I am, Therefore I feel
Have you ever wondered what factors are at play when people with high IQ flounder and those with modest intelligence do surprisingly well in their careers? Is it that in some way a person was able to improve his intellect or did he use unethical means to grow?Sometimes, what people call politics might just be emotional intelligence at work.
In my opinion EI can be broadly classified into 2 types.
a) Understanding ones own emotions which include self-awareness, self-control, enthusiasm, an ability to motivate oneself.
b) The other part is empathy, compassion, to see another perspective, to understand someone else’s truth. As they say – Stepping into someone else’s shoes and understanding them is a great act of generosity.
I will be dwelling more on the first part here. Understanding how our emotions are at play puts us in the best position to maximize whatever intelligence we have been blessed with. We need to place a very high value on EI for success in our career and relationships and in understanding how toxic emotions put our physical health at as much risk as smoking.
Our genetic heritage might have endowed us with emotional set points but what we need to understand is that the circuitry involved is not set in concrete. It can be changed which makes EI more of a competence that can be developed than a character trait that has to be lived with.
How can one become more emotionally intelligent? This topic is so vast that volumes have been written on it. As I have started taking baby steps towards understanding this mammoth, my effort here is to probably nudge you to look in the direction of this unexplored continent across the ocean beyond the distant horizon.
As J. Krishnamurthy says – “The highest form of intelligence is the ability to observe ourselves without judging.” A good way to start becoming self-aware is to fix a time and place to start observing how our emotions are at work and what is the cause of every emotion that we feel. Well, if not every emotion, at least certainly the more disturbing ones.
The root cause of an emotion can either be physical or psychic or both. What we are experience as anger might just be hunger and what we are experience as irritability can be a lack of good bowel movement.Or it can be an emotional habit, a go-to response learnt earlier in our lives. Probably an outburst of anger might have put us in a power position in our early days. This might have been corroborated by a few more incidents and that has become an emotional habit, and we respond that way to a similar social stimuli. You would have observed this while stuck in traffic when feelings overwhelm rational behavior. The problem is not with emotionality but with appropriateness and its expression.
Another idea to become aware of our feelings would be develop a good emotional vocabulary and start verbalizing emotions in our daily conversations with people we trust. Though this might make us vulnerable it will surely push us to think why we are feeling what we are feeling.
As I embarked on this journey I could not help but wonder how our lives would have changed if we were taught self-awareness in our schools. I hope the day is not far where our education system will include essential human competencies like self-awareness, empathy, conflict resolution, listening skills and synergy in its curriculum – a good place to start creating a better world to live in.
