It’s often said that emotions have no place in business, but is that even possible?
You probably decided to create a business because you were excited to launch something into the world. You had this fantastic idea and now are working towards its creation and constant improvement.
Trying to deny your emotions to keep your cool within the business world is incredibly hard, and it often leads to negative behaviors and strong emotional reactions.
Back when I was starting out, I tried to bottle my emotions as if I could trap them and toss them into the closet to deal with them later.
It was all because I wanted to keep my cool and kept my emotional world completely separated from my business.
And you know… it didn’t work!
Stress kept building, and I was unable to do any creative work because I had all this backlog of feelings, thoughts and unprocessed experiences.
I thought I was postponing them, but they kept consuming my energy and dragging me towards the inevitable burn out. It was one of the worst things I could have ever done.
And with this immense toxic backlog in my mind’s closet, I had to make a change.
I started journaling my thoughts, attended therapy and worked through all those bottled emotions. It took a long time, but I learned that dealing with them is not as bad as I thought.
Once I felt more confident about my emotional work, I started what I call a daily decompressing session. A personal time that I devote to process the events of the day to keep my mind balanced.
You know, running your business every day is taxing, especially those days when nothing seems to be going your way.
An emergency here, someone needs your attention over there, life throws you a curveball, and on top of that, technology decides to stop working just because the universe thought you looked a bit bored.
We all have those terrible days when you want to throw your hands in the air and hide under the blankets. And you know what, it’s ok to take the time to go under those blankets and gather yourself.
It’s about consciously deciding to process all those events so you can tackle the challenges in the best way possible. It’s not giving up to the pressure; it’s understanding that your emotional world affects the way you work.
It doesn’t matter if it’s happiness, sadness or anger. You need to take care of your emotional world.
And I don’t mean the simple ones when you throw your arms into the air and celebrate your success. Those are easy to embrace, we all love to celebrate and if you get to do those often, kudos to you!
But, I mean devoting a little bit of time each day to process the hard stuff, those moments when you feel helpless or angry. That terrible sadness because something didn’t work the way you wanted.
Just as you jump out of excitement when something goes your way, you should take the time to punch a pillow if you are angry.
You should journal those heavy thoughts that are causing you so much anxiety. Just let them flow into a piece of paper, so you are no longer carrying them around. Or sit down for a minute and gather your strength.
There is no shame in it. In fact, it shows a massive amount of emotional intelligence and self-care.
And yeah, this is hard work, but it will allow you to be at home with your emotional part and learn so much more about yourself. You will be able to keep your cool when dealing with the haters and naysayers of the world.
But most of all, it will help you make better decisions because you won’t be clouded by the anger or desperation of some unforeseen circumstances.
And ultimately, you will be better prepared to deal with the challenges of your journey.
So now it’s the time to look at yourself. Do you have a stack of bottled emotions hidden in your mind’s closet as I used to? Then I invite you to grab one and spend some time with it; you will see that it’s not so bad and you will feel a lighter once empty it.