I often like to pretend that I’m a logical thinker, so for the longest time I (illogically!) convinced myself that emotions were petty, trivial and unimportant. After several years of reflection and contemplation, I still like to masquerade as a logical thinker, but I’ve come to realise that emotions are incredibly powerful and cannot be excluded from any serious discussion about anything involving people.
It’s impossible to make rational decisions without emotion. Decision-making requires value-attribution, and value-attribution is a fundamentally emotional process. Emotion is present even in the most logical, cold decisions. Emotion and empathy are not synonymous- disdain for others often has an emotional basis. The rare few emotionless people in the world, if they exist, would be characterised by their indifference and apathy. They won’t even care enough to tell you that they don’t care. True nihilists. Rare.
My personal epiphany:
I was a chronic underachiever throughout my youth and adolescence. My parents couldn’t understand why. I had no responsibilities, they reasoned. Nothing to worry about except my results. When they were in school, they had to care for their siblings and do household chores. What they would have given to be in my shoes, what heights they might have achieved! Their argument made logical sense. But I neglected my studies anyway. Why? Emotions. I thought it made sense to study, but I didn’t feel compelled to do it, so I didn’t. My parents and teachers would blame everything that I distracted myself with- basketball, cartoons, video games, music, my girlfriend. It never occurred to them to appeal to me emotionally, apart from guilt- and guilt is an emotion that we are always quick to get rid of. After some further soul-searching, I think it’s important to note that even then I wasn’t altogether apathetic and emotionless. I didn’t feel compelled to study because I felt like I was above it. Such a sensation was grounded in badly flawed inductive logic- I did fantastically well in the first few years of my education, so I reasoned that I would do well for the rest of my life. Karl Popper and Nassim Taleb would have smacked me across the head. I felt like I’d received all the validation I needed, and I felt like I had nothing to prove.
My emotional renaissance came in the form of my GCE ‘A’ Level results. I knew what I was going to get, and I got exactly what I deserved for the effort that I put in. I was oddly detached from it all- I remember that my parents and siblings were moderately congratulatory, which made me realise that they must have had expected me to fail miserably. I didn’t think I had anything to celebrate about. I came to the gradual realisation that the odds of me becoming spectacularly successful in life were diminishing fast. I was terrified at the realisation that I might well and truly live a nondescript, inconsequential life. I was angry when I realised that people who I had then considered intellectually inferior were going to be far more successful than I was.  (I have since developed a more refined perspective on intelligence and success, but the memory of the emotion remains.) I was hurt at the realisation that my family sincerely thought I wasn’t going to amount to much. I was incredibly disappointed and frustrated with myself to the point of intolerance. With my self-deception having been shattered by reality, I felt incredibly small as I realised that the amount of power I had at that moment to realize my potential and shape the world was far, far less than my humblest estimations. I simmered and stewed in my emotions and swore to myself that I was going to take charge of my life.
I have made it a point over the past couple of years to study successful people of all kinds, and I notice something, even amongst the most logical and intellectual people throughout history- every single one of them is emotionally driven. They might not admit it, and they might not even be conscious of it- but they are all motivated by strong, powerful emotions that are rooted deeply in their minds. Think of anybody that you might consider successful in any way in any field, and you will find passion- because passion creates compulsion and invokes propulsion. Hitler, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Einstein, Feynman, Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Mao, Obama, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey- nobody reaches the echelons of human achievement without emotion. Emotion is rocket fuel.
Usage Guidelines:
Nobody ever really teaches you how to deal with your emotions. The truth is, most people aren’t really sure themselves- your parents and teachers included.
Begin with self-awareness. You can’t manage what you are not aware of.
Check yourself, before you wreck yourself. A question you should be asking yourself many times a day- when you wake up, when you’re on the way to work or school, and before or after anything of importance, is “How am I feeling?” Specifically,what are you feeling, and why? They seem like obvious, even redundant questions- but you’d be amazed at how many people have no idea.
Get familiar with your emotions. If it doesn’t make you feel silly (and it shouldn’t!), list them out. List out all the emotions you feel over a month. If you’re a normal person who doesn’t make a conscious effort to manage your emotional state, you’ll be amazed by how often you feel “bored”, “annoyed”, “frustrated”, “lazy”, “pissed off”, and how little you feel “excited”, “empowered”, “fulfilled”, “energized”. A lot of our time and energy gets wasted away in negative emotional states when we’re not careful, and this leads to an undesirable and hard-to-escape cycle. You have to be aware of it before you can transcend it.
Self-awareness leads almost naturally to self-mastery.
Once you’re aware of your emotions and the conditions that create them, you should slowly begin to find that you’re able to manipulate them. By that I don’t mean to say that you can create and destroy emotions at will- realise that emotions are always present whether we like it or not, and the desire to be in control of our emotions is a fundamentally emotional desire. (Deep, huh?)
You get to choose your emotions by choosing what to focus on. Different people focus on different elements of the same experience. Successful people embrace failure as a learning opportunity. They feel pain too- don’t ever allow yourself to believe the ridiculous idea that “Nobody feels pain as much as I do.” Everybody hurts. The difference is that some people choose to wallow in it, and other people dry their tears, dust themselves off, get up and move on. Somewhere out there, there is somebody who’s going through worse than whatever it is that you’re going through, and they’re going to make the decision to deal with it. What about you?
Everybody has different needs and unique critical points. I’m speaking to myself in this entry, because I know myself best. You need to figure yourself out and what works for you. The stoic, masculine “Stop whining and grow the fuck up” style works for me, but it might be overkill for you. Figure out what works. Be patient, calm and fair to yourself.
A warning:
Rocket fuel is powerful but it can be dangerous. I speak from the perspective of a logical, thoughtful person who discovered emotion- for some reason, it never occurred to me to be self-destructive. I have seen some people allow emotion to tear themselves (and others) to shreds. Be safe, be sensible, be responsible. Vale.
Tony Robbins beautifully describes the power of emotions.
(Stay tuned for my next post- after self-awareness and self-mastery comes the awareness of others and interpersonal savvy!)
Find what lights a fire under your ass and use it. If it’s a quote, read that quote at the beginning of everyday and dominate it. If it’s music. Find that song that pumps you up and have a quality, intense workout. Why do something half assed? Bring your emotions into the situations where they’ll benefit you. And leave them out of the things where they’ll hinder you. – Chad Howse
“I was terrified at the realisation that I might well and truly live a nondescript, inconsequential life. I was angry when I realised that people who I had then considered intellectually inferior were going to be far more successful than I was….. I was hurt at the realisation that my family sincerely thought I wasn’t going to amount to much.”
This. I felt the exact same way
🙂
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