#30: Why I’m Trying To Be Less Emotional In Business And How It’s Helped Me Grow My Business
Episode Shownotes
Do you feel drained by the little things?
Do you find it hard to separate emotion from your decision making?
In my experience, female entrepreneurs and freelancers are highly intuitive and feel so many things, so deeply.
But I found that was the exact thing holding me back.
In this episode, I dive into the topic of balancing emotion and logic in business and life. Two of the main takeaways I want to share are the importance of protecting your energy and being intentional with your time. We all have a limited amount of mental and emotional capacity, and it's so valuable to be able to spend it on the things that matter most.
To gain back capacity, I discuss setting energetic and time boundaries, and how to say no to requests that drain your energy. We’ll also dive into strategies for protecting your energy, balancing masculine and feminine energy, and mastering self-discipline.
“We don't actually have a lot of big problems. What we have is a lot of big attachments” —Colin Powell
A key aspect of managing your emotions is managing your energy—where you direct it, and how you spend it. The following insights are all centred around making the most out of this finite resource. Like time, it’s how you spend it that makes the difference in your life and business.
Those of you who know me personally, you'll know me as someone who's very intuitive, very emotional being I feel things deeply. I take what people say to heart and I care like so much. Too much about so many things, and some days I do feel as if I could just explode, like sometimes with the love and happiness other times with like stress and sadness.
But what I realized is, I only have so much mental and emotional capacity to give a shit, and I felt like I was letting so many little things drain my energy away, and I just felt like I was really struggling, you know, to get into my focus flow zone of the. The important work that I had to do, but also just putting out little fires like 10 times a day.
These are three of my top takeaways from this episode on Free Wild Souls:
#1 Protect Your Energy
If someone sends me a Slack message, I used to feel like I had to reply to it instantly. Or sif omeone sends me a WhatsApp message I felt like have to reply to that instantly. It’s those little requests for your time and energy that add up a lot and by midday, I was already tired and I hadn't even started my work.
One of the main takeaways from the episode is the importance of protecting your energy and being intentional with your time. Setting energetic and time boundaries is essential - it’s essential to learn how to say no to requests that drain your energy. It doesn’t come naturally to many of us, but committing to focus your energy intentionally is more sustainable than saying yes to every request.
#2 Balance Your Masculine and Feminine Energy
We all have the ability to tap into both masculine and feminine energy. We can often make business decisions from a place of emotion, but it's important to also consider logic and rationality. Step back for a second with each decision, and catch yourself if you aren labelling yourself as ‘bad’ for protecting your energy by making a logical decision that could have an emotional component to it.
Logic and rationality, there is a place for both. But I think when you can balance both and marry the two together, that's when you get a really powerful strategy when it comes to making decisions.
#3 Master Your Self-Discipline
Lastly, mastering self-discipline and controlling your actions in response to emotions is important in both life and business. It's easy to let our emotions control us and our business decisions, but it's important to be intentional and disciplined in our actions. It’s important to note there's a distinction between being intuitive and living life from a place of intuition versus letting your feelings and your emotions control you. An example is the period of time where I was eating out every day because I was so busy that I didn't have time to run to the supermarket and then go back home and cook and then clean and then work. I just didn't have time for that.
And so I just ate out a lot and it got, I got used to it. And and recently I realised how much more productive and how optimal I feel when I actually take the time to prepare my own meals and know what goes into my body.
And being very intentional about that and not letting my like laziness of like, oh, I don't have time. I no longer let that detract or deter away from my commitment to my health and to my body.
My journey and the insights from successful entrepreneurs and freelancers have led me to the realization that intentional with our time is crucial for success in both business and life. To achieve this balance, it is essential to protect our energy, balance feminine and masculine energy and master self-discipline. By setting energetic and time boundaries, saying no to energy-draining requests, and making decisions that balance both logic and emotion, we can take control of our emotions and energy and achieve the life we truly want to lead.
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Episode Transcript
Emily Peilan: “We don't actually have a lot of big problems. What we have is a lot of big attachments.” —Colin Powell
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually trying to be less emotional and ignore my feelings more when it comes. And precisely for that reason, I thought this episode would be a really good one to do and share some insights from what I've learned from, from fellow entrepreneurs. And I know that most of my listeners tend to be females, right?
