Myth: All emotions will fall into a category of either “good” or “bad.”
A lot of professionals I’ve met believe that feelings like excitement, love, and joy are “good” emotions, but emotions like anger, sadness, and jealousy are categorized as “bad.”
Truth: Emotions are neutral. They are signals from our body or mind. They are an internal, personal response to what is happening around us. They give us information we can use to form a response.
Learning to regulate versus condemn or ignore our emotions is essential to communicating at a high level as a leader, personally and professionally. When we learn to self-regulate, we raise our awareness of our feelings which allows us the opportunity to become curious about them and what they are signaling. If we don’t learn to self-regulate, we tend to over-react, make quick and harsh judgements, and explode emotionally at others.
I talk a lot in our Leadership Academy and in my presentations on Courageous Leadership Communication about the importance of a leader’s mindset before they employ the skillsets we teach. I contend that no skillset will help you communicate like a leader if used from a low-level emotional state such as anger, fear, bitterness, or judgement. So how does that work if emotions are neutral?
Some emotions are a lower-level energy than others, but that doesn’t make them bad. In fact, low level emotions can be truly helpful in signaling and facilitating us to make changes. They can signal we need to have a conversation, hold a boundary, reclarify an expectation, find a solution, own a mistake, create an understanding, or let something go.
Our emotions are like a guiding light pointing us to what we need to explore within ourselves and helping us determine the actions we must take to feel and do better.
This week, don’t condemn or judge your low-level emotions. Notice them, name them, bless them, and use them to determine what your next right steps should be.
If you could use some help with gauging and controlling your emotions in order to improve your communication and professional results, reach out to us or considering joining our virtual Leadership Academy where we help people just like you learn simple tools that completely change the way they respond when they feel frustrated, triggered, let down, or overlooked.
“Anger is an acid that does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything onto which it is poured.”
~ Mark Twain
