How Do You Feel - Really?

Sales is a tough job. It's thrilling, rewarding, frustrating, maddening, exhilarating and sometimes downright debilitating. How's that for a range of emotions for a career we love?

It's human nature to want to create two simple and easy piles of emotions: the good ones and the bad ones. For instance, most people would automatically classify guilt as bad. You don't want to feel it — you might even beat yourself up about it — and you do whatever you can to get rid of it. Likewise, we tend to let good emotions like excitement run wild. We pump ourselves up and feed off the energy. The downfall of attaching such labels to your emotions is that judging your emotions keeps you from really understanding.

In the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves share:

All emotions are derivations of five core feelings: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and shame. As you move through your daily routine — whether you're working, spending time with family or friends, eating, exercising, relaxing, or even sleeping — you are subject to a constant stream of emotions.

The key is to identify your emotions and feelings, and then be able to make logical reasoned decisions. This process is called self-awareness or Emotional Intelligence or EQ; the ability to identify and understand your emotions. Bradberry and Graves caution:

When you don't take time out to notice and understand your emotions, they have a strange way of resurfacing when you least expect or want them to.

Not only is EQ an important skill to develop for your personal life, but it will also serve you well in understanding the emotions and reactions of your clients and business colleagues and even the world around you. Turn on the news for even a few seconds and there are more than enough stories to have emotions about. As marketing professionals, we can be the voice of calm and assurance. As fears of the economy continue business owners are anxious, tentative about the future, yet hopeful. By understanding these emotional ebbs and flows as it relates to what's happening in the world around us, we can help our clients and others navigate these and future difficulties.

Your empathy, EQ, expertise, and problem-solving skills can be the help they depend on — now and in the future.

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@rab.com. You can all so connect with him on X and LinkedIn.