Raising Your Emotional Intelligence

Raising your Emotional Intelligence (Ch. III)

Jane Seagal. Harper Co.
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It's Smart to Feel
Why doesn't anybody like Lucy Leroy? As she'll be quick to tell you, she's smart, conscientious, well organized, and industrious. She cares about other people; she really does. But time after time, when the invitations go out, her name is left off the list;she hears chitchat of lunch plans in the making at the office but eats alone at her desk.
And whatever happened to Tom O'Brian? Tom was the kid in the neighborhood all the moms envied--so smart he got sent to a school for gifted kids; so creative his inventions won science prizes usually reserved for much older children. He was awarded a scholarship to some Ivy League school, but lately arumor's been circulating that he dropped out and is repairing toasters out of his apartment. Could it be possible?
How about you? How's your life going? Have you achieved all you expected you would? Are you content with the number and depth of your friendships? Is your marriage the fountain of intimacy and support you dreamed it would be? Have you been promoted with the alacrity you deserve atwork? Do you feel generally at ease in the world--or a little out of synch, for reasons you can't quite discern?
If you feel out of synch; if you answered no to many of the questions above, I can diagnose your problem in a snap. You're normal. You, Lucy, Tom--and Dick and Harry and Jane and Joan--are average, red-blooded thinking Americans, trained in family, school, and work to value theintellect and devalue the emotions, to squelch passion and to use your head to "figure out" what your body is feeling, to be, in short, smart-not emotional.
But what exactly is "smart" and at what cost do we stifle the emotional component of our identities?
I say the price is far too high, for ignoring our emotions leaves all of us at least to some degree -lacking the skills we need to leadhealthy, satisfying, fulfilling lives. Our IQ may help us understand and deal with the world on one level, but we need our emotions to understand and deal with ourselves and, in turn, others. Without an awareness of our emotions, without the ability to recognize and value our feelings and act in honest accordance with those feelings, we cannot get along well with other people, we cannot get ahead inthe world regardless of how "smart" we are, we cannot make decisions easily, and we are often simply at sea, out of touch with our sense of self.
Culturally, Americans (along with many other Western societies) have been taught to think of consciousness itself as an intellectual activity rather than as a heart or gut response. We've learned not to trust our emotions; we've been told emotions distortthe allegedly more accurate information our intellect supplies. Even the term emotional signifies weak, out of control, even childish. "Don't be a baby!" we say to the little boy who is crying on the playground; "Leave him alone! Let him work it out!" we admonish the little girl who runs to help the little boy. In fact, we tend to mold our entire self image around our intellect. Our abilities tomemorize and problem-solve, to spell words and do mathematical calculations are easily measured on written tests; those measurements are slapped onto report cards in the form of grades and ultimately dictate which college will accept us and which career paths we should follow. If we do not perform well on these standardized tests, we clearly feel the impact of the label -any goal we have becomesthat much tougher to reach when we know we may well not be smart enough to attain it.
Does your instinct tell you there's something wrong with that picture? That's because as much as our society tells us being objective and rational is the way to get ahead, the sense that people weren't meant to be thinking-only beings runs strong in us all. When we see a film that moves us, we agree it was...