Emotional Wisdom

Emotions are deeply entrenched responses to our environment that have been embedded into our evolutionary psyche for a reason: to help us thrive and survive.

Imagine for a moment the disgust you would feel upon seeing rotting meat, teeming with maggots. Our instinctive reaction of disgust primes a natural response in us—do not eat the meat. Think about other things that disgust you. The evolutionary reason that you feel disgust is to compel you to avoid digesting or coming into contact with the object of that disgust.

It is important to note that emotional reactions occur in a different part of the brain than rational thought. Our ability to think, which is largely governed by the cerebral cortex, is only one of the many functions of our brain. Emotional reactions, which are largely governed by the amygdala, are far quicker than rational thought. That is to say, we feel disgust, and the associated desire not to eat rotting meat, long before our rational mind tells us that eating it would not be a good idea.

Disgust is not the only emotional reaction to have evolutionary value. Other emotions prime us to act in different ways. The sadness that comes with losing a loved one often teaches us what we really should care about in life. This is because sadness primes us to be open to learning. The idea of learning from our mistakes is hard-wired in our mental faculties. Fear also has its place. It prompts us to act now in order to prevent something bad from happening in the future. Anger is an emotion that gets a lot of bad press but also has evolutionary value. It drives us to rise up against perceived injustices. Prospective coaching clients often ask us to help them learn to be more assertive. In reality, it is frequently not assertiveness skills they lack, but rather an unwillingness to listen to and act on the anger they feel inside.

So should you always act in the way that your emotions induce you to act? The answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no”. There are situations that require instinctive reaction and heeding your primal fear helps you escape danger.

“You do not need to know exactly what something is to know that it may be dangerous.”

—Joseph Le Doux

Yet some fears are irrational, and if I succumbed to them, I would never fly again. Similarly, anger can frequently be counterproductive. I have seen, for exampe, tennis stars lose their cool in angry temper tantrums that subsequently result in poorer performance on the court. Furthermore, anger can lead to inappropriate outbursts and violence that only serve to damage our relationships with others, sometimes beyond repair. Clearly, acting on your emotions without first thinking about those actions is not always a smart thing to do.

Quite often, the best approach is to integrate emotion and thought. This involves:

• Being aware of how you feel
• Understanding how those feelings are influencing your response or action
• Thinking about an appropriate and intelligent way forward

At this point, I thought it appropriate to finish with a quote by Aristotle that I originally read on the very first page of Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence.

“Anyone can be angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy.”

—Aristotle

Emotional wisdom and intelligent thought work hand-in-hand.

Tagged as: emotion