And female freelancers, female entrepreneurs, and we just. So much about so many things. We are so, deeply intuitive and deeply emotional, and we make a lot of our business decisions from a place of emotion, whereas men, you know, can't generalize, but most men actually make business decisions from a place of.
Logic and rationality, and I think there is a place for both. And I think when you can balance both and marry the two together, that's when you get a really powerful strategy, right, of when you, when it comes to making decisions. So in this episode, I wanted to chat a little bit about why being a less emotional in.
Is actually a good thing. And I wanted to share a story about the person who sort of inspired all this and, and this shift from being hyper emotional to balancing out my. Rational, logical side because he was so, he was so opposite to me and the way he ran his business and the way he just you know, showed up and in the way he made decisions, it was so fascinating and I learned so much from him.
So that kind of follows on the next section is talking a little bit about balancing that masculine and feminine energy when it comes to work and decision making and just some strategies. I wanted to share. That's been helpful for me in terms of how to, how to be more intentional with my energy, how to be less reactive, you know?
And for a lot of us women, it's kind of like someone asks for something, someone else asks for something, and we get dms and we kind of feel obliged to respond to everybody and to give to everybody. And, and we kind of come last and so, What I often find with a lot of my female entrepreneurs is we just let people.
Poke holes in us and, and to just drain our energy. It's not that people are doing it intentionally, but yeah, I just wanted to speak a little bit about how to have better energetic boundaries as well as time boundaries. And the last thing I wanted to touch on is mastering self-discipline and controlling your actions in response to emotions.
So really juicy episode. Something that's, Yeah, personal for me as well, something I've been working through, and I hope you find this helpful.
So those of you who know me personally, you'll know me as someone who's very intuitive, very emotional being I feel things deeply. I take what people say to heart and I care like so much. Too much about so many things, and some days I do feel as if I could just explode, like sometimes with the love and happiness other times with like stress and sadness.
But what I realized is, I only have so much mental and emotional capacity to give a shit, and I felt like I was letting so many little things drain my energy away, and I just felt like I was really struggling, you know, to get into my focus flow zone of the. The important work that I had to do, but also just putting out little fires like 10 times a day.
You know, someone like sends me a Slack message. I felt like I had to reply to it instantly. Or someone sends me a WhatsApp message and I have to reply to that instantly. Or a DM or just like little, little requests for your time and energy. They add up a lot and. by midday, I was like already tired and I hadn't even started my work.
And so I knew something had to change. And around this time I was traveling and also dating this wonderful man who was. In my eyes, an incredibly successful entrepreneur and he was running multiple companies and had hundreds of employees. And it blew my mind that like we'd be traveling and here I am just like stressed out of my mind with my one company and like barely a team and, and here he was with all his companies and all his employees and I was just fascinated by how he could.
So calm and not seem stressed. What I noticed was like how little he let things affect him emotionally, energetically. And in the beginning I thought, ah, you know, men And I just assumed he didn't care about a lot of things, right? But the more I got to know him, the more I realized how much he does deeply care.
But he chooses more intentionally. Where to invest his care and energy and doesn't just let any random person drain his energy. And I'd never met a person more protective of his energy than him. And there were, you know, a few times where he'd say no to a re a request of mine because he didn't have the capacity for, for it for me.
And I was mind blown. And I got super salty and I was so triggered by that. And I'd be like, how dare you? You know? I think like, But if I'm being super honest and upon reflection, it triggered me so much because I think I wish I'd had the courage to do that. But instead, I say yes to almost any request that comes my way, whether it be from a client, family, friends, or even a friend of a friend, or heck, even someone I don't even know.
My instinct is to say yes because I should, because if I don't, then I'm a bad person or I'm a selfish person. And again, it's with the labeling. Like if I don't. If I don't answer this person then I am a bad person. Right? Or that is a bad thing to do. And so, yeah, I get super, obviously super emotional about so many things.
And, and when I say emotional, and I should probably define it by this, I mean there are a lot of emotions and overthinking involved. It doesn't mean, you know, I cry or anything like that. It just. . I feel a lot of emotions and I overthink a lot. And so I overthink and I get emotional when it comes to client emails, like sales calls, feedback calls, sending out proposals, receiving a no, potentially sending out contracts, outsourcing a task to like anyone on my team hitting, send on that invoice.
