Emotional Conditioning Is the Job
The professional skill that no one is telling you will profoundly change your life
In case you haven’t noticed, people aren’t doing so hot at work.
Not an accusation, just an observation. But it seems like in every workplace I hear about, more and more people are emotionally dysregulated.
In fairness, we are collectively grappling with the dissolution of democratic institutions, rising rates of depression and anxiety, the internet in general, and the skyrocketing cost of being a person. So yeah, people are a little stressed out, demoralized, and upset.
It’s easy to witness this pervasive unwellness and be tricked into believing that because it’s common, it’s also normal. And, to be clear, it is normal to have emotions at work. After all, companies are just vessels for tons of nuanced, wounded people to bump up against other people’s nuances and wounds in the name of building widgets. The feelings are bound to leak out.
And yet, despite all that very fair rationalizing, they don’t have to.
The Office Isn’t On Fire
A leader I admire once changed my career by telling me this at a new job. She was on her way out, I was on my way in, and while I was helping her write a departure announcement, she offered me some advice:
“The easiest way to make a difference at this company is just to learn to ‘be water.’ Everyone will tell you they’re just really passionate, but it sets the whole place on fire. When you walk into a room of false flames and defensive postures, the only thing you need to do to make a difference is be water when everyone else is fire.”
And then I just casually went on to think about that interaction every day and watch it slowly change my life.
Even when everyone else is fire, and many of the fires are real, we all go to work each day with the ability to be water. Emotional regulation—the ability to exert control over one’s emotions and responses—is a skill you can learn and practice. One that, when nurtured properly, will likely change your life too.
Emotional Conditioning Is the Job
Since I wouldn’t dare try to explain something to you without an extended analogy, here it is: emotional regulation is to working professionals what athletic conditioning is to athletes.
All jobs, like all sports, require technique and skill. At the beginning of your career, most of your advancement comes from learning those techniques. You work on your form, build capability, and grow through nailing the basics. But once you’re let loose on the field, technique alone is never enough to win. You also need basic conditioning.
The consequences of poor conditioning are obvious in sports: players get sloppy, and unforced errors pile up, especially late in the game. At the highest echelons, an unathletic player will lose—ten times out of ten—to someone evenly matched in skill but better conditioned.
The same holds true at work, except the relevant conditioning is emotional. Emotional dysfunction operates just like physical fatigue: it shows up at high-stakes moments and robs you of all the skills you worked so hard to build.
I promise you’ve seen this happen. A good leader makes a bad decision because their pride is hurt. A friend overpromises from insecurity but underdelivers out of fear. A normally detailed colleague misses an obvious error because they’re angry and distracted. Unchecked emotions betray us all in truly innumerable ways.
As an athlete, it’s obvious what to do with this information: get your ass to the gym. If I told you that all great athletes have great conditioning, you’d say yes… what an obvious and bad topic for a newsletter?
And yet, the idea that we should treat emotional regulation—the conditioning skill that almost all knowledge workers’ effectiveness depends on—as core to professional development doesn’t get treated as obvious at all (and thus: newsletter!)
So many of us are out here signing up for SQL classes and project management certifications while willfully overlooking the fact that it’s our lack of emotional fitness, not our expired Udemy license, holding us back.
Also… not to be the “especially in a world where AI” person… but especially in a world where knowledge and whole skill categories have become commoditized by LLMs, AI will swallow the technique-heavy, self-regulation light because, unlike us, AI isn’t actually blinded by self-doubt or resentment. At the same time, AI also can’t calm down a room of riled marketing associates. The thing that will differentiate you is that, as a regulated person, you can.
You’re Not Broken. You’re Unskilled.
While I’m not a therapist and cannot tell you what type of professional care might benefit you personally, I can report that the most valuable thing I ever did for my career (and life) was a year of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT).
You, unlike me, might never have heard of DBT because you don’t have a mood disorder. But as someone whose emotions ravaged me throughout my early career, I sought out a DBT provider in my early twenties when it became obvious I lacked tools to manage my emotions. The evidence was in my emotional experience, but it was also in my career: I was underemployed and overwhelmed, and everyone kept telling me I was capable of more… except what they couldn’t see was the toppled redwood of emotion that lay on the road to a better, more fulfilling career.
