Jessy Grossman: Hey guys, what is going on? Welcome back to the pod. Gosh, I was sitting here before I pressed the record button, and first of all, I’m here with another solo episode. I’m trying to do more of these lately.

If you enjoy them, please let me know. If you don’t, please let me know. I will definitely be infusing interviews throughout, but I’m doing like the scary thing and I’m just trying to personally challenge myself. So the scary thing for me is just to talk to you guys, which sounds so crazy. I’m hoping to talk about some interesting, more controversial, sensitive topics.

So here I am, another solo episode. So as I’m sitting here about to press record. Wondering what the heck to talk to you guys about. Some fluffy topics are easy. I could just rattle those off. No difficulty there. And then some other more sensitive topics can, like, I really wanna challenge myself.

So today we are going to be talking all about managing emotions. And this is. I’m sure gonna bleed into my personal life and I’m sure to bleed into, you know, just like us as human beings. But of course, this is mainly focused on how to manage emotions in the workplace, pertaining to work all the things.

So if this is a topic that sounds interesting to you, I hope you stick around in this episode.

Jessy Grossman: All right guys, so this week is all about managing emotions. Oh my God. First of all, okay. I just have to level set to say that. As women, we are constantly told to manage our emotions as if emotions are a bad thing. So what you’ll not hear me say today is that emotions are a bad thing. I think it’s like one of our superpowers as women that we’re like an emotional creature, and I love that about women.

When I shut down emotionally, I think it’s a negative thing. So what you won’t hear me say today is that like, Emotions are a bad thing in that we, there’s no place for them because there is, but managing emotions, because I always want you guys to be able to create a professional life that serves you.

And so if you are feeling something, let’s say you’re feeling excitement. It serves you in that moment. ’cause it gets your team hyped up and it gets you motivated for the next project or whatever the scenario is, then fantastic. It is serving you. I think what I am going dig into today is when the emotions that we naturally feel, ’cause we’re human beings are not servicing us.

What do you do in that instance? So as always, you guys, please let me know what these are like. Topics you are interested in, your thoughts on these topics. If you’re watching us on YouTube, send us some comments. I wanna hear how you guys manage emotions when it gets challenging for you. So I love, love, love when you guys leave comments, so leave them all right.

Managing emotions in the workplace.

Jessy Grossman: Okay, so managing emotion. So I’ll just share a brief story. I feel like I might’ve shared this on a previous episode, so bear with me. But it was just such an impactful moment in my life that comes to mind. So I was probably like, I don’t know, maybe 26, 25, 26 years old, and I was in like my first job at this talent agency that I used to work at.

It was like, you know, my first like, real job, right? Where I had, I was like climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak, and just really like working my way up and feeling as if I, I had like a trajectory and a plan. I had, you know, one main person I guess that I reported to and. You guys, she intimidating is like the main word that comes to mind, although I would’ve never admitted it at the moment.

Right? Like, so she was my direct boss. She was the head of the department. She was like a woman in her fifties. She’s had so much success. She presented herself as like this, I don’t know, like, like straight out of like a movie. Like she was so well put together, so well dressed, well spoken, but like.

She wasn’t a girl’s girl at all. However, she presented, like she would never admit to that. Like she would say, oh my God, I support women. Oh my gosh, that’s so important to me. But like as somebody who was young and impressionable and on the receiving end of it, I felt intimidated. I felt, and it wasn’t, I don’t think it was like in my head like I legitimately felt intimidated ’cause that was what she was putting out there.

Like she was willing to help and support. But to a certain extent, like to a certain point, I needed to sort of know my place and respect her for who she was. 

So that’s like the dynamic. And so there was this one day where I honestly can’t even describe like, Why I was in her office, what we were talking about.

But I just remember her pushing whatever the topic was and pushing me to the extent that I was sitting there in her office. And I just remember tears like welling up. I don’t know about you guys, but like I mostly feel that way when I’m feeling on the verge of like just crying, mostly. Just crying or being emotional.

It’s hard for me not to just let it go. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but oh my God. The one thing that will just destroy me is if I’m in that place and someone looks at me and they see that I’m in that place and they’ll be like, Jess, are you okay? Oh my God. That’ll lose it. I lose it every single time.

So I’m sitting there in this like meeting with this woman who like, I respected her. I wanted to be her. At the time, I was intimidated by her, like all the things and I can’t, like she’s pushing me about something and just trying to probably challenge me and I was just, I felt myself getting so emotional and tears were like on the very edge of my eyelids, like dying to come out.

