The poet sage Valmiki has just completed his epic, Ramayana.
Narad, divine messenger and communicator visits him: ‘Do you know that Hanuman has also written a Ramayan?’
Valmiki is anxious- a competitor? He makes haste to the forest –Hanuman’s Ramayana is scripted on thousands of large banana leaves.
When Valmiki reads Hanuman’s text, he is touched, moved and inspired to tears. Every sentence is soaked with ‘rasa’ and ‘bhaav’ of love. He is also envious— will the world read his epic ? This seems far superior to his own.
Then Hanuman reads Valmiki’s masterpiece. It is full of scholarship and an objective description of Rama, his actions and his epoch, yet written in exquisite poetry .
Lord Rama appears and, “Both the writings are excellent and incomparable. Hanuman’s is a song drenched in emotions. Valmiki’s is a work of a poet, academic and historian. Both Bhakti yog and Gyan yog are equally important paths of enlightenment.”
Today’s work place also needs us to pay attention to both— cold facts, data, logic and rationale AND the warmth of emotions.
Sensing, recognizing, acknowledging and responding to emotions humanizes the workplace. It is the juice which connects people. Relying on only statistics, knowledge and reasoning in interactions makes us transactional and exhausted.
Emotions play a big role in our lives. There are more than 600 words in English to describe them; and 43 facial muscles to express them physically. Although human beings speak more than 6,000 languages, about 90 percent of people across different cultures have no trouble figuring out if someone is registering happiness, surprise, or disgust just by looking at the person’s face.
We are supersensitive to the slightest shift in people’s facial expressions, especially if they are registering fear or anger.
And yet, business folk are ambivalent about emotion in the workplace. At best, it is awkward and better be over quickly. At worse, it is a pollutant clouding the cold, data-driven reasoning that business supposedly runs on.
The focus remains on logic, cold data-driven reasoning: Giving instructions, Asking why/ problem solving, Measuring gaps and outcomes.
Salovey and Meyer defined Emotional Intelligence as: ‘The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.’
Do you stop to ask: How am I feeling? What emotions can I read from the other’s micro expressions? What is the predominant emotion in the room? How can I use this information to guide my thinking and actions?
(Today is full-moon and the birth anniversary of Maharishi Valmiki.)
He is 93 years old and insists on living by himself. He is becoming more stubborn and difficult by the day.
In my weekly visits, I sometimes try to resolve an issue, such as by finding a new part-time housekeeper, because he finds fault with them, and they leave. Sometimes angry words are exchanged between him and me. He doesn’t like me telling him what’s best for him, and I’m exasperated because if he were to listen to reason (me), life would be much simpler.
When I sit in the car during the half-hour drive back home, I feel sad, helpless, even furious that he doesn’t let me help him. And ashamed that I’m not more patient with him. And somewhere buried under all this is a deep love for him.
I also know that the intensity of my emotional reaction is not ‘rational’. If an onlooker (like my husband) were to deal with the situation, he would not be so triggered. I get hooked because there is a history of (in my eyes) excessive control he exercised on me as a child and teenager.
Our driver Maru Ram, who has been with us for the last 21 years is a silent witness to the tears which roll down my cheeks. And to the shouting match in the house earlier. He offers no comment. He quietly absorbs the flailing energy. I know that he never discusses or gossips about family matters. In fact, Maru is a deeply spiritual person with weekly fasts in prayer to his family god, Hanuman.
His non-judgmental presence makes me feel anchored. It helps me find my own inner witness or ‘see-er’.
The above is an example of the nature of emotions, and their impact on our lives. They are strong energies, and they can hijack our rational thinking. And if unbridled, they have the potential to throw our actions off-course.
There are several misleading notions about emotions that exist today. As a coach, I hear people say, ‘I am too emotional. I want to control my emotions’, and on the other extreme I see people who are not in touch with their emotions. They talk, explain, rationalize, blame, describe at great length, but they avoid feeling, because it entails pain.
