Emotional
Maturity
“When
awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life.”
Tara
Meyer Robson
The
subject of emotional intelligence has come up a lot lately—in life situations
and in conversations with friends. One thing has become clear—high academic intelligence
is not a guarantee of equally high emotional intelligence. The major factor in
acquiring emotional maturity—because one must actually work to acquire it—is self-monitoring
and self-questioning. We assume that the way we feel about something is the truth
and is simply “the way it is.” Unless we stop to ask ourselves questions about
our emotional responses, we will never get at the reality of a situation nor
become emotionally mature.
There
has now been enough research into emotional intelligence to understand what it
is and what one must do to acquire it. There is a great article
about it on the YourTango website, written by Dr. Todd Helvig, and titled, “The
Smartest People Possess These 4 Traits of Emotional Intelligence.” The four
principles that Dr. Helvig outlines are: 1) Self-Awareness; knowing what
creates an emotional response in you; understanding your gut feelings and being
able to relate your emotions to your thoughts. That sounds simple enough, but it
requires a bit of digging. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? When
have I felt this way before? What is being triggered in me? And before you call
this naval gazing or psychobabble, understand that unless and until we are
willing to ask ourselves the hard questions, we have no chance of arriving at
emotional maturity. Self-awareness is primary.
2) Self-Management: You are
in control your emotions and know effective ways to use them to guide and
direct your behavior. In other words, you do not allow your emotional upheaval to
control what you do. Sometimes, it is better to take a break, give yourself
time to breathe and think things through before you act. It helps to have role
models to guide you. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was a model of emotional
intelligence in her senate hearings this week—she was cool and thoughtful under
fire. She was respectful and unperturbed in the face of personal attacks. She
used the emotions she must have felt to create productive responses rather
than a destructive ones.
3) Empathy: Understanding
the emotions of others. Look at the situation through their eyes. If you can infer
how others feel and put yourself in their shoes for just a minute, you demonstrate
emotional intelligence. Empathy is not admitting defeat, it is not feeling
sorry for the other person; it is simply trying to feel what they are feeling
and asking yourself whether you might behave the same way if you were them.
And
finally, 4) The ability to build relationships. Do you know how to help others
manage their emotions, or do you add fuel to their fire? Can you use your own
emotions as a guide to build and maintain positive relationships? Benjamin
Franklin once said, “Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.” When you
feel angry, if possible, take a time-out until you can respond in a
non-destructive way. When we are in emotional pain over a situation, as hard as
it is, we must sit with it until some of the pain passes. Then we will make
better decisions and better life choices. Emotional pain is a signal that we should
pay attention long enough for it teach us. Inspirational author, Alan Cohen advised:
“Use pain as a steppingstone, not a campground.”
Emotional
intelligence is not stuffing one’s emotions, nor is it bludgeoning someone with
our words. Emotional maturity is arrived at when we can manage our own emotions
and those of other people either by our silence, or by carefully choosing our
words to explain. Sometimes the smartest people are those who defuse anger with
kindness.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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