October 31, 2018 • 7 minute read • by Saeed
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.“
– Marcus Aurelius
Managing your emotions in the workplace is more important today than it ever has been — because today’s workplace is a challenging place. A controlling boss, demanding clients, competition with your colleagues, insufficient boundaries between your work life and personal life. Recognizing difficulties, and choosing to learn and to grow from them, does not negate their existence or potency, but establishes them as of a distinct facet of one’s life. Most of us are juggling multiple priorities, sometimes with limited resources. The range of emotions we experience at work is enormous but when we manage our emotions, we’re better able to handle the changes and challenges all jobs bring.
This requires emotional well-being.
1. It starts with self awareness…
Everything starts with self-awareness. You bring your brain to work. You bring your emotions to work. Feelings drive performance. First, identify common causes of stress for you in the workplace from personal experiences. Determine your levels of personal and work-related stress and recognize the ways you may be contributing unintentionally to your own levels of stress.
Begin by identifying aspects of your personal and professional lifestyle choices in relation to your management of emotional well-being. In other words, examine if you have set yourself up to fail or succeed. Learn to differentiate between positive stress and negative stress and your reactions to each. Cultivate interests outside of work, including activities with good friends. Remember, not all satisfaction comes from work accomplishments.
2. It develops when you reach for mastery…
Next, define emotional mastery, what it might mean to you and its impact on your work life. Identify different feelings in the past and present and your reactions to those feelings. Remember how you managed them. What worked? What didn’t? Differentiate between groups of emotions to better understand how you are feeling and why. Some emotions present an extra challenge when we encounter them at work. Five hard-to-handle emotions that are common in the workplace that warrant attention include frustration, worry or insecurity, anger, feeling “down”, and dislike.
Any number of workplace situations can cause this: limited promotional opportunities that make us feel stuck in a job or a difficult manager who ignores our suggestion for a process improvement. Frustrations, especially those that are chronic, need to be dealt with early, or the feeling can spiral into anger, a much more difficult emotion to control. Evaluate your emotional debt and discover ways to pay it off. Analyze situations so that your emotions do not sabotage the results you want. Recognize thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with these situations and analyze behavior patterns associated with them so you can begin to head them off at the pass.
3. It’s put into action when you are intentional…
As you develop awareness and identify patterns, create a personal action plan to implement your learning back at work. Use your mirror listening skills to understand how others are feeling. Identify feelings and the reasons why people feel the way they do. Don’t just think about your positive feelings for others, but act on them. At the same time, recognize when to be assertive in interacting with others but always maintain being respectful. To maintain steadiness and calm, identify rituals that presently exist in your life, classify your rituals according to purpose and stick to them, well, religiously. Learn to express your emotions in appropriate ways.
Be sure to allow yourself to deal with difficult feelings in appropriate ways for the work place. If you feel angry, take the time to consider what may have triggered the feeling and consider actions you could take to diffuse such a situation in the future. You don’t need to pretend you’re not feeling the way you are, but you do need to deal with the emotions so that they do not affect your interactions with others. Give appropriate feedback to clear the air. For example, if a co-worker has said something in a meeting that offended you and this is bothering you, talk with the person about it, preferably soon after the event and in private
Final Word
It is important that your work does not become your life. Maintain support systems outside of work. Talking honestly about your concerns with close friends or your partner can help reduce your anxiety and keep problems in perspective. Choose someone you trust who knows you well enough to give you honest feedback when you need it. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to friends and family, hiring a coach can be a great step in this direction. Talking to a professional coach can help you gain perspective on problems and come up with solutions as well as specific techniques that will help you manage your emotions more effectively. You can also seek support from your company’s employee assistance program (EAP) program, if you have one.
Above all, eat well, get enough sleep, and exercise regularly. If you’re well-rested, well-nourished, and physically strong, you’ll have more energy to meet emotional challenges. This will help keep you “emotionally resilient” and help you feel more in control of your emotions and your life.
Wait! Before you go…
I really appreciate your readership. If you found this article valuable, please like, comment, and share it with your network so that it can benefit others. I also invite you to FOLLOW ME on LinkedIn or subscribe to my BLOG to receive exclusive content not found here.
A Special Offer:
In addition to being an organizational development and leadership consultant, I am a personal leadership coach who specializes in helping passionate, thoughtful, creative people like you find your inner leader and live the life you deserve.
As a trained co-active coach, I am currently enrolled in a 6-month professional development program to complete my certification. As part of that training, I need practice clients to try out my new skills, and I am offering a huge (>50%) discount for the first five practice clients.
You can do a free call with me to see if my approach and style would be a good fit for you (and no worries if it’s not – coaching is super personal and I’m happy to recommend you to other coaches that might be a better fit for you).
You can check out my website here. You can also contact me on LinkedIn.
Saeed H. Mirfattah, MA, CPCC 