These notions come from commonly held judgements, which tell us that Anger, Fear, Shame, Sadness are ‘negative’ feelings, while Joy, Love, and Courage are ‘positive’ feelings. The belief says that negative emotions are inherently bad or maladaptive for our psychological well-being, and positive emotions are inherently good or adaptive. This is so decreed based on whether an emotion obstructs or enables a person’s ability to pursue goals, attain resources, and function effectively within society. Negative feelings should be controlled, we are told: overcome, avoided, transformed or healed; and positive emotions maximized.
Emotions as understood from the Natya Shastra and Yoga Sutras
However, as explained by our ancient Indian texts, emotions are not good or bad. They are just bundles of energy which move through the body. This is generally felt as sensations of contraction such as tension, or expansion such as calm. The Latin derivative for the word emotion, emotere, literally means energy in motion.
A healthy person experiences all emotions FULLY, but is able to meet the next situation without any residue.
According to Natya Shastra, said to be written by Bharatmuni a few thousand years back, there are nine Rasas (juice or essence). The Navrasas are Anger (Raudram), Fear (Bhayanakam), Sadness or Compassion (Karuna), Disgust (Bhibhatsam), Joy (Hasyam), Courage (Veeryam), Curiosity (Adbhutam), Love (Shringar), and Calm (Shantam). Love has been called as the Rasa-Raja, or the King of Emotions. The 9th rasa — Shantam or calm — is the absence of emotions from which you can witness yourself, as an observer.
The hundreds of emotions that we experience are combinations of these primary rasas. For example, jealousy is a combination of fear and anger. Depression is a combination of sadness, fear, anger, and disgust, and so on.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ or EI) is a term created by two researchers – Peter Salavoy and John Mayer – and popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.
EQ can be defined as the ability to recognize your emotions and that of others, and make healthy choices of action and behaviour.
For self-awareness, one useful question to ask the self several times during the day is: How am I feeling right now? The navrasas is an easy framework to refer to in this self reflection. There is an actual term for those who have difficulty in indentifying and naming their feelings- alexithymia.
How to deal with emotions
When emotions arise, we usually either anaesthetise ourselves (by drinking, eating, shopping, binge-watching Netflix, etc), or are swept away in its force by wallowing in it (shouting, losing one’s temper, crying without restraint), or pickle ourselves in it by dwelling in related thoughts which go round and round the head.
Why do we do this? As young children, when natural impulses were expressed, we experienced reprimands, rejection, ridicule, and repression from well intentioned or ignorant caregivers and adults around us. The impressions were absorbed into our sensitive and not yet matured nervous systems which did not have the capacity to regulate the intensity of the hurt and anger. Out of the need to escape from the disorienting states of vulnerability and pain, we developed strategies of freeze, fight, fawn or fight.
What if we could instead engage with the emotion by ‘doing nothing’, but just watching and following with curiosity the sensations arising? By simply being aware of sensations such as heated skin, shortness of breath, tight jaw and face muscles, the gripping intestines. And what if into this non-evaluative curiosity, we brought in a loving embrace, a warm holding, a relentless self-care?
This form of ‘doing nothing’ and simply observing and allowing these feelings to flow is key to self care. It means we are not fixing or changing, or allowing their presence to decide our self worth, or dwelling on the story of ‘why’ or finding someone to blame. It means a commitment to acknowledge the inner parts of us which erupt because they have been shamed, banished and discarded in the past.
As J. Krishnamurthy said, ‘The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence’. This observation is kind and neutral, unlike the judgement that usually accompanies our emotions. When we feel angry or jealous or fearful, there is shame accompanying the emotions, as a voice inside says, ‘you are a bad person for feeling so, it’s pathetic that you can’t control yourself’.
Photo credit: Dank Memes
When we enter the world of emotions, its not easy at first, as staying with unpleasant emotions can be painful.
However, when we simply allow ourselves to feel the emotions in a presence of love and empathy, we encode a new circuitry of slowly finding back our inner emotional regulator – and the painful intensity starts diminishing as we start to self modulate our reactions to the external world. Then we find ourselves on our way back to our ‘home’- to the majestic vastness of who we are in essence- at ease, loving and flowing.
