Hearing that someone has intense ups and downs of emotion sounds like emotional instability.
If a friend said "my boss's moods swing hard," I'd feel sorry for them.
Of course, someone who constantly shouts and freezes the room is out of the question.
But people who express emotion large are easy to read — so as long as you're careful, communication can even feel simpler.
In my case, especially at work, I try to amplify joy.
That doesn't mean flattering everyone — when something positive happens for the company, I show that I'm happy so people around me can see it.
I congratulate the people involved, and I actually praise them. A little too much, even.
Personally I think this matters a lot — and to put it cynically, it's a high cost-performance form of communication.
I'm not doing it grudgingly. I'm also a fairly simple person who gets happy more easily than average, so I'm not manufacturing emotion from nothing — more like turning up the volume on what's already there.
Here's a related story.
A few weeks ago I had dinner with a coworker and we talked about motivation somehow.
Neither of us likes waste; we're more logic than emotion — but we both agreed that who you work with matters a great deal.
We talked about how focusing only for yourself has limits.
The conclusion we reached: when you push hard at something, if it isn't also something that makes people around you happy, you can't go all in, and the heat doesn't come.
I suspect that isn't just us — it's true for a lot of people.
You can work for yourself, but it's even better when people around you are glad too.
Even the successful people nearby — no matter how much of a Superman they seem — none of them got through big things on their own.
What one person can do alone is limited, of course.
Going back: making it clear to someone that you're happy for them, I believe, moves their motivation more than you'd expect.
As much as possible, being a simple presence for other people is probably an advantage in all kinds of ways.
In that sense, being "intense" about joy, pleasure, sadness, and anger — meaning others can easily tell what makes you feel what — might actually be a gift to the people around you. That thought crossed my mind.
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