And they did. And they did, and I was mortified. You guys. I was mortified because it had never happened before. The stakes were so high. I was just trying so hard to impress this woman, but to me, impressing her was never crying. Oh my God. This is like. Probably before or maybe even around the time when Hillary Clinton was running for office and do you guys, I don’t know if you guys remember, but she was running for office and there was like some moment where she cried.

Was it in the Benghazi trials? Like I don’t know. Oh God no. Probably wasn’t because she was incredible in those. But there was like some moment where, you know, fricking Hillary Clinton running for president of the United States. Is she in this emotional state and oh my God, was she destroyed because of it?

And so these things come into my mind like how God forbid you were to ever show emotion nonetheless in a scenario where you’re at work. And like that just can’t be part of your narrative. Like that just can’t be part of your persona. Right.

Handling high-stakes emotions.

Jessy Grossman: So that leads me to today’s conversation, just to like give you a little bit of history that I have, like personally been there when stakes are high and I just let it go.

And I think that like my 36-year-old self today would’ve, I know. I mean, I know I would’ve handled it so differently. I know that I wish I would. I. I feel like if I were in that scenario today, I hope that I would’ve just like acknowledged what was happening and just continued to breathe and continue to talk through it.

I know that is so much easier said than done. ’cause even as I’m saying this out loud, I’m like, would you have done that even today if that would’ve happened? Because you’re just like, you’re feeling so much inside. And I just wanna acknowledge that like the older that I get and the more that I work, like the more that I just like to encounter people in a business or like in life, you just we’re all going through stuff.

Like, my mom passed away a couple of weeks ago and like a lot of people had no idea. I like sharing it kind of publicly recently, but like I certainly didn’t share the extent of our relationship and how complicated it was. Like, I shared some of the details of what happened, but like, no, I didn’t like to share everything that like goes through my mind at night as I’m about to go to sleep.

But the reason I bring that up is because like you just never truly know what people are going through. And so while we’re working these 40 to like 80 hour weeks, sometimes. We’re away from our families and our personal lives, like our professional lives. It just bleeds together so much with our personal lives.

And so like it’s an impossible task to say like, I’m never gonna bring emotions into the workplace. 

Ghosting in the workplace.

Jessy Grossman: We just came off of one of our manager meetups today when I’m recording this and one of the conversations that came up and it comes up often was about ghosting. Why is this a thing now? Like, why are people, why do they feel like it’s okay to just ghost somebody?

Like, not even in negotiations, but someone was telling me that they were, you know, offered their client a $25,000 deal, and then the company ghosted. And then they have the balls to come back to them like months later and say like, let’s work again. And that’s another very real scenario in which it’s like we have to acknowledge what happened because I, in good conscience, would at least find it very difficult and maybe impossible.

To just pretend like something didn’t happen. When it did, I followed up. I emailed you, I called you. I got in touch with other people to get in touch with you like you were unresponsive for in some instances, weeks or months, you know, a $25,000 deal. That’s not the kick in the bucket. Like that’s a decent-sized deal for anybody.

So to receive that and to be telling your client that’s coming, and then to have it completely disappear, but also to have no like, Nothing to say about it. No reason or rationale of why it went away like that is, that’ll drive you crazy. That’ll make you feel crazy. That’ll give you so many problems that like, I’m gonna look so bad in front of my client.

Like, they’re just gonna assume like, really somebody just ghosted you. Like, what did you do to make this happen? Or at least that’s a fear. And so what do you do to manage all of those emotions? I shared a previous episode about how we’ve been trying to get pregnant for many months at this point and having trouble, and gosh, like there’s a reason to manage emotions, right?

Because as much as I genuinely love my work, there’s always stress that comes up. Whether you love your work or you don’t. Like, there’s just things that pop up and are stressful. And so if there’s a, like an important reason to manage your emotions, whether it’s just managing your everyday stress or you’re trying to have a baby and they say, don’t be stressed, literally impossible, or, you know, or a number of other reasons, like those are very, very real reasons to put a focus and emphasis and your foot down that like managing emotions.

The reasons can be selfish. I just wanna flip the narrative because I feel like even the topic of this episode, right, managing emotions, my initial instinct would be I’m managing emotions so that I can hear professional or that I can, you know, like basically impressing the other person, the other side, the person who’s on would be on the receiving end of those emotions, right?

I power back to say like perhaps managing emotions for your wellbeing, your mental health, your physical health, your like, a number of different reasons. Take. Manage emotions for you. So then, of course, the inevitable next question is like, okay, Jess, like I’m on board. Like I get it. You’re right. I wanna manage my emotions. I want stress, fear, life. I wanna be able to breathe through things and not feel like I’m in this heightened anxious state.

