‘Avan’ as a single child in a very normal family, grew up in Chennai. Avan’s life followed, as most would say, our society’s approved sequence. He had a formal education, followed by a timely marriage, and a career that many men in metros feel or made to feel incomplete without. Avan is now a “Team Leader” in a Multinational Company. He is an effective leader and always inspires his colleagues, give them hope and help them overcome obstacles and reach their full potential. Thus, Avan achieves maximum results in the best possible way. He is always successful.
What makes him always perform better? How is he always successful? Is it his Talent? Skills? Or his IQ?
Of course ‘Avan’ does not have a great IQ or special talent, persistence or thinking out of the box or Special skills. The truth is different.
It’s actually the “EI” of Avan. Yeah! “Emotional Intelligence” Since child hood we were told, taught that successful people had special talents, skills, better IQ and that they worked really hard to achieve their goals. And even today most talk about topics of self improvement is of positive thinking and visualization. These concepts are good and can help but, emotional intelligence has a more practical and really profound impact in a person who learns it and practices.
Then, what is EI?
It is the ability of a person to control, perceive and influence his or her own emotions and of other people around him or her. In other words, ‘EI’ is the ability to monitor our own and others feelings and emotions.
If so, is it new to us? No, It has been practiced for thousands of years but we were not aware of it or it wasnt defined, only few have realized and practiced its real importance.
Do we need it really? Let me tell you one common example, sometimes we express ourselves in certain ways where we are in pressing situations, at those moments we say what we think and the other one too, He or She might not disagree with us in the main point, but the way we say or impose becomes the cause for him or her to disagree with us. This clearly shows that, not our words but our actions or the way of saying it, is the cause for him/her to defend. If we can’t control our emotions, the say or the way we say, we can hurt relationships and partners for years to come. Only if we learn to perceive other peoples emotions and control ours, we are in advantage. Then it becomes easy for us to resolve a conflict better