It’s been a long week and I’m glad that tomorrow is Friday. The week has not been particularly difficult. But my brother was sick with a blocked nose which means he just can’t go to day care. He’s also struggling to get to sleep and we’ve each taken turns spending time with him waking up a few hours with him since I’m late anyway. It's my turn now.
We are both lucky, although we work in places that allow us to keep our day sick when children are sick. I took most of the time on Mondays, my wife on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we shared today and my wife will receive tomorrow, but work out what she can. The problem, of course, is that taking a day off doesn't mean work won't stop. So we are both lagging behind in our various activities.
My team has a history of hiring new training specialists to provide a topic of their choice in their first weeks and this week, the latest hire has given a session on Emotional Intelligence. Which I saw a little myself. He is a great trainer and well delivered. So I'm glad he joined the team and the two hours were interesting. At least for those who haven't thought about these things much before.
At the end of the Q&A, I asked what it would be like if he recommended a place for someone to start exploring. And in journalism he said. I agree, this is a good place to start, although I prefer to expand on blogging about things that are important to me, not just a direct reflection on my experience.
However, one thing that always bothers me when people talk about the importance of sensitive intelligence skills is that they focus on the social aspects of things and interpersonal relationships. Not that these aren’t important, but I see them as a secondary level to being emotionally intelligent. Where the real key lies in decision making.
Many people have become convinced that it is important to show emotion and try to control emotions as they are hidden. People who show uncontrolled emotions are not intelligent by default. Because intelligence by design, being able to focus and think directly about itself means that the sense needed for sensitive intelligence is felt, it is captured. Evaluate and then decide whether to show or hide it regarding environmental conditions. Strong emotional intelligence can process it so fast. It comes as if there is no filter, because the default habit is to monitor and set the direct sensitive response.
Thus, control allows other factors to improve. For example, our ability to be resilient, which means we will be able to absorb a few negatives and continue. But again, I think resilience requires more than that, because it doesn’t ignore the conditions and that certainly doesn’t mean not to change. Because it can be harmful. Resilience lies not in the ability to maintain the same action, but in the ability to clearly evaluate conditions and make good decisions. Where change may be the best course of action. People confuse resilience with inertia.
It’s like getting drunk when we’re emotional, where our thought processes are abandoned and we’re more likely to make decisions that we don’t normally make. If you imagine that your loving partner is cheating on you with the excuse that "I was pretty drunk" - is everything forgiven? Impossible, but similarly, when we are on top of emotions and have no control over our words and actions. Then we can do a lot of damage that we can never take back. Being able to feel emotions and then make wise choices about how to present them to the world gives us the possibility to recognize that our initial reaction may not be real to us, it is just chemical talk.
Feelings are just chemicals that emanate from us based on stimuli. However, the information they use does not need to be accurate at all and they respond to content that is heard and misunderstood. Emotions do not speak the truth about conditions, yet people think that their reactive actions are justified because they are felt. This is why having sensitive control is positive for building and maintaining good relationships, because it is possible to teach how to break the negative and flow more freely into the positive. Often, sensitive responses work in reverse. Where we express our frustrations to the people around us, we are more reserved when it comes to praising or being grateful.
When we are able to be thoughtful in anger and frustration, we can probably find solutions to the challenges we face in calming down and improve the situation in a healthy way, even with those who frustrated us at first. When we are able to express our positive about people for free, we are more likely to connect with them, encourage them, inspire them, inspire them. This is why motivational leaders are often generous when they are praised by others around them when they have a problem. They are controlled and look for solutions.
Most of us don't think much of ourselves and rarely reflect on our own behavior. Yet we are sensitively responsive to our environment. This makes us more sensitive to manipulation. Because our minds are less resilient, which means we are less likely to feel good - there is always a bit of emotional intoxication and once we come up with a title that triggers us. The emotion we get after we shoot, the emotion that goes from zero to a hundred slows us down without any cognitive handbrake.
For me, much of what I’ve learned comes from observing my own life and my place in it. Which is filtered and processed through my posts. It does not matter what the subject or genre is. Behind every post is always my controlled emotion, where I try to make good decisions about what I show and what I hide.
Hiding our emotions is not a sensitive dishonesty, it is understood that the impact of our behavior falls on others and is the result of our actions. It is able to face our world and maintain agency. Even in the midst of stress and hopefully, using the most out of the hand we deal with will yield better results for all concerned.