If we could just learn to speak in equations, our world would be a much better place. Communication would become much more efficient, allowing us to solve problems quickly and understand each other better. Once, when I was working with a scientist on his leadership skills, he told me that success requires maintaining focus on the larger goals while paying attention to achieving small successes in the present. Most communication goes beyond words, with cues and signals picked up between people. Those with the ability to understand these are said to possess a high level of emotional intelligence; and we can both agree how essential this is. If one is not so good at emotional intelligence, will they still be able to become a great leader? Research tells us that great leaders are also good at emotional intelligence. Open up emotionally, learn and understand – these words are key to unlocking the secrets of our emotions and those around us. If we can discover the means to better comprehend and process our feelings – both for ourselves, as well as others – it can help create an atmosphere of acceptance and connection.
About five years ago, I experienced a powerful combination of three elements that sparked my exploration into this topic. What happened during this period was the perfect storm for me to learn about these issues. I had recently written a book called "A Married Man's Survival Guide". While researching for it, I interviewed a variety of men in monogamous marriages that had lasted between 35 to 60 years. From my findings I came to the conclusion that there are more men with similar emotional challenges than just myself. I had begun researching a theological concept called the dark night of the soul. This is a place where everything you believe to be true no longer explains your current situation. It can be quite scary and I will explain more about this principle in a minute. I was also hired by a pharmaceutical firm to begin my story in the R&D department focusing on emotional intelligence. My purpose there was to work alongside the senior managers, and it has been a journey ever since.
You likely know the character Sheldon from the popular Big Bang Theory show on television. With his quirky personality, Sheldon has accumulated many fans over time. Intelligence and savvy skills were key qualifications in filling the Sheldons' council meeting room. Unfortunately, each of these talented and knowledgeable individuals assumed they were the brightest in the room and now their successful qualities have pushed them up into senior leadership roles. Leadership can be a difficult task, especially when it comes to being the brightest kid in the room. Unfortunately, this approach often comes across as abrasive and arrogant—the wrong way of leading. I found it difficult to broach the subject of emotions with them as none of them had ever been taught about how to speak or understand these topics. Yet, at the same time, I could not just walk in and start talking about it either. Good or bad, I was quite curious and a bit distressed to realize that most of these people I was dealing with seemed to have only two emotional states. They would either say they were doing good or not so great when I asked them how they felt. I was struggling to figure out how to discuss different emotions and their various complexities with them, such as recognizing that frustration doesn't necessarily mean anger, and therefore being able to manage someone based on the emotional state they are in requires a unique set of skills.
One day while having lunch with a friend, I noticed an interesting poster of vegetables arranged in a periodic table-like fashion which reminded me of the one we had to memorize in high school chemistry. This sparked my curiosity and I wondered: what if there was a “periodic table” for human emotions? Now, relax and take a quick search of the web — nothing was found. So I created one, it looked like this: no quiz for anyone at the end, by the way. I'd be in trouble if I borrowed something as complicated as Mendeleev's periodic table and it wasn't up to standard; so it would have to be reliable or we would both get into hot water. The lighter emotions like joy, contentment and curiosity are at the top of this sequence while the more heavy and complex emotions like anger, guilt and depression come at the bottom. Replacing the real periodic table's f-block is a sequence made up of passions and depressions — emotions which are not only heavier and complex but also more unstable. Emotion is represented on a spectrum, with the more visceral or gut emotions on the left and the more lighter and spiritual feelings on the right. Moving along this spectrum, it progresses from raw emotion to increasingly heady and spiritually-driven states. Using chemical symbols and atomic weights, the guys gave each emotion a scientific look and started having fun with it too. After all, these were just some guys playing around.
You'll find things in it that you know, like a prescription that expresses relief. Such reflections are what make it unique. Pleasure was given the symbol of "mmm"; this term is applied to describe a feeling of intense delight. The significance of love can be weighed using the symbol of pi; for it has the power to keep the world going round. Gratitude has the atomic weight of 24.700, since it needn’t be exclusive to certain moments; there are countless opportunities every day to express appreciation and be thankful for the people and experiences in our lives. Living with a mindset of gratitude 24/7 allows us to recognize how richly blessed we truly are. Dread was known to be the heaviest of all the emotions, estimated to carry a weight of six times 10 to the 24th metric tons, a truly gargantuan amount indeed! Of course, Denial does not consider its atomic weight to be significant, so nothing was really attributed to it. It was great fun to encourage the participants to observe and reflect on their feelings and emotions. The purpose of this activity was to engage them in a discussion about emotionality, yet it still does not exactly constitute as one about emotional intelligence. At the end of the day, our discussion was mainly academic, but it had to start with emotions. Despite 35 years spent with all-male teams and writing a guide for married men, I learned that many of us are still not very good at expressing our feelings as we have often been taught not to even feel them. At the end of the day, it was just an academic discussion and it would remain that way until things got real. Leaders can find out that having knowledge isn't enough to lead, and us ordinary folks can suddenly be left on our own when our rug gets pulled away, causing us to fall flat in the mud, let alone left alone in the dark. The dark night of the soul, often humbling and humiliating, comes from traumatic experiences that trigger it. It can be manifested in various ways.