I get emotional about money and finances. I figure out my bank account about taxes there. A lot of shit that I get highly emotional about, and that was unconsciously just draining my energy on a daily basis. And just, you know, to expand on one example, sending one email, so usually proposal emails were.
It's like we've had our discovery call and I'm about to send out a proposal. I've customized the proposal which takes me a really long time, , and and then I'm about to send off this email to them. With then if they accept it, then the next stage would be like, Cool. We're booking the project in, so this is quite a delicate phase to me because there's a huge chance to receive a no, to receive a rejection or to receive like a silence.
And so one email, this one email can take me upwards of an hour sometimes because just. emotionally involved and attached to the outcome. And so my fear of receiving a no drains my energy and my pursuit to be absolutely impeccably perfect about something that perhaps doesn't even matter that much to the person in the long run.
Right. And so one of my favorite quotes from Colin Powell, he was on a, he was a guest speaker in one of my mastermind sessions recently. He said, we don't actually have a lot of big. What we have is a lot of big attachments and that just like blew my mind and just, you know, take a second and think about all the things that you think are massive problems and behind it.
Are they, are there lots of big attachments, you know, expectations? And where can you perhaps learn to lessen that, attach more to detach yourself from that outcome? And then would you still have that. Another fantastic quote that I heard from Leila . She said, you can feel one way and act another. And I was like, wait, what?
And it just had never even occured to me that that was possible. And I was like, but I'm I, my whole. Operates from a place of feeling like, I feel like doing this. I feel like doing that. And therefore, you know, I run literally solely from a place of intuition and feeling, and this just triggered me so much.
And I was like, but feeling is everything. And it just completely like opposed my view or my, yeah, my view of reality. It's like, oh, everybody. Do what they feel. And this was, I mean, you know, nothing is right or wrong, it just simply is, it's, it's just an opinion, right? But you know, it is an option. You can feel one way and yet act another.
And so I sat with this and I was like, well, where, you know, where could I implement that in my. Of not always having to act on how I feel and not letting my feelings and my emotions control me, because if I'm being honest, like that is what's happening. Right? And I think there's a distinction between being intuitive and living life from a place of intuition versus.
Letting your feelings and your emotions control you. And I think a part of mastering self-discipline is mastering, overcoming your emotions and having control over your actions in response to those emotions. And I'll give you an example. It's like same when it comes to creative work, I'm like, oh, I do it when I feel like doing it, but.
No, you do the work. Even if you don't feel like doing it, you start doing it and then the feeling of wanting to do it will come later sometimes, right? Or getting up in the morning, for example. Think of if you're an like an Olympian athlete or something, you know, you can't just wake up at 5:00 AM in the morning and decide that you don't feel like training.
You'll never be successful. You'll never get to where you want to be if you only go. How you feel. And you know, back in the day, like I was a professional competitive swimmer myself, and there were many, every single morning I woke up at 4:30 AM in the morning and I was like, I do not feel like going training.
And I never felt like going training, but because I got my ass up anyway. And because I went and acted and did the thing, despite not wanting or feeling like doing the thing, I became a really good swimmer, right? And so it's like, how do we be good at something? And sometimes we have to do the thing, even if we don't want to do it, in order to succeed, in order to be you know, the best version of ourselves.
And I think most people, perhaps most people, fall too much into, oh, I don't feel like doing something. And so they don't do it. And so they're an not successful. And if I'm being completely honest with myself, had I known this and had I embodied this and implemented this, you know, like you can feel one way, but you can act another, like at the start of my business, like I think I would be far, far more ahead than I am now.
And. Am passing this on to you and sharing this because it has really changed the way I view work, the way I show up in my business and the way I show up for myself and life in general. This is also for me, like, personally health and fitness, right? I. Really don't actually work out a lot. But now I am more committed to working out and realizing that even if I don't feel like it, even if I feel like I've got lots of work to do and I don't have time, it's like, no, I commit to myself.
I act despite how I feel. And same with when it comes to food and eating. Like there was a period of time where I was eating out every day because I was so, I was so. busy that I didn't have time to cook and run to the supermarket and then go back home and then cook and then clean and then work. Like, I just didn't have time for that.
