Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede - 3

If you were to poll a group of people, they’d probably tell you that women are more emotional than men. That’s certainly the stereotype, even though there’s little scientific evidence to suggest that this is a biological fact. 1 It’s definitely possible that this is a cultural reality, though, and that women are more in tune with their emotions, simply because we’re allowed to be. In fact, the stereotype that women are more emotional than men grants us license to be that way. While there’s a certain amount of stoicism expected from men, women are allowed to feel their feelings. This is a clear advantage. Emotional literacy and emotional intelligence (EQ) are critical skills for reading a room, tapping into cultural trends, understanding the motivations of other people, and even understanding what you want. Our emotions are often our best connection to the intelligence of the body as well—if you know how to listen.

To reap the benefits of your gut-based intuitions, and to use your emotions in a healthy way, you need to learn how to modulate and manage them. While your feelings are an essential source of information, you cannot live a healthy or functional life if you’re running a decision-making process based on your anger or fear—and many of us, dare I say most of us, are. This very much used to be me. It’s very human. Almost every woman I meet is terrified of messing things up and frequently so paralyzed by fear that there’s a refusal to start working on a dream outside of fantasizing in her head. Meanwhile, some of us can’t get beyond guilt, whether it’s guilt about the ones we feel like we’re leaving behind or neglecting in the process (children), or guilt about doing too well.

It’s important to rightsize all your feelings—even your enthusiastic ones—as you consider how to best move forward. This does not mean that you run your feelings over or suppress them. In fact, because emotions are body-based, your body will have its vengeance on you in time if you leave it out of decisions completely—a lot of us ignore our own body-based “no,” for example, and agree to do things all the time that we absolutely don’t want to do. This is a type of betrayal; we need to stop doing it.

I’ve worked hard throughout my life to get a clear read on my emotions, in part because my childhood ensured that, like many of us, I’d occasionally be flooded and overwhelmed. Since I was largely left to figure out life on my own, I didn’t learn proper emotional coaching or regulation from the adults in my life—in fact, it was a boyfriend in my teens who suggested I needed help learning how to manage my feelings. I’ll always be grateful for this intervention and the community-based program I found (I could not afford therapy, nor would I have known where to look), as I learned—in time, with patience—how to listen to my emotions without letting them color my thoughts or destroy my relationships. This takes practice, but it’s one of the most productive things you can do.

These coming pages are about precisely this: Before we get deeper into mindset and assessing the Old Thoughts that shape the way so many of us show up in the world, we need to clear the emotional decks first.