At 5:00 a.m every Thursday morning, my best friend and I would have a phone call like clockwork; even though he had moved away to Florida 15 years ago. However, within a couple of months last year, that routine was tragically cut abruptly when he passed away suddenly. On the heels of that tragedy, a man on my men's team passed away. It was another heartbreaking loss that has profoundly impacted me in particular. His doctors gave him a timeline of six to twelve months to get his affairs in order, but just five days after this notice was given, he sadly passed away just like that. Those weren't the actual shocks that blew me away to kingdom come, but the evidence presented would have been compelling enough for any jury to find the unwitting culprits guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, when it came time to make the hard decision to close my business, that was when I really felt the crushing blow. We had to close our early childhood education center, due to a lack of stability. This was a business but not only that - it was an essential service for children which we found difficult to staff with enough teachers. We closed on Monday, and so I wanted to make sure that all the children had somewhere to go. To do this, we decided to place them into all the different schools in the area. Last Tuesday night, to aid in the transition, I was spending time in my office alone, completing photocopies of various records. While it was around 7:30 at night, and I was surrounded by stacks of yellow folders, it suddenly dawned on me that these weren't just papers – these were the beloved children that I had pledged to protect and defend with all my might. Tears streaming down my face, I found it hard to keep my composure: the sadness I felt was too overwhelming. As I tried to suppress the emotion, an unstoppable flood of sobbing began; my sorrow would not be silenced. I couldn't stop crying while I was on my way back home. When I got there, I ran straight to the bedroom and threw myself onto the pillow, screaming in pain. It just felt so bad. The previous night, I had gone through a long period of intense sobbing and convulsing but after four hours, I finally fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, however, I felt refreshed and revitalized, but more in spiritual form than in bodily form.
I looked similar on the outside, but inside I was completely different; I had opened up, and it felt like there was a void in my chest so large you could have fit a Mack truck through it. It was a dark night of the soul for me - something I had read and studied about for five years, but only after finishing my thesis on it in May did I finally understand it to be an intensely personal experience of being torn apart and rearranged inside. Grief drove me to feel a range of emotions beyond the chart, some that I never experienced before. This touchstone to compassion opened a hole, out of which flowed all those intense, and sometimes overwhelming, feelings. Regret and grief both provide important opportunities for empathy and compassion. Specifically, Brenda Brown states that regret is the birthplace of empathy, while I similarly suggest that grief creates an environment in which compassion can flourish. Compassion is a feeling which entails understanding and sympathy toward another person's struggles. It is a willingness to suffer with them, and to be there while they experience their emotions. Compassion allows us to truly know what someone else is going through. Compassion is essential for creating and sustaining connections with others, even when everything else seems to be falling apart. Experiencing the darkness of despair has its own benefits: it helps to break down pride so that we can learn the importance of compassion. Having compassion for yourself first allows you to have an inside out view of others. This enables you to see and understand their feelings more deeply.
The dark night is a powerful emotional experience, one that brings us all closer together and profoundly alters our connections to each other. My dark night is unique and different to that of others; I'm certain of it. No two nights have to be the same for different people. It can be a big bang, or it can be a hundred little things all adding up - either way, the result is equally powerful. At the end of the day, allowing yourself to feel and be in touch with your emotions is something that opens you up and facilitates intimacy. When wide open like this, you're not only solidifying a connection between yours and other people’s feelings, but also transforming a relationship into something more otherworldly. We may have been mistaken in referring to this phenomenon as "emotional intelligence" when, in reality, it might be better described as "emotional intimacy". No matter our race, faith, age, gender or any other trait we share, all seven billion of us have one commonality: the capacity to experience and express emotion. Intimacy with your emotions gives a universal recognition that does not factor in differences. The dark night can be filled with a feeling of dread - as one CEO confided to me, they feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of managing hundreds of lives. Or it might be something more subtle yet equally agonizing, such as seeing the heartbreaking image of a Syrian father cradling his deceased child. The bottom line of emotional intelligence is not about having a vast vocabulary or assigning certain significance to words. Rather, it's about understanding and managing one's own emotions, as well as recognizing and responding effectively to the emotions of others. The power of relationship lies in our ability to truly connect with each other. When we share an understanding and are able to empathize, the bond between them becomes much stronger. This connection allows us to be more open and trusting of one another, resulting in a much more meaningful relationship. With my studies I found myself not unlike Sheldon, with a deep knowledge of emotions but no real attachment to them. All in all, my findings just confirmed what I was already expecting. A perfect storm or a dark night gives us an opportunity to connect with our feelings, and this is what makes the world better. If we learn to be emotionally intimate, each one of us could truly be a blessing to others - namaste!
See also: https://mygodsentangels.com/