When someone "pushes your buttons," the problem isn't the person pushing, but that you have buttons to be pushed. True emotional resilience comes from dismantling these internal triggers, which are often tied to your sense of worth, rather than trying to protect them from external events.
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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.
The ability to accurately name a wide range of emotions—beyond just "happy, sad, or mad"—is a critical leadership skill. This "emotional granularity" allows leaders and their teams to process setbacks more effectively and build resilience, as you cannot tame an emotion you cannot name.
The self-critical voice that tells you you're not good enough is not inherently yours. It is an echo of criticism from a parent, teacher, or other authority figure from your childhood that you have mistakenly internalized as truth. Recognizing its external origin is the first step to disarming it.
Shift the focus of mental health from coping and feeling comfortable to building the capacity to handle life's challenges. The goal isn't to feel better, but to become a better, more resilient person through difficult experiences.
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 common advice to 'protect your mental health' often encourages avoidance. A more effective approach is to 'exercise' it. By actively and intentionally engaging with manageable challenges, you build resilience and expand your mental capacity, much like a muscle.
A common misconception is that safety means preventing bad things from happening. A more powerful and realistic definition is having the internal conviction that you can handle whatever comes your way. This shifts the focus from external control to internal resilience and capacity.
The impulse to harshly judge yourself before others can is a defense mechanism rooted in past pain. A more powerful, healed stance is to simply become unavailable for external criticism, effectively removing the "button" that others can push.
The real leadership challenge isn't feeling negative emotions, but the "inflation" of those feelings into disproportionate reactions. This is caused by misinterpretations, taking things personally, or past trauma. The goal is to manage the intensity of the reaction, not the feeling itself.
The way to handle the inner critic is not to fight or stop it. Instead, do the opposite: actively express its concerns, have a dialogue with it, and develop a collaborative relationship. This counterintuitive approach transforms the dynamic from an internal battle into a partnership.