Emotions will always come, whether it is when I visit my father and have a disagreement with him, or you clash with a colleague who is throwing an axe in your wheel, or a boss who doesn’t listen because he thinks he knows better. But if we connect with our inner ‘observer’ who witnesses without judgement, the emotion or the energy in motion will move on. And then you access your inner ‘driver’ you will have the resources and the drive to meet the next situation or act upon your goals to reach the next step.
(This article, written by the author, originally appeared in ‘Kaustubham’, Human Resource Management and Labour Relations Journal of TISS, 2019)
You have asked me (and I quote your email): ‘What should I do with my competitive behaviour. In a team- I want to be the best. The feeling is similar to being 1st in the class. In fact throughout my high school and Engineering, I was either 1st or 2nd in class.
However in real life, this behaviour sometimes makes me less productive and prevents collaboration with others. I would appreciate it if you could give me some suggestions – either via an online session or email if possible.
Well. Here goes.
First, congratulations in seeing so clearly a part of yourself which many people dare not touch. Most of us run away from looking into the mirror when we find something unpleasant or undesirable. Its also called: our psychological or personal “Shadow”, which comprises of those qualities, impulses, and emotions that we cannot bear for others to see and thus cast into the hidden domain of ourselves. It takes courage to call out a quality in the self, which is normally looked down upon by society.
The Psychodrama session which we did in our last meeting— while it was about your difficulty in ‘speaking up’ a point of view which you believe was in the best interests of the organization, especially in the presence of ‘authority figures’ ; it unearthed another topic— of your competitive self which gets triggered, which was until now buried in the unconscious. This is also the power of Psychodrama.
In this role-play, where you were the protagonist, we called on ‘stage’ group members to play these two roles: the boss and the boss’ boss. As we explored the tension between you and your boss (ofcourse there are organization politics all the time), and your diffidence in sharing your view point, we understood that to get out of ‘Freeze Mode’ requires giving up the need to be right, and allowing yourself to make mistakes and risks.
And as the enactment explored not only external behavior, but also ‘inner’ aspects, such as unspoken thoughts and feelings, fantasies of what others might be feeling and thinking, you discovered an unspoken competition between you and your boss (who is almost your age) which was coming in the way of building a healthy relationship, which in turn was impacting the way the project was moving forward.
As you know, in Psychodrama, we don’t ‘advise’, but offer a ‘sharing’.
The fact is that competitiveness is one of my ‘demons’ too. Demons don’t entirely go away, even after addressing them. They have a habit of visiting again, but with an impact of decreasing intensity, as we start recognizing them.
At a recent meeting with peers, this popped up again. I found myself getting annoyed with the lack of structure, and discussion which was skidding out of (my) area of relevance and interest as per the broadly defined agenda.
I am so used to leading groups that I wished that I could have just cut across the ‘bumph’ and moved on. That’s what I do in my groups. I let things roll for a while, and then step-in and ask: Guys, what is really happening here?
But I was uncomfortable in voicing this in a peer group.
Because there are inevitable comparisons and competition in a peer group- Who occupies how much space? Who is more senior/ better/ more competent even among equals? And this comparison coexists with the anxiety of wanting to be accepted by the group. And this anxiety creates a dilemma: Should I speak up? Or stay silent?
Speaking up means ruffling feathers and risking making myself unlikable.
Staying silent means killing my authenticity- and my interest and enthusiasm dies out.
These realizations make me feel uncomfortable. But ‘Presence’ is being comfortable with the discomfort.
Some things which help me are:
–Know your triggers -Who sets you off? When?
–Notice your body signals: the heart pounding, the breathing becoming shallow. Attend to these with a gentle compassion.
–Challenge yourself by engaging with the situation fully instead of going into withdrawal mode.
–Find something to appreciate in the person you are feeling competitive with. Say it aloud to them. This will help you to say your piece, but in a relational way.
–The brain is getting fired up with these signals. Use it to bring energy in the room. Your (different) point of view can bring value to the topic, and help improve the quality of the outcome.
–Even if afterwards (post meeting) you realize that you were not able to present your ‘wise self’, do it afterwards in a 1:1 conversation.
–And finally, don’t worry about expressing yourself in a ‘perfect way’. If there are ruffled feathers, and you don’t come out in your best, polished way, you’ll deal with it later.