I went into my year of DBT skeptical and with a fatalistic narrative that I was just an emotional person. To some degree, that’s true. I feel lots of things. However, what DBT taught me is that our emotions aren’t particularly clever saboteurs. We just aren’t given the skills to thwart them. My brain wasn’t broken (and yours isn’t either). I just needed some tools in my kit.
Tools for the Emotionally Regulated
While this isn’t an exhaustive list of the emotional regulation skills that can help people at work, it’s a decent starter kit of DBT-based practices for anyone who feels like their feelings have ever gotten in the way of their career. And if you’re someone who believes you’re feelings have never gotten in the way of your career, they’re actually especially for you.
STOP. In DBT, this acronym, meaning “Stop, Take a step back, Observe, Proceed mindfully,” is the first skill for self-regulating. It’s exactly what it sounds like: learning to take a beat. At work, that means not sending the email while you’re riled up about it, and not making a heated decision tonight if you can afford to wait twelve hours. If you’ve ever sent a regrettable Slack or had to apologize for your tone… STOP is the skill you’re probably missing that will free you from being someone who has to regularly apologize.
Check the facts. This one has mattered most to me because I’m world-class at inventing compelling stories for myself. If you think people are mad at you, have ever claimed to have imposter syndrome, or generally find yourself doomspiraling, this skill will also matter for you. When you find yourself spiraling over how you think someone feels or thinks, ask: “What facts prove they feel that way?” “What facts prove they don’t?” “Could someone else interpret these facts differently?” And if so… sorry, not facts. For the majority of twenty-somethings I’ve worked with, this skill would quite literally change their lives. If fear and insecurity are your problem, better fact-checking is your cure.
Opposite action. It’s what it sounds like, and it’s great for when you know what you’re doing is bad. Phoning it in out of spite, trying to make someone feel small, and sending an agro email are all things I’ve definitely never done that fall in this category. The non-DBT tactic that has helped me with this is getting familiar with my worst and worst selves and understanding how both of them behave. When I can identify that an action comes from my worst self, I let out a big, frustrated sound and then begrudgingly do the opposite. Taking opposite actions is wildly hard, but it gets easier with practice. And if you have a single ounce of spitefulness in you, sorry—you need this one.
Take a lap. The technical DBT skill is sensory self-soothing, but in the KL school of self-regulation, it’s “taking a lap.” It’s what you do when you can’t reason with yourself. Excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. Feel cold water on your hands. Sniff something strong like coffee or soap. Pop a vinegary chip in your mouth. I’m being entirely literal. It’s a grounding practice, and it helps turn the heat on the majority of feelings down from a twelve to an eight. No good choices are ever made at twelve, and a sensory interruption is one of the easiest ways to gently nudge the dial when the cognitive tools aren’t working. In general, if you can’t reason with yourself emotionally, do it physically. I once made my CEO take a lap in the middle of an argument where we were both too frustrated, and it resolved a three-month-long dispute. The chip break option has worked for me too. Just find your sensory cool-down thing.
Finally… DEAR MAN. Another DBT acronym, and this one you unfortunately do need to remember. If you find that fear prevents you from self-advocating, asking for what you need, setting boundaries, or raising concerns, the DEAR MAN framework is worth learning. It stands for “Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, then stay Mindful, Appear Confident, and be willing to Negotiate.” At first, it’s tedious to work through, but it eventually feels as autonomic as panicking once did. If you're unsure how to ask for your next raise or provide constructive feedback, try using this tool until you no longer feel the need for it.
The thing about all these tactics is that most people won’t practice them. Even if they know they should. Even though they’re simple!
Improving your emotional regulation is like any other form of conditioning: spectacularly easy to find reasons to avoid. Just like most people know they would benefit from exercising and still don’t do it, the thing that makes these skills so invaluable is that people literally just won’t build them.
So, if you've reached the end of this essay and your vibe is, “That was nice, but pass,” my forewarning is this: you can go ahead and sign up for another certification and pretend it will change your career. And, who knows, maybe it will. But one day you’ll find yourself in a room of fire, real or maybe invented. And in that type of moment when careers are built and broken, you will lose—ten out of ten times—to the person who trained for that situation and knew how to be water.
Happy self-regulating!
KL
P.S The DBT skills workbook is free, and if you actually read/use it and don’t feel like it changed you’re life, I’ll write you a very public apology for being wrong.