Hacks to improve and control your emotions at work

Frustration, anxiety, anger, and even helplessness - these are some of the negative emotions that we can feel at work. 

While it is natural to feel these emotions, we can find ways to control them and not allow them to be internalised and cause harm to our mental health.

Instead, we can learn these tips to take these emotions and use them wisely. 

Monitor your body language

Do you have a client who is requesting endless changes or criticising your work? This could be a situation that you are facing and over time, it can get harder to keep your emotions in check. 

To avoid exploding in front of your client, an excellent way to control your emotions is to know your limit. 

You can do so by monitoring your behaviour during meetings and observe how many questions it takes before you start to feel your neck tighten, pulse racing or mouth feeling dry. 

By monitoring your body reactions, you can learn to hijack them by changing the topic, opening the floor up for discussion, bringing up case studies, or presenting materials that you have prepared beforehand. 

Time-anger gap management 

Working together in teams can often result in disagreements and derail your productivity. 

According to Shawn Johal, a business growth coach, one way to control your emotions is an empowering move called the time-anger gap.

To master the time-anger gap management, you have to decide for yourself how long do you want to stay angry at the situation. If you give yourself 10 minutes, you are given free rein to be as emotional as you want and when time is up - you go back to work. 

By doing so, you can control your emotions and not let them linger over a long time.

Write it down 

Do you always end up in a cycle of frustrating situations? Why not write it down and identify the process to make sure you get out of this recurring issue.

By noting down the situation, you can mark down the areas you can control and improve the process, and for uncontrollable areas, you can highlight ways to prepare yourself better.

A plus point of writing it down is that it allows you to see the different stages and how it leads up to the frustration. With your emotions under control, you can free up your mind to focus and manage tasks more efficiently.