What You Feel is What They Experience

The emotional energy influencer — and why what you feel is always on display whether you know it or not.

I am a certified high-performance coach with 26 years in mortgage banking. I have coached professionals through some of their hardest moments. I teach people for a living how to identify the thoughts that are quietly undermining their results.

And when someone asks me what I charge — I still hear the voice.

It shows up when I'm writing the proposal. It shows up when I'm about to hit send on a contract. It shows up the moment someone says "so what is your fee?" and there is a half-second pause before I answer that I am fairly certain nobody else notices but that I feel in every cell of my body.

The voice says: Is that too much? Will they think that's worth it? Am I worth it?

And then I catch it. And I almost laugh. Because here I am — the coach — being managed by my own emotional energy in the very moment I should be leading it. The irony never gets old. Neither does the feeling, apparently.

What emotional energy actually is

Most people think emotions are something that happen to them. An agent doesn't reply to a phone call or cancels a coffee meeting. A deal falls apart and the rest of the week gets colored by it.

But emotional energy isn't something that happens to you. It's something moving through you — and with awareness and practice, it's something you can actually learn to work with.

It shows up in your ability to manage your stress response in the middle of a chaotic transaction. In your emotional awareness — knowing what you're actually feeling in real time rather than two days later. In your emotional expression — how you show up in a conversation when you're under pressure. And in what I call being in a success-enhancing mode: the state where your emotional energy is working for your performance rather than quietly working against it.

In mortgage sales, your emotional state is your most powerful sales tool — or your biggest liability. And it is on display every single moment whether you know it or not.

A borrower sitting across from an LO who is carrying anxiety or self-doubt feels it before a single word is spoken. An agent on the other end of a call knows within thirty seconds whether the person calling is operating from confidence or from need. You cannot hide your emotional energy. You can only learn to lead it.

The chain underneath it all

Here is what I want you to understand about where your emotional energy comes from: a thought creates an emotion. That emotion drives a behavior. That behavior produces a result.

The thought I am not good enough — one of the most common I encounter in this industry — creates doubt. Doubt creates hesitation. Hesitation shows up as the hedge in your voice, the over-explanation, the follow-up that never quite gets sent. And the result seems to confirm what the thought said all along.

This is why emotional energy is so critical. It is the bridge between the thought and the action. And when you learn to work with it — to recognize it, understand it, and channel it intentionally — everything downstream changes.

The practice

The LOs who sustain high performance over time are not the ones who don't feel the pressure. They feel everything — deeply. What makes them different is that they have developed two habits that most people never build.

First, they ask: What do I feel right now? Not the polished answer. The real one. They name the actual emotional weather they are operating in — honestly, without judgment.

Then they ask: What can I learn and do about what I feel? They follow the feeling back to the thought underneath it. They acknowledge it — because that thought has been trying to protect them, not sabotage them. And then they redirect. They consciously choose a thought that fuels them rather than one that drains them.

That is not suppressing emotion. That is not performing over it. That is leading your emotional energy with intention — and it is one of the most powerful skills you will ever develop in this business.

One thing to try this week

Before your next significant conversation — a buyer consult, an agent meeting, a tough phone call — stop for sixty seconds. Ask yourself what you're feeling. Name it honestly. Then ask what you want to feel walking into that conversation, and what thought would get you there.

You are not at the mercy of your emotional state. You are the one who gets to lead it.

You are beautifully and wonderfully made — and when you learn to lead your emotional energy rather than be led by it, the version of you that shows up in every room becomes unstoppable.