Like, okay. How do I do that? So I will not be talking about the ins and outs of like how you should do it, but I’ll be real with you guys and tell you what I have done. And I’ve practiced this a ton and I am no expert at it whatsoever. And I haven’t even really been able to fully manage my emotions myself.

Slowing things down.

Jessy Grossman: But I’ll tell you what has worked for me, what I’ve tried, and what hasn’t worked for me, and like take what you will from it. But I think that number one, in terms of managing emotions, is slowing things down. And here’s what I mean by that. When I was managing talent for years, I mean, I’ve done thousands of negotiations easily, and in some of those negotiations, like I felt my emotions getting heightened.

I would be like the mama bear to my clients like I would defend them. I would get mad. I just like, I would take things so personally and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t To this day. I just, I do, I take things personally and I won’t apologize for that. It’s just part of who I am, but. Again, going back to the beginning of this conversation, like, does that serve me?

And in those instances, does it serve my client also, you know, to get emotional, to show my emotions, right? And so I mentioned slowing things down. So I think number one is being able to have the self-awareness to know. When you’re getting anxious, when you’re getting a little bit overly emotional when you’re feeling things more intensely, that’s step number one.

Identifying that moment in the moment, and number two, which has just absolutely helped me, is like slowing things down. I have such a, you know, desire to email that person back right away and give them a piece of my mind, wait till tomorrow. I am dying to like rage-text somebody because they just pissed me off.

Give that one a week, you know, like slow things down. Give yourself a moment to breathe, because I would say nine times out of 10 in so many instances where I’ve paused and didn’t respond right away. I ended up responding very differently from how I would have originally in the moment. So those are some tips I can give you just in terms of slowing down the conversation.

You also give the other side a second to breathe too, and chances are if you’re feeling heightened emotion, they probably are too. Like we don’t exist in a vacuum. We pick up on the energy that we’re given. And so taking the bull by the horns and like being the one to slow it down or pause it or what have you.

You’re taking control of the situation and I think helping both sides and the relationship, you wanna be thoughtful. If you ultimate girl, if you ultimately decide that you wanna respond and be rageful, be like, you know, like do it. I’m not here to tell you otherwise, but I want it to be a conscious, thoughtful decision.

What I don’t want you to do is impulsive and you regret it. Okay. Managing emotions, you guys. That’s what we’re all about today. All right, so I have to tell you guys a little bit about a company that I love. It’s called oversubscribe, their co-founder. Peter was recently on this podcast to go check out that episode from June 20th.

But basically, oversubscribing is a place where fans can fund their favorite creators and earn back on that investment. So if you’re a creator or their management, you should check them out. The million-dollar question these days is always around growth. How to grow, how to scale. And if you’re a creator who wants to expand your business, but you simply don’t have the capital to do it, let your fans fund it.

The people who are already invested in you. Once the creator successfully grows their business from this investment and earns more based on that funding the investor, the fans earn from it too. There are lots of fans out there who would love to invest in their favorite creators, but they simply didn’t know that they could.

So subscribers now have a real state in the success of a creator’s business, thanks to Oversubscribe. They can help them grow financially, which will then in turn make the content better, the quality of the content better, which will accelerate your growth as a creator just because you got some funding from the people who have already supported you for years.

I think it’s an innovative idea. I love it. I want you guys to check out Oversubscribe Co. and just mention Wim. That’s Oversubscribe Co. And tell them Jesse from Win sent you. Hey, you. Thanks for listening to this episode. This show is sponsored by women in influencer marketing, the best online community for the creator economy.

You’ll meet fellow influencer marketers, brands, and talent managers to talk, shop, get hired, and even find a mentor. When you join, don’t forget to check out all of our incredible resources. We also have dozens of masterclasses from the top. Voices, a TikTok, YouTube award-winning agencies, and women who are paving the way for us all. If you want a chance to network with a who’s who in influencer marketing, just check out what it takes to join the Membership collective visit. I am wim.com/join today. That’s why I am W I m.com/join and I’ll see you around the community. The other thing I wanted to discuss with you guys, Is when being emotional can benefit you.

So, you know, I’m, I keep saying managing emotions because I’m very intentionally like avoiding saying, don’t be emotional. But again, it’s like, it’s what’s serving you. 

Masked emotions beneath anger.

Jessy Grossman: So the next thing that I want to talk to you about though is just when I wanna talk to you guys about anger. Anger is a tough emotion, certainly to manage, nonetheless to process. I think first it’s really important to get to the core.

