Emotional Intelligence, a real perspective

Nishan WIMALACHANDRA -Corporate Trainer, Lecturer and Writer

The corporate world has heard enough of the importance of emotional intelligence.

Most of us know that it ranges from knowing one's emotions, managing them, as well as recognizing and understanding same in other peoples so that it's easier to manage, control or empower people within organizational settings as well as in personal relationships and to motivate us as well as others.

Today many organizations brag about how employees must manage personal lives as against professional careers which seem to demand more and more of one's time without providing an outlet as to how to actually do it.

Organizations world over echo on 'work-life balance', notwithstanding the disturbing statistics proving paltry achievements.

What is emotional intelligence?

Firstly one must understand the realities of life.

That is, humans are not machines. They are a complex combination of flesh and blood. A thinking animal, one who is very much different to others, of course to most of them in existence.

Human emotion, from love, joy, delight to hatred and depression or anything else is a complex production of chemical reactions in the brain.

So are we now just a heap of chemicals?

Yes we are. Almost all human behaviour is triggered by complex chemical reactions in the brain, call it love, call it hatred or any other emotional feeling of well-being, they are all chemical reactions.

The only difference is that as humans we romanticize things, fantasize all of our emotions and give it a name tag and call it real.

For example, most of us know many people including men and women who cry while watching movies, famous Hindi movies such as My Name is Khan had been responsible for many of such crying scenes while the movie is being played. Hollywood movies such as Sweet November, Seven Pounds make most people cry. Now let's look at it objectively. The movie stars are paid to act in such a way, while the musicians play a very touchy theme when the scene takes place, and on the other side, the one who's crying too has paid for a ticket which is a total creation of a paid film director.

Now how do you think that happened? We all know that things in films are usually not real, unless they are based on a real story.

At the same time I remember a relation of mine crying while watching TV about the people who got washed away at the Galle Bus Stand in 2004 during the tsunami wave.

But this is a real situation as compared to the movies, but the reactions of our brains are the same. So now do you think that the tsunami scene was a creation of a paid film director? Confusing isn't it?

It isn't a mystery anymore that human emotions are only chemical reactions in the brain, a person's believes, feelings and emotions are indeed controlled by many chemicals such as adrenalin, cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, vasopressin and oxytocin.

These ensure how emotionally stable or unstable we are, whether we are in love, or something else.

Why do lovers share chocolates?

If anyone had been in love at least once they may remember that chocolate also does the same trick. It may give you the same feeling you get when you are in love as chocolate is full of phenylethylamine most commonly known as PEA.

The combination of these chemicals has the potential to override the activity of the part of the brain that controls the rational thinking.

And, as many colleagues and friends have found, no amount of logical reasoning could convince someone that the person they think they are in love with is "all wrong for them."

Love must stand the test of time to determine if it is true and whether or not the object of one's love is real.

This long term attachment in love is also a result of another chemical reaction.

Thinking animals

Humans are these amazing animals who experience and partly understand a lot of chemical reactions. I recently had this opportunity to witness a litter of our family pet. For a moment I was so taken by the love shown by this mother over the newborn. How she took care of these puppies.

But actually it was just instinctual and biological behaviour of animals to do that. The mother could not help herself but was caring for the puppies. For many dog lovers, this may sound an extraordinary love story, but the fact is that the mother had no choice or reasoning. She was controlled by the grips of nature.

But in many animals the instinctive fatherliness is not much seen. For they kill and eat their young. The mothers have to protect their young from the biological fathers.

That's how it is. No one can blame a crocodile father for eating his young because biologically they do not possess the chemical to love and take care of their offspring.

But fortunately or unfortunately, we as humans do possess them, even though some seem to have lost it to some chemical abuse like alcohol or other. Most of us have these chemical ups and downs, running.

And it continues to make us fall in love, feel great, elated and so on.

Understanding our basic chemical make up alone is not enough. As humans we need to analyze and manage our emotions and the responses which are created by hormones and chemical reactions. The one who is depressed, may see everything as negative and may talk so many negative things as against someone who is manic, but both may get stabilized with the administration of right chemicals into the system.

A person who laughs more than necessary, or who cries more than justifiable causes may need to understand that it's the chemicals which are in control, and a simple shift of thought, a mind-over-matter approach could create wonders.

Emotional intelligence is understanding the reason behind the behaviour of people and their emotions.

It helps us to understand that we are more than this meat soup running around.

Emotions of hatred, love, loneliness could be an easily manageable phenomenon, if proper understanding is ensured of who we actually are.

Even though emotions play a larger part in human existence, a thorough understanding of its operation could take away lot of heartache. It could actually help people work better, manage relationships better and help build lasting relationships based on logic and rationality rather than a chemical which cannot be trusted to be there all the time.

Emotional intelligence is a total realization that the humans are capable in making illogical decisions based on how they feel rather than how things should be.

A termination of an employee while you are angry is equal to falling out of love with someone just because the other person has fallen in love with another.

Making decisions in workplace as well as in personal lives based on how we feel may bring disastrous results if we do not understand that emotions are just indicators of how we feel, not exactly how it is.

Emotional intelligence must be possessed by all of us in order to survive rainy days as failure to understand them may make us face a lot of unnecessary trials and tribulations.

So finally emotions are these great things which are no more than chemical reactions in the brain which should be well understood, controlled and managed so that our existence on earth is worth-living.

(The author could be contacted via [email protected])