The goal is not to avoid feeling bad, but to break the direct link between negative emotions and negative actions. Maturity is the skill of maintaining your intended, values-driven behavior despite internal turmoil. This allows you to feel your emotions without letting them dictate your conduct.

Negative emotions are signals that something needs attention, much like a car's engine light. Don't ignore them. Instead, sit with the feeling to understand it, grant yourself grace for feeling it, and then create a concrete plan to address the root cause.

Labeling emotions like fear as 'bad' leads to suppression. This act disconnects you from your body and forces your attention into your mind, which creates debilitating self-talk. True confidence is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to feel everything without judgment or suppression.

The habit of emotional withholding isn't selective. When you consistently suppress feelings like sadness or anger, you also unintentionally stifle your ability to experience and express joy. Emotional health requires being open to the full spectrum of feelings, not just the negative ones.

Using emotions like anger, fear of failure, or shame can propel you to achieve goals. However, this "toxic fuel" keeps your body in a high-stress state with elevated cortisol and adrenaline, leading to burnout and unhappiness rather than accomplishment.

The feeling of being overwhelmed is typically not a result of having too much to do. It's a symptom of unexpressed emotions—like excitement, fear, or anger—that are being suppressed. It can also signal that you are avoiding a crucial but difficult task. Addressing the emotion or the avoided task alleviates the feeling of overwhelm.

Conventional leadership advice suggests suppressing negative emotions. A more powerful approach is to reframe the intense energy behind feelings like rage or fear as a fuel to overcome obstacles, rather than a liability to be contained and hidden.

The key to avoiding burnout isn't just about stepping away, but about how you treat yourself while engaged in work. Stop beating yourself up for not knowing everything in a fast-paced environment. Granting yourself patience and empathy for the learning process is more sustainable than striving for perfection.

The fastest way to recover from rejection isn't to immediately suppress the negative feeling. Instead, you must allow yourself to feel and process the emotion fully. Suppressing it causes more pain. True resilience comes from letting the feeling pass through you before asking powerful questions to move forward.