freedom

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG –  The Refractory Period – Emotional Intelligence