Bottling up your emotions, never letting yourself express anger or hurt, is poison. But that doesn’t mean you should give yourself endless leeway to indulge in your worst impulses.
Good fences make good neighbors, and that’s true of the emotional neighbors as well – your feelings and your responsibilities have to get along, and the best way for them to do that is to have a little structure. A fence isn’t a prison; it’s a guardrail.
In life, you are rewarded roughly proportionate to how much responsibility you take on and how well you shoulder it. Taken to the extreme, it’s a recipe for burnout and disaster. But the other extreme, where you never ever say “Instead of feeling my feelings right now, I have a job to do, and I need to put that first,” is a recipe for a joyless life of zero accomplishment.
Be the shepherd for yourself.
The Opportunity Machine 