And so I just ate out a lot and it got, I got used to it. And and recently I just, I've gone more into biohacking and that's for another episode perhaps. But realizing, you know, how much. More productive and how much more optimal I feel when I actually take the time to prepare my own meals and know what goes into my body.
And being very intentional about that and not letting my like laziness of like, oh, I don't have time. Oh, I don't feel like it, or something. Like not letting that. Detract or deter away from like my commitment to my health and to my body and ultimately just to my quality of life in general. Right? So this has been a really transformative mindset for me and I hope, yeah, I hope you get something out of it and implement it in your own life as well.
And lastly, I just wanted to say like, I still get to be emotional and I still. To feel deeply, especially when I'm doing my creative work. I really get to tap into that feminine energy. I get to tap into the, the, the flow and the emotions. But when I choose to and not as a reaction to something that's suddenly appeared in front of me attempting to train my energy.
Right? And this is partially why. Don't read the news as well because it's just, for me, it's just all fair and gloom and it's like the quickest way for your energy to just be passively leaked out. The other side I wanted to expand a little bit more on is this idea of making decisions from a place of logic and rationality rather than emotions.
And the way that plays out in business is, for example, you are hiring somebody, right? It's. Do you choose to hire this person because you like them and you feel emotionally good about them? Or do you hire the person who actually does a better job? Does it. You know, faster and, and higher quality. Another way it could play out is if you are about to say invest in a business, it's like, do you invest in a business that you just like, you know, feel good about and you just, you like the business, but actually financially, if you did the, the numbers and you know, the, did the cash flow and it's actually.
Not as good as another business that, you know, perhaps not as exciting. It was like a boring business. But it does way, way more in cash flow. It's like, which business are you going to invest in? Are you going to let your emotions run your life and run your business? And, you know, it depends on your, your set of values as well.
If your value is is. supporting impactful, sustainable businesses, then that will always come first and foremost. But if your value of your mission or goal is really just to, you know, make money and choose the one with highest cash flow, then you know, you can't really let your emotions get in the way.
And last example I'll go of, just because I see this example so much in my particular industry is people investing a lot of time and money and energy on vanity metrics or vanity marketing like Instagram for example, where your content literally disappears after 24 hours. Like. Sees it and you put so much time and love and effort into creating this one post, and I dunno, a handful of people might see it, even a smaller handful of people might like it and that's it, right?
And then what's the shelf life of their like 24 hours and it's gone. Whereas if you were to invest that time and money and energy, Blogging and creating SEO rich content. It's like you would, that would work for you for years to come. You would get consistent leads for years, right? And so the return on your time, on your effort, and on your money, because let's say you are hiring, let's say you're spending 700 US dollars for each, if you had to hire social media manager versus if you were to hire an SEO content creator, blogger, right?
The returns on SEO would be far, far, far higher than the one for Instagram, but because people are emotionally drawn to Instagram, there's this ego attached to it. There is this vanity metric attached to Instagram. There's more of a instant gratification rather than the delayed gratification of seo.
And so people Spend a lot of money and time and energy on something that doesn't give them the return. And so I'm trying to, I mean, I have been guilty of this myself, obviously, and I'm so, I'm speaking from experience and sharing my mistakes with you. If I could go back and do it again, I would spend like nothing on Instagram, of course, like.
get it up and going, but I would've spent far, far, far more energy on my seo. And had I come from a place of being rational and logical, and my business would actually be a lot more successful because of that. So these art lessons that I've personally learn and I'm sharing with you in hopes that you don't have to make the same mistakes that I did.
So, main takeaways from this episode. Be fucking protective of your energy and of your time and invest that wisely in the things that really matter. So I hope you will go and experiment with this a little bit, and I would love to hear your thoughts here. You know, what comes up for you and what. You are planning on making in your own life and business.
So send me a dm. I would love to hear from you. I love receiving personal messages. From you all. So share your insights with me over on Instagram at Emily Peilan and I'll drop some of my links below in case you prefer to contact me in some other way or form. And just wanna say, as always, I appreciate you so deeply for listening and I hope that you found this episode valuable and I will see you in the next one.