I think. Of like what you’re feeling because in my experience and what I’ve learned, I think that anger is usually masking some other emotion that like isn’t truly anger necessarily, it’s embarrassment or sadness or you know, I don’t, just like other, other emotions are usually masked by anger. So if the emotion that you’re feeling is that you’re freaking pissed, I think it’s worth taking a moment to just do some self-reflection, ask yourself more questions about it, and sort of try to dig into like what is underneath that anger that you’re feeling.

Once you come to that conclusion, like perhaps in a scenario, maybe it’s that you don’t feel valued in your company. Maybe it’s that you’re pissed at this, you know, you’re, whether it’s your boss or your superior or whatever, and you’re mad, you, like, you can’t stand looking at them. You don’t wanna be in a room with them, a Zoom call with them.

Like you don’t wanna utter, their name in your, and put their name in your mouth, but like, why? What is it? Maybe it’s that you just don’t feel valued appreciated or seen. And so if that’s the case in this particular scenario, there’s so much that you can do about that versus just being angry all the time.

And like you guys, I’ve, I’ve been that person who has just been freaking angry a lot. I. I can’t emphasize enough, that when I was managing talent, I was, I felt like I was pissed more than I wasn’t pissed. I like it, there’s so much more to dig into that if I’m being honest. Like I know that there’s so much more to dig into on that and it’s probably a whole other conversation, but my stress levels are so much lower now that I got out of managing talent and I think that that anger though, Maybe in my instance to speak personally, I think that in a lot of moments I like, I didn’t feel respected.

I think in other moments I, I don’t know. That’s probably the main thing. I just didn’t feel respected, like from the other side. I didn’t feel heard in some instances, but I bring this all up because how do you manage the emotion of anger? You dig into like what’s happening below the surface, like what’s going on there?

And just try to talk, I don’t know about you guys like everybody deals with like hard situations in different ways. For me, it helps to talk things out. Like I’m that girl that goes to therapy every week when I have issues with, you know, family or my partner or like anybody. I gotta talk it out.

Have a dialogue with your peers

Jessy Grossman: And so I just recommend like it is very appropriate, okay. To talk things out with, whether it’s your coworker or someone on the other side. I would recommend the following. It sort of diffuses the situation. I think that it’s important to start any difficult conversation with like what you wanna achieve out of talking.

And hopefully, it’s something positive. I’m at a level set before I even talk about anything today, like, I’m coming to you because like I wanna have a great relationship with you. Like, I’m coming to you today because I want us to be productive in the workspace, like in our work. And I you know, I want us to come to a place where we feel positive.

Working together in this team environment. I wanna be a great teammate. I’m feeling X, Y, z, I want to be feeling A, B, C, and I’m curious how you feel. I think that asking open-ended questions has been a game changer for me once I trained myself on like how to do that. Not leading people to the answer that you want them to give.

Not even leading people by letting them know a whole ton about how you feel, but having an open-ended question given to the person on the other side. You might be like really pleasantly surprised with what you get in return. So in terms of like managing anger, frustration or something like that, again, like it’s digging into what’s happening underneath and then being brave enough to like start a dialogue with the other person.

And I do think that setting the tone of that conversation has helped me and, and had things go a long way. Now look. Another way of managing emotions is escapism. I am escaping. I don’t know how healthy it is, but like if I’m feeling emotional, more on the depressed side of things, like I am a self-isolator.

I don’t want anybody around me for a variety of different reasons. I go into my world. Like sometimes Indulge, you know, sometimes I’ll just like indulge those emotions, like feel the heck out of them. But sometimes I just escape and I don’t deal with them at all whatsoever. I think being in any of those places for a brief amount of time is natural and healthy.

I think it’s when those amounts of time become a month, a year, a few months, you know, like then. You gotta ask yourself questions like, is this serving me? And if the answer is no, then I think it’s worth like switching it up a little bit, right? I think that when it comes to. When it comes to dealing with your emotions on your own, like for yourself, you know, you’re not having a conversation with somebody else about it, maybe you need to process it before you can even do something like that.

Or maybe it’s just something that doesn’t necessarily involve anyone else, but you’re just feeling all of this emotion and you gotta work on it yourself. I feel like it’s key to just continuously ask yourself, is this serving me? So, as I mentioned briefly, I am like, I don’t know, I’m the queen of like, escapism.

I, after a long day will just go and watch some like mindless TV and like scroll incessantly on my phone and like, again, short periods, that’s fine. But like, could I be doing more with my evenings if I’m doing that every single night? Yeah. Like absolutely. Like if I’m feeling something.

