Emotional or Emotio'null'?

Did you know that there are nearly 27 different categories of emotions we can feel as humans? Or that a wild claim a few years ago pronounced that a human could potentially experience 34,000 different emotions in their lifetime but primarily expreience only 8 of them? Probably not.

As humans, the greatest luxury is to deeply feel emotions and the connections they bring with them. Its a ride we are bound to hold on to throughout our life and what we make of it naturally changes with time. But what we must not do is deny its existence and let ourselves believe that we can avoid it. To convey better what I am trying to derive, let's recount a few personal experiences we all encounter.

Let's say you are in school, doing your best in grade 5 and then in one of the exams, your friends scores more than you. What did you feel? Several pangs of jealousy. What did you make of that feeling? You probably developed a slight bit of hatred towards them and stopped talking to them. Well, why did that happen? Because when you are barely 10 years old, you don't have the maturity to think any better. So you end up feeling jealous and maybe forget it after a few days when they lend you their favourite eraser.

Now let's say you are in Grade 12 and the same thing happens. What would you feel now? Jealously ofcourse because whether we accept it or not, that is the first thing that steps in. But what is different this time is that it doesn't stop there. You take one step forward and reflect on why you were not able to score those marks. You are mature enough now to maybe accept that you need to work harder or have the foresight that since you are involved in extracurricular activities, you can do a better job at managing your priorities and focusing on what is really important to you. Well this goes without saying that you have grown up enough now to not hold a grudge against the one who outperformed you.

To take it a tad bit further, to speak in the context of work - consider that you and your colleague are working on the same assignment and you both have been asked to come up with a deck. Post review, your peer's deck is selected to be presented in the leadership forum. So what happens now? Would you feel jealous? Maybe a little bit but the major catch here is that you would not let this whole incident get the better of you. Nuh-Uh, not happening. What happens instead is that you go over your deck and the one selected, you carefully compare and contrast, you notice why yours did not get selected, ask your peer to walk you through what they did differently and incorporate newer ideas going forward, maybe even propose that you and your peer collaborate for the next task and present a much better deck.

So what did we actually arrive at through these examples? We see that jealousy is a constant feeling but what's different is that we learn to regulate that emotion with time and drive more mindful decisions after we experience it. We learn to consciously control how we feel and not let negativity get the better of us. More importantly, did we feel the need to force the emotion out of us and act that it doesn't affect us in any way? No. Rather what we did was accept that its an organic feeling and the best way to get past it is deal with it.

To address the crux of this blogpost, we as adults are often led to believe that feeling emotions is a sign of weakness. That strength is only derived from being stone cold and not letting yourself feel any emotion. That the whole game of life is either black or white and unless you usher all the emotions out of yourself, you cannot get ahead. Well that is the thought I am trying to provoke and the misconception I am willing to challenge today.

Being an emotional person does not mean that you are not a strong person. It does not mean that you cry your eyes out at every instance. It does not mean that you cannot think straight and logically. It does not mean that you are not ambitious or that you cannot see the bigger picture. It does not mean that you are weak and are unable to take the right decisions and it definitely does not mean that you are an 'emotional fool'. Maybe we have been led to believe the wrong picture for too long.

The way we are not wired to see it is that being an emotional person is actually a good thing, provided we know how to channelize that emotion and use it act from a position of strength. The ability to feel sentiments is a gift, indeed a superpower because lets assume that you are experiencing a happy emotion very strongly. In that case just think about the motivation and pure bliss it gives you to strong-arm that gush of happiness and delight into welcoming more events and occurences in your life that make you feel the same way and re-direct that positive energy towards working on making that an ongoing feeling. In a few cases where your state of mind is overcome by anger, disappointment, fear, sadness,

do not resist the emotion and try to push back. That way you would just be stuck in a loop of the same emotion and find it much harder to get past. It's advised that you rather let it sink in without affecting your ability to take rational decisions after.

The roller-coaster of emotions we feel sometimes is an organically driven process so embrace it, deal with it and move on. We often deny that they affect us which backtracks our healing process and our ability to make something positive out of it. Believe it or not, logic and emotions can co-exist. Yes, they can. They are not mutually exclusive and when regulated with a slight bit of hindsight and foresight of what you would make of the parade of emotions, you can have a much better, emotionally rich life.

With the onset of AI, technology has taken over so much, for good reason ofcourse. But it can never take away the authenticity of feeling human, which again is only through being able to feel a barrage of emotions and make something good out it. It's simple - don't force emotions into you (like don't feel disappointed at someone just because that's the usual drill even though you would go the length to understand their point of view) and don't force them out of you (for example - you are feeling resentment because you misunderstood someone and took it out on them). Let that spark of thought to forgive someone when you fully understand them dawn naturally upon you and let that feeling of resentment serve as a reminder for you to be more cautious and mindful. It is a game of balancing at the end of the day but trust me, being able to make the best out of emotional moments and not being 'null' in that department is what preserves human sanity.

Let me know your thoughts, experiences and suggestions!