Emotional Intelligence

Documenting my key learnings

There are some things that can be learnt from a book and some that can be learnt only by experience. Emotional intelligence is one of those things that you can’t learn from a book.

Since I have a packed schedule, I never cordoned off time to know about my emotions. In fact I thought emotions were useless and only logic mattered. I saw suppression of emotions as a way to avoid uncomfortable truths and focus on things that mattered.

I was aware that I was not emotionally intelligent. To cover this weakness I did purchase a book with the same title written by Daniel Goleman. But I found it extremely boring and did not read beyond 140 pages in spite of many attempts.

But there was one emotion that I badly wanted to feel — love. But to rightly navigate around this emotion, I realised that I have to feel all emotions effectively, including ones that I don’t like.

Not a Superhuman

The first emotion that I had to deal with before understanding others is my own arrogance. It was arrogant of me to think that I was some stoic stud who could weather all storms and not be bothered by anything. But in reality surroundings do shape our behaviour and emotional reactions.

It is hard not to react in a crazy scenario. If not a crazy response, you end up reacting in some way or the other to protect yourself or find the reason for craziness. And things you do in the process make you appear crazy.

Now it’s again a tall ask to say that one can prevent all sorts of crazy scenarios. But it is possible to identify people who are capable of creating crazy scenarios and stay away from them.

Traits that I have observed in people who create crazy scenarios are

• They crib a lot and never take responsibility

• Crazy people judge others while not introspecting about their own actions

• They try to pit people against each other

• They love drama and like to watch others fall

• Generally love games, lies and manipulation

• They are addicted to attention and don’t like a scenario where spotlight is not on them.

There’s no way you can deal with this if you are sane. More often than not you are on the edge most of the time to ensure that nothing crazy happens. And if by mistake, you end up investing emotionally in a crazy person, then consider yourself doomed.

Understanding this reality requires a little bit of humility. You are not a superhuman. You will mess up in a crazy environment and that’s human. Don’t blame yourself if this has happened in the past.

Introspect and understand that you fucked up the moment you refused to build solid boundaries or started pursuing the validation of an emotionally unavailable person.

Rewarding bad behaviour

There’s a concept called reinforcement learning in Machine Learning technology. If you reward good results, the algorithm shows more of that behaviour and the model improves. It’s the same with humans as well.

But during some occasions, I realised that bad behaviour was due to some sort of past issues and hence if you pour love and attention on an individual, they will eventually become good. I kinda derived this idea from the TV show Ted Lasso. But in reality this is a terrible theory.

One should never ever reward bad behaviour no matter what stakes are involved. Even if you love the person immensely, you should take a step back, communicate needs and enforce consequences if behaviour doesn’t change. Compassion given out to bad actors eventually turns into poisonous pain.

Controlling the surroundings

All of these factors lead to one critical point. Individuals need to exercise their choice and remove themselves from toxic environments. You need to surround yourself with sane people who can meet your needs and treat you right.

There’s no point wailing over someone who treated you badly if you can’t vet the individual in a few controlled environments before promoting them in your life.

In my case I realised a tendency to compete for the attention and acceptance of people who give intermittent reinforcement (aka breadcrumbs). It had become a bad habit. I realised that it was carried over from childhood.

That’s probably because of inadequate attention given to me by a single separated parent. I was surprised by mom’s muted response to me topping class X exams.

There was literally no encouragement or enthusiasm in her whenever I achieved major milestones. However there were signs of anger and jealousy over losing control over me.

This is what set me up for a lifetime of achievement chasing and approval seeking behaviours which have finally come to my light.

Though I believed moving out of the house would solve the problem, which partially helped, I still carry those deep scars even today.

Patterns are like Inertia

Even after I realised that I had certain patterns and wanted to change them, I realised these are hardwired to some extent.

You might avoid them consciously but they cling with great tenacity. It takes time for them to loosen up and fade away even if you work hard on these learnings.

Being patient with oneself and reiterating the new desired behaviour in your own head can be very helpful. I had to learn the art of self-compassion to patiently wait, work and finally unlearn these hardwired behaviours.

Patterns built in the system for decades can’t disappear in weeks. This is a difficult reality. But ignoring them is not a solution. Changing the pattern does take a lot of time. It takes a toll on emotional well-being and sometimes physical health as well.

I allowed myself to let the pain rip. I missed fitness classes and ate carb-rich dosas to keep myself happy during these days. I was ok carrying an ugly tummy as well. The tsunami of self-realisation had hit me hard. But the old structure had to be destroyed to make way for stronger ramparts on the edge of my emotional coastline.

Entitlement (or the lack of it)

Lack of positive reinforcement at home meant trying harder to win the parental love and approval. This also meant settling for lesser than what I deserved. The same happened in my romantic relationships.

The deep scars hidden under the sleeve burned when they got closer to the desired ones.

I must admit that I could not hold it together. I didn’t ask for more. Instead I tried to hang on for lesser and lesser attention.

As my friend rightly pointed out, my peace-making, problem-solving and approval-seeking tendencies has only attracted broken people. Broken just like me but in a different way.

When will this stop? I wondered. It will only when I stop giving such individuals encouragement or reward their bad behaviour. It must stop.

But I was unable to follow through during the first few months. I am making massive progress in redefining the meaning of love and kind of treatment that I must accept from others.

I’m not there yet, but I know I’m enough. I’m good enough and I deserve a lot more than what has been given to me from an emotional POV.

I am now 80% there in terms of rebalancing the equation not only in terms of romantic relationships but also in friendships and office dynamics.

I can speak up for my needs and get valuable feedback on where I stand. The creaking wheels have overcome the inertial friction that held them back. Now we need to make it move and then speed up.

So these are my first hand learnings. Even if I had finished Daniel Goleman’s book on emotional intelligence, the ideas would not have sunk in.

This knowledge has to be learned on the ground and assimilated through introspection. I am truly proud of the distance I’ve covered. It is encouraging.

I need to be more entitled. I have settled for far less than what I truly deserve in the past. It needs to end.