As I mentioned to you guys, my mom passed away. Like I could just not deal with what I’m feeling and I could just ignore it and like, oh my God, can I dive into work? Like I, that’s when I am the biggest workaholic is when things are stressful in my life because to me it’s a positive like I’m putting all that energy into a positive place, and that energy has to go somewhere, right?

So again, like I’m not a therapist. I’ve been to a lot of therapy, but I’m not a therapist myself, and I’m only just sharing what’s worked for me. And I can say that like all of these, you know, things, escapism and whatever like they’re fine for a short period. I wouldn’t judge me. I wouldn’t judge you.

But I think that like after a certain period, it’s like, okay, like I sort of like. I nursed the wound to the point that like it’s mostly healed ’cause time just naturally heals things. But now I have to do the hard work. Like now I have to dig into like what’s going on here. And I am such a huge proponent of therapy.

Therapy and finding support.

Jessy Grossman: You guys, like I have been in therapy off and on, oh my god, since college. I am a huge proponent of it. I’m a huge proponent of simply talking things out with people. So I want you guys to find your people and sometimes it’s your family and the people that you live with, and sometimes those are the last people that are gonna be helping you with work stuff, right?

Sometimes you just want someone to listen. Other times you want someone to participate in the conversation. I don’t know about you guys. It’s rare that I just want somebody to listen, says the girl who’s. Just talking into a microphone right now, that’s ironic. But when I’m like with people and I’m in that heightened state I want you to participate in this conversation.

I want you to like, usually I want you to side with me. Usually, I want you to talk it out with me, but I don’t just want like have like a sounding board that doesn’t ever make me feel better. So the reason I bring it up is just because I want you guys to know what you need where you can find that and where you can get that need met.

Because sometimes it’s our partners and then other times it’s like he or she is like not that great in that department. And I love them to pieces, but they’re not the person who soothes me. They’re not the person who talks me down off a ledge. Maybe your best friend is, or maybe your sister is, or your brother is, or your mom, or whoever that is for you.

But I just feel so strongly that we should go to the people and be real about like what those people bring to the table and how they can help us. And don’t try to extract orange juice from a grape, you know? So yeah, go to those, use your support system basically, and help them help you. And lean on people, you guys, because if there’s the best way to, like, one of the great ways I think to manage emotions is being able to like to know when to ask for help.

Know when to, and that could be like, you know, I need help planning an event. Or like, I just need help, like, working through this problem or like figuring out why I feel like this or like, what are some ideas for me to get through this, to get over this. Just having that secondary perspective, somebody else in your life that you can trust and that you think gives sound advice, like finding those people are so, it’s just so important.

It’s so, so important. So find your people and if they’re not in your personal lives, lean on whim because they’re incredible, incredible women in this community who are very intuitive and very supportive. And I just feel so strongly that like. You gotta find your people to lean on. You just, you gotta, and it, ’cause it goes both ways, and don’t think of it as being selfish.

You’ll be there for them in the future. So managing emotions, you guys, it’s a very nuanced topic. There’s so much more to say, but those are just a few thoughts that I had. I would love to hear your thoughts are you someone who is like, Are you full of rage all the time? Are you sad a lot of the time?

You know, what are you guys feeling and how do you get through it? I just wanna be, I just wanna be real about this stuff and I, you know, we, like you hear a lot of people, I hear a lot of people who are like seemingly like business. Experts or people in business who are giving you advice. I listen to those podcasts and I watch those YouTube channels and a lot of those people, like they make everything feel as if it’s fine.

Toxic positivity.

Jessy Grossman: Like everything in life is just, it’s easy. It should come easily. It should be just, Superficial and good, and I hate that, like toxic positivity. I think it’s complete bullshit. And so I guess like my challenge to you guys is like when you are inevitably feeling depressed, sad, anxious, upset, whatever emotions that like you have a little bit of shame behind, how do you work through that?

Because it’s just inevitable that we’re all human beings. All kinds of ways. So I just, I never want you guys to feel shame about any of those things and know that like there are, all of us are feeling it. It’ll be temporary and you can have a very successful professional life feeling.

All of the emotions that you feel because like we’re women, you guys, and we’re emotional creatures. Thank you guys for listening. I’m excited to do more episodes like this., I hope you enjoy them. If you do, you know, leave a thumbs up on this video, in a comment below. If you’re listening to the podcast, you know, comments on our Instagram.

We’re at, I am WIIM on Instagram and most of the other social platforms. I look forward to hearing from you guys in the comments. 

If you enjoyed this episode, we gotta have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective.

You can check out all the information@iamwim.com. Leave us a review, or a rating, but the most important thing that we can ask you to do is to share this podcast. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week. Tune in next week.