I had a blah day earlier this week. Nothing terrible happened. There was no direct trigger. I just didn't feel great emotionally.

Chances are you have more than a few of those days yourself.

Sometimes they're provoked (a nasty email, conflict on your team, a difficult meeting), and sometimes they're not. For me, my blah day wasn't provoked by anything I could see.

Sometimes bad days and seasons just happen. As John Mayer so poignantly puts it:

When autumn comes, it doesn't ask.
It just walks in, where it left you last.
And you never know, when it starts
Until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart.

So, many leaders I meet live in that space for more than a short season.

I believe misunderstood and unaddressed emotions sink more leadership potential than most of us realize. And I also realize that if I don't jump on a bad day quickly, it can lead to a bad season.

If you don't understand your emotions or know how to manage them, you will never reach your leadership potential. So how do you do that?

There are at least five ways emotions can help you or hurt you in leadership.

Understanding how emotions can work for you or against you is key to becoming a healthy leader and cultivating a healthy culture on your team.

2 Ways Emotions Help You

Emotions can be great friends to any leader. Here are two ways your emotions can make you a better leader:

1. Emotion fuels passion. Who wants to follow an emotionless leader? There is no passion without emotion.

As John Wesley said: Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to see you burn. That's just true. You are attracted to people who are passionate, or at least you can't easily dismiss them.

When you lead with passion, teach with passion and preach with passion, your leadership becomes far more magnetic.

Plus, passion ends up fueling you. It's what makes you get out of bed in the morning and drives you on.

When your emotions are healthy, passion comes more naturally.

2. A fully alive heart generates powerful leadership. When your heart is engaged and alive, you become a better leader.

When you feel a full range of emotions (both positive and negative) you can empathize with people who are hurting and celebrate with people who are celebrating.

You can walk with a group or congregation through a hard time and celebrate joyfully in the great moments. To do that, you need to keep your heart healthy and in tune.

I wrote about the top 10 habits of leaders who effectively guard their hearts here.

Often, the negative impact of emotions exacts an incredible toll on leaders and the people who follow them.

Here are 3 ways emotions can hurt your leadership:

1. Emotions can distort reality. When you're having a bad day, you convince yourself it's over when it's actually just beginning.

You see negative things more negatively than you should. You take things personally when you shouldn't.

Even positive emotions can hurt you when they are detached from reality. If you're overly positive, you can ignore reality, miss impending dangers and gloss over problems that actually require your attention.

That's why keeping a healthy heart is so important.

2. Negative emotions make everything about you. Bad days or bad seasons are most often fueled by pain. A stinging email triggers a deep hurt. A bad staff situation eats away at your joy. A season without momentum erodes your self-confidence.

You end as a leader in pain. And pain is selfish.

In the same way that stubbing your toe makes you forget about whatever else you were doing until the pain is resolved, your emotional pain (no matter its source) makes you more selfish as a leader.

People in pain:

•        Don't listen well to others.
•        Withdraw and sulk.
•        Blame others.
•        Eventually turn every conversation to a conversation about themselves and their needs.
•        Want others to share their misery or sadness.
•        Seek attention.
•        You said terrible things.
•        You fired someone you wish you hadn't.
•        You hired someone you wish you hadn't.
•        You lost your temper in a meeting.
•        You broke up.
•        You ate too much.
•        You drove so fast you got a killer ticket.
•        You almost quit.
•        You did quit.

All of that behavior is selfish. And selfish leaders are never effective leaders.

The best way to get rid of your selfishness? Get rid of your pain.

Pray about it. See a counselor. Drill down on your issues.

3. Emotions make you do things today that you'll regret tomorrow. When emotions drive decisions, you almost never make great decisions. For sure, great decision-making is a combination of the head and the heart.

But think about all the terrible decisions you've made when you were emotional:

Years ago—largely because I learned not to trust my emotions—I made a decision: Don't base tomorrow's decision on today's emotions.

Now when I'm having a bad day (or one that's unrealistically good), I just don't make decisions. I wait until I'm feeling more healthy. And I've learned to always draw in other voices and decision makers into important decisions (here's how to do that).

That's what I remind myself when I'm having a not-so-good day, or whenever my emotions aren't firing properly.

I've also realized that if that seasons continues for more than a few days, it's probably a sign God has further work to do on my heart or even to go back to a counsellor. I outlined other steps you can take to get off the emotional roller coaster of ministry in this post.

What helps you get through a season when your emotions aren't reliable?

Carey Nieuwhof is Lead Pastor of Connexus Church north of Toronto, Canada, blogs at careynieuwhof.com and is host of The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast available for free on iTunes. For the original article, visit churchleaders.com.

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