Show and tell, hide and decide

It has been a long week and I am glad that tomorrow is Friday. The week hasn't been particularly hard, but my daughter, Smallsteps, has been ill with a blocked nose which means not only can she not go to daycare, she is also struggling to get sleep and we have each taken it in turns to spend hours awake with her. Since I am up late anyway - it is generally my turn.

We are both lucky though, as we work in places that allow us to have the day off sick if a child is ill - I took most of Monday, my wife Tuesday and Wednesday, we shared today and my wife will take tomorrow, but work what she can. The problem is of course that taking the day off doesn't mean work doesn't stop, so we are both behind in our various activities.

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My team has a tradition of having new training specialist recruits deliver a topic of their choice in their first weeks and this week, the latest hire gave a session on Emotional Intelligence, something that I have looked into a little myself. She is a great trainer and delivers well, so I am glad she has joined the team and the couple hours was interesting, at least for those who hadn't thought about these things much prior.

In the Q&A at the end, I asked if she were to recommend one place to start exploring this area for someone who hadn't done anything before, what would it be - and she said, journaling. I agree, this is a good place to start, though I prefer expanding that out to blogging about topics that are important to me, rather than just reflecting directly on my experience.

However, one thing that always kinds of annoys me when people talk about the importance of emotional intelligence skills, is that they focus on the social side of things and the interpersonal relationships. It is not that these aren't important, but I see them as more of a secondary layer to be emotionally intelligent, where the real core is in the decision-making arena.

A lot of people have been convinced that showing emotion is important and see controlling emotion as hiding emotion. People who show uncontrolled emotion aren't intelligent by default, as intelligence is by design, being able to focus and direct thought itself. This means that emotional intelligence requires being able to feel the emotion arise, capture it, evaluate it and then make a decision to show or hide it in regard to the environmental conditions. Strong emotional intelligence can process this so fast, that comes as if there is no filter at all, as the default habit is set to monitor and direct emotional response.

In this way, the control allows for other factors to be improved, for example, our ability to be resilient, which some mean to be able to absorb the negative and keep on keeping on. But again, I think resiliency is more nuanced than that, as it isn't ignoring the conditions and it doesn't necessarily mean not changing, as that might be harmful. The resiliency isn't in the ability to maintain the same action, it is in the ability to clearly evaluate the conditions and make good decisions, where change might be the best course of action. People tend to confuse resiliency with stubbornness.

When we are emotional, it is similar to being drunk, where our thought processes are loosed and we are more likely to make decisions that we wouldn't normally. If you imagine your loving partner cheating on you with the excuse "but I was quite drunk" - is all forgiven? Unlikely, but similarly, when we are high on emotions and don't have control of our words and actions, we can cause a lot of harm that we can never take back. Being able to feel the emotion and then make a wise choice on how to present it to the world gives us the possibility to recognize that our initial reaction might not be our true self, it is just the chemicals talking.

Emotions are just chemicals that boil in us based on stimulus, but the information they use doesn't need to be accurate at all and they will respond to misheard and misunderstood content also. Emotions do not tell the truth about the conditions, yet people feel that because they feel, their responsive actions are justified. This is why having emotional control is a positive for building and maintaining good relationships, as it is possible to learn how to pause on the negatives and be more free flowing on the positives. Often, the emotional responses work in the opposite, where we release our frustrations on those around us, but are more reserved when giving praise or being grateful.

When we are able to be thoughtful in anger and annoyance, we ill likely find ways to calm down and find solution to challenges faced, improving conditions in a healthier way, including with those who frustrated us in the first place. When we are able to express our positives about people freely, we are more likely to connect with them, encourage them, inspire them, motivate them. This is why inspiring leaders are often liberal with heaping praise on others around them when there are issues, they are controlled and solution-seeking.

Most of us however don't consider much of this about ourselves and rarely reflect on our own behavior, yet, we are emotionally responsive to our environment. It makes us far more susceptible to being manipulated, because the resilience of our mind is lower, meaning we are less likely to think well - always a little bit emotionally drunk and once we come across a headline that triggers us, we down shot after shot of emotion, going from zero to a hundred without even a cognitive handbrake to slow us down.

For me, a lot of what I learn comes through my own observation of life and my place in it, which is then filtered and processed through my posts. It doesn't matter what the topic or genre is, there are always my controlled emotions behind each post, where I try to make good decisions on what I show and what I hide.

Hiding our emotions isn't emotional dishonesty, it is the understanding that our behavior impacts on others and our actions have consequences. It is about being able to face our world and maintain agency, even under stressful conditions and hopefully, get better results for all concerned by making the most out of the hand we were dealt.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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