Rationalising emotion
Emotion triumphs rationale, even when we think we are making a rational decision, it has emotion in its core covered up with rationale thinking. Emotion can be used to describe your biases, values, state of mind etc and it can also be used to supercharge your purpose, desire, intention etc. Emotion determines your ability to empathize and to a large extent makes your human. However, the control on knobs of these emotions is what determines who we are and also whom we are seen as.
As science tells us, the emotional part of the brain is far more developed and older than our cognitive brain and therefore possess superpowers such as fogging your thinking brain to max up emotional power; giving you reactions rather responses. In that sense, how do you become more aware in the ‘heat of the moment’ and recognize your inabilities to think or recognize the rush of thoughts from the past and future?
Taking a rational path means to be able to allow the prefrontal lobe to be at the steering wheel of decision making, it is after all the thinking part of our physiology but why does the thinking brain allow itself to be fogged or struggle emotionally? Surely, the brain knows itself and understand its working subconsciously than we do consciously, or is making a decision or judgement more than evaluating things objectively?
To explain this further, when decisions are found to be challenging, it often takes the perspective of mind versus heart. Mind being the logical thing to do but the heart determining emotion or what feels right. However, while we all know what the thinking heart feels like, we also know that both these thoughts are taking place in our brain. It is that effort to participate and understand ourselves that helps us arrive at a balance to manage the relationship between the perspectives in life and the knobs for how you live your life.
Being able to 'Rationalise emotion', therefore, is one of the many things that makes us Creators' superior creation. As mentioned, helps empathize, connect with others and even protect ourselves. Allowing for connections in the real world. But it also means to be aware of your own biases, your ability to critically think, hopefully with that leading you to be open-minded and take a decision in fair consideration to all.
I teach because I can. Founder Director and Dean, Rustomjee Cambridge International School & Junior College
4 年Good article, Omar. That's why the emphasis has shifted away from IQ , and towards Emotional Quotient. However, it remains a fuzzy topic across institutions and organisations. Not many have figured out how to teach, build or assess EQ. Can it be taught? Can it be built? It is easier to build quantitative and language skills because we know how to teach that. Women are assumed to have a better and higher EQ than most men, and that's why they would make better leaders, unfortunately they face too many obstacles and biases in the corporate world. This article of yours alone can spur many issues that need to be tackled. Keep writing.