Work is the place where we spend most of our day-to-day life and where we can feel the most intense and frequent emotions. We usually understand that these emotions can be harmful in a professional sense or that our work or relationships within the company are not worth it because they are tinged by stress, anxiety, conflicts and insecurity.

However, the problem is not in those emotions… but in how we understand and manage those emotions.

The relationship between our emotions and work

The relationship that exists between emotions and work is maximum, since during every second of the day we feel emotions and they do not make you feel one way or another, but they condition your relationships, your motivation, and also the decisions you make.

The mistake we have made regarding emotions is to ignore them . This comes from an ancient, mechanical, Cartesian view of emotions. We think that emotions are our “irrational” part and that we should ignore them. However, the opposite is true. Emotions are always there, influencing your interpretations, decisions, and every human action and relationship.

In this article I’m going to tell you how your emotions affect your work and above all how to have them on your side , because if you learn to understand and manage them, you will have on your side the greatest tool not only of professional growth but also of well-being.

The root of everything is on our emotional side

In the last 10 years I have accompanied as a psychologist and coach people from up to 5 different countries in their processes of change and personal growth. In cases where people wanted to grow as professionals or to succeed in their ventures, we discovered that emotions were the key to everything.

What’s the reason? It’s clear: the key to feeling good in your job, to grow and improve, is not selling techniques, following advice, training without stopping or following a guru… but developing the key personal skills that help you as a person and professionally. These are skills such as assertive communication, productivity, how you relate to others , and of course, the big pillar is managing emotions. That is why I developed Empoderamientohumano.com, an online personal development school from where I accompany people to live this process.

Emotions in the different types of work environment

You may find yourself in one of these three groups:

1. You work at the base of an institution, organization or company

In these cases it is common to feel too much stress and conflicts both with the team and with the users or clients, as well as difficulties in time management and planning. It is difficult to grow and feel good in stressful environments.

However, although every environment can be better, the big key is how you manage your emotions. What does it depend on if you know how to manage your time well or not? How do you understand and manage your emotions? What does it take to make one decision or another? On how you understand those emotions (if they paralyze you or make you take action). On what does the quality of your personal relationships depend? On your ability to manage conflict, to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and to connect with that person (again, emotions are the key).

2. You work in a responsible position

In this case the importance of emotions is paramount, since the greater the responsibility, the greater the difficulty in managing anger when the results are not what we want or the team does not perform as required.

But the problem is not the team, but how to connect with others, transmit security, confidence and leadership and make the team grow . In this case, learning how to manage anger, fear and trust in order to connect better is the big key.

3. You work alone and want to undertake a project

In this case, the key emotion is fear. Not only is there a lot of fear of taking action, but of trying different actions that will lead to different results.

In turn, fear leads us to distrust, to not generate productive relationships with other people and professionals. There are also problems with insecurity, mistrust (towards yourself or others) or anxiety (because everything depends on you).

The possibility of progress begins with oneself

Whatever case you’re in, your emotions condition your outcome. But as I told you at the beginning of the article, the problem is not your emotions but how you understand and manage them. To get them on your side instead of against you, the tool is to live a process of personal change where you discover how you manage your emotions now and learn to manage them in a more functional way, so that your confidence grows, fear does not paralyse you and both your decisions and your productivity and personal relationships improve in an atmosphere of calm and mutual growth.

I invite you to visit empoderamientohumano.com, the online school of personal development where I accompany people to live their processes of change, especially related to their management of emotions. Having them on your side will be the most valuable decision you can make.