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Think of the last time you reacted and thought: "that is so me."
The same tightening in your chest before a difficult conversation. The same flash of irritation when someone changes the plan. The same instinct to go quiet when you'd rather speak up.
I call this your Emotional DNA — the recurring pattern of how you feel, react and recover.
It feels like a fixed part of who you are. Today I want to show you which parts are built in, and which parts you can rewrite.
Let's start!
Today at a Glance
➡️ The Pattern You Mistake for Your Personality
➡️ The NeuroScience Behind your Emotional DNA
➡️ How I Coach your Emotional DNA
The Pattern You Mistake for Your Personality
Most of us treat our emotional reactions as a verdict on who we are. "I'm just an anxious person." "I've always had a temper." "I'm not good with feelings."
Part of that is true. Part of it isn't — and the difference matters enormously for how you lead.
Your Emotional DNA has two layers. The first is temperament: the baseline you arrived with — how quickly you ramp up, how long you stay there, how sensitive you are to context. The second is everything layered on top: the habits, stories and coping moves you rehearsed for decades, mostly without noticing.
Leaders tend to confuse the two. They accept the second layer as if it were the first. And so "that's just how I am" becomes the most expensive sentence in their vocabulary — it excuses the snapped reply, the avoided conversation and the pattern their team has long since learned to work around.
The first layer you learn to work with. The second you can rewrite.
The NeuroScience Behind Your Emotional DNA
Part of your baseline is inherited. A meta-analysis of twin and family studies puts the heritability of personality traits — including emotional ones — at roughly 40 percent (Vukasović & Bratko, 2015, Psychological Bulletin). That's a population statistic, not a verdict on you, but it tells you something useful: your wiring is not a blank page — and a large share of the pattern is shaped by experience.
Emotional style is measurable — and trainable. Richard Davidson describes six dimensions (resilience, outlook, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context and attention), each tied to identifiable brain circuits, and argues that these circuits change with practice (Davidson & Begley, 2012, The Emotional Life of Your Brain).
Precise words give you more control. People who can tell their emotions apart — disappointed versus ashamed versus anxious, instead of just bad — cope better and regulate more flexibly (Kashdan, Barrett & McKnight, 2015, Current Directions in Psychological Science).
Key Takeaways
Your emotional patterns are part built-in, part rehearsed.
"That's just how I am" is rarely the whole truth.
The brain circuits behind your emotional style change with practice.
You can't edit what you can't name — precision comes first.
How I Coach Emotional Patterns
#1: Map the full pattern.
For one week, track four things: what triggered you, what happened in your body, what you did next, and how long it took you to recover.
Don’t judge the pattern. Study it.
#2: Identify what the pattern protects.
Ask yourself: “What is this reaction trying to prevent, protect or achieve?”
The response that limits you today may once have been useful. You don’t need to fight it — but you can decide whether it still fits the situation.
#3: Name it — then change the first move.
Replace “stressed” with something more precise: overwhelmed, dismissed, uncertain or exposed.
Then choose one small alternative for the next time it appears: pause, ask a question, name what you need or delay your response.
You don’t rewrite the whole pattern at once. You practise a better first move.
That's it for this Saturday.
The next edition comes out Saturday, the 10th of October 2026.
We'll continue with: "Are There Unteachable Lessons?" — the things no course can hand you, and how people learn them anyway.
Own it!
Yours,
Moritz
PS:
Meet Moritz!
Can you rarely make time for physical activity or regeneration?
Do youI feel emotionally unstable and have difficulties to stay calm under pressure?
Is managing people emotionally and energetically draining for you?
If that sounds familiar, Mastering Emotions is for you. I began coaching in 2023. Since then, l've coached over 30 executives, entrepreneurs, and high potentials on building Emotional Intelligence and into becoming future leaders.
If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:
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