Your Friday Self-Leadership Reflection - Week 34, 2026 - Emotions as Signals

This past week, I had the gift of speaking to a group of educators about using emotions to guide relationships.

Notice I'm not talking about being emotional.

I'm talking about emotions themselves.

The things we had well before we had words. Well before electricity. Well before we had spreadsheets and OKRs.

Emotions are here to keep us alive.

They're the energy that moves through your body and says... this is wrong, move away.

Or... this feels right, move toward it. You survived!

And yet in the workplace... most of us have learned to suppress the emotions we're feeling. To override the signals. To power through.

Even though the signal running through your body is often more powerful than all the words in the world.

Emotions are dashboard lights. They're telling you to check something. To pay attention.

So this week... three questions that live in the space between what you feel in the moment... and what you do about it.

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Here are your Week 34, 2026

Friday Self-Leadership Reflection:

1.  High Point of Emotional Wisdom
When was a time you actually listened to what your emotion was telling you... and it served you deeply? Even though it would have been easier to suppress it or push through?

2. Wisdom From What You're Ignoring
What's a feeling that keeps returning to you lately... one you've been trying to talk yourself out of? What might it be trying to teach you if you actually listened?

3. Opportunity One Week From Now
Imagine yourself one week from now. You listened to your body this week. You honored what you were feeling. What's different? What did you free up? What did you release?

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Thank you for taking the time to invest in yourself and answer questions like these.

We talk about it all the time... there's no such thing as a perfect leader. At home, at work, in your community.

But a self-aware leader is as close to perfect as we're ever going to get.

And paying attention to what's happening in your body... the somatic experience of being a human being... including the emotions moving through you... is the way you build that self-awareness.

At the end of the day, a mature leader recognizes three things:

I see how I impact you.
I see how you impact me.
And most importantly... I see how I impact myself.

Somatic experiences and all.

Just don't leave these in your head. That's where potentiality goes to sleep. Journal them, share them with a friend, or send your musings to me.

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P.S. What I love to do most is walk into large groups of people in the corporate world and have them talk about their experiences in life and work.

Not "being emotional." Not even "talking about emotions." Just talking about the truth.

As Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, likes to say...  "All progress begins by telling the truth."

But for truth to emerge, a psychologically safe environment has to be built first. That's the work I do... and love to do.

Because with clarity of mind, with truth being spoken, teams do their best work. Their most meaningful work. And leaders feel a sense of freedom and inner peace they didn't have before.

Want to hear more about that work? Check it out  HERE
Want to learn more about how we put in that work? Check it out  HERE

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Mindset & Leadership Coach & Facilitator
- Michael