People say it all the time. “You have to do the work.”“He’s not doing the work.”“I’ve been doing so much work on myself.” But what is the work? What does it actually mean? I don’t think this is very clear. At least, it wasn’t clear to me.

Let’s be real: most of us were never taught how to deal with emotions. We didn’t learn it in school. Many of us didn’t learn it in our...