We'll leave behind the Blind Square this week (finally) and talk a little about Emotional Intelligence and the related concepts.
This week in class, you played the Emotion Coding game. Like most of the games in this class, it was designed to challenge you and make easy success unlikely. For some people, it might have been hard to "be onstage" and for others, it might have been difficult to express emotions. In this blog topic, I'd like you to reflect on the Emotion Coding game and how your performance in this game is associated with the rest of your life.
For example, I remember my mom saying (over and over and over) while I was growing up that it "wasn't what you say, it's how you say it" and I cultivated a fairly sarcastic tone of voice during my high school and college years. I didn't realize it until people started saying I was cynical or unsupportive. To me, a core value is being dependable and supportive. If you need, I'll be there. And, another core value is being positive and believing that everything will work out. So, it was hard to hear people think that I wasn't authentic or that I view the world (and the people in it) in a negative way. I had to check myself and what I was saying, especially when making first impressions, to make sure that my values were coming across. I grew up in an environment in which positive emotions were not frequently or easily expressed (or any emotions, really), because that was not my family's way. Realizing that I have this particular cultural background has helped me bemore aware of my emotional expression habits.
Every single day we experience emotions. We all do. Yet some are healthier than others and some of us are better at managing them than others. Who taught you to effectively deal with hurt, resentment, hatred, disgust, rage and frustration? Do you know how to honestly deal and cope with these emotions or are you a habitual avoider?
ReplyDeleteEverything can be taken from a man but the last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances, to choose one's way.
– Viktor Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning'
When thinking of emotions typically we believe we should forcefully control them like some sort of vice grip, but a more insightful word to use would be to “manage” your emotions. If you simply control your emotions they no longer act as part of you and your authenticity is denied. No one can sustain “fake it until you make it,” for any monumental length of time. The milestones and goals in life should be about sustainability over the long run. Life is not a 50 yard dash but more like an ultra-marathon. The more we try to bottle up and mechanistically control our emotions, the more we deny ourselves the beauty and richness of our genuineness.
The readings for the week; Strategies for Managing Your Emotions and Understanding Communications in One-to-One Relationships ascribe a monumental point of reference for understanding the emotions of self and others. The points of reference are that assumptions that we make about the level and quality of communication impede the understanding of the stimulated emotion. Because we all originate prewired with assumptions, and experiences our value framework is already preconditioned to receive certain signals while rejecting others. If I am preconditioned to view lazy people as stressful and difficult to manage I am preconditioned to hear every statement from a person I have labeled as lazy as a weasel plot to get out of work. This is where misunderstanding occurs, according to the Understanding Communications in One-to-One Relationship, a perception of negativity can take place when the decoder harbors prewired negative feelings or labels of the situation.
It is so important to “manage” emotions so that they are able to work in your behalf and not against you. My stomach literally jumped when I read about the story of the John Hopkins Shooting. As taken from a CNN report
Baltimore, Maryland (CNN) -- A man distraught about his mother's health shot and wounded a doctor at Baltimore's prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital on Thursday before killing his mother and taking his own life, police said.
The gunman was getting an update on his mother's medical condition "when he became emotionally distraught" and pulled a pistol out of his waistband, Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld said. He shot the doctor, then retreated to his mother's room, Bealefeld told reporters.
This is obviously a problem with dealing with emotions and obviously the doctor had a problem deciphering the emotions of the gunman.
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