525: A Founders Guide to Feeling Feelings

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about a founders guide to feeling feelings.

Running a business is difficult and comes witha lot of stress that if not managed properly can lead to a lot of problems for a founder. Problems that could affect your personally or worse, the health of your business.

In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten what it means to suppress your emotions, why doing so might not be a good thing, how to get in control of your emotions and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic

00:32 Why this topic was chosen.

01:38 How Steli deals with his emotions.

03:25 One factor that determines how you deal with your feelings.

05:02 Another factor that determines how you deal with your feelings.

06:16 One way to get in control of your emotions.

08:35 The importance of recognizing your emotions.

09:05 A real-world example of dealing with emotions.

10:34 How Steli reacted to an emergency situation.

11:41 Why you can pay a big price if you suppress your emotions.

3 Key Points:

• I can’t quite fully trust my emotions.
• Think things through before you act.
• Personality has a lot to do with how you express yourself to the outside world.

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:04]

Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat, we’re going to figure out if founders know how to feel their feelings or they’re just thinking them. So, here’s why I wanted to quickly talk to you about this. Anybody that’s been listening to the Startup Chat for a long time knows we have talked a lot about the inner game of being a founder. We’ve talked a lot about it, we have a good amount of episodes around managing your emotions, managing your states, managing other people’s emotions, because it’s an emotional game. And if you don’t control your feelings, they might lead you astray and into problematic situations. One thing that I recently discovered about myself, and I wanted to quickly unpack with you for founders, because I thought this might be useful to people that listened to us, is this realization that I had about myself that I think at some point at a young age, I started realizing that I can’t quite fully trust my feelings, and if I just act on my emotions, I wreak havoc, and I create all kinds of problems. So, I started focusing more on controlling my feelings through my mind, and through thinking things through, and not acting immediately, and slowing it down, and de-intensifying my feelings, analyzing them first. Over a long period of time, very subconsciously over decades, I think that I mastered… I overdid this to the point where over the last many, many years, I think I thought most of my feelings, especially the negative ones, right? So, I could tell you here’s a situation that I think I was hesitant in and probably was driven by some kind of a fear, I didn’t feel fear or I didn’t feel hesitant, but I didn’t feel nervous. I just thought, “I’m probably nervous in this situation,” but it didn’t have a physical sensation. And for many, many reasons, I think that that’s not a good idea. It’s not a good idea to just think your feelings. I think it’s a much better idea to actually feel them, be present for them, not let them overwhelm you or runaway with you, but not run away from them either, but actually being fully present for the feeling. And then, you can still decide to think things through at times before you act. But, as I was thinking about all my friends that were CEOs and founders and entrepreneurs, I was wondering if this is maybe not so unique of a case. And what the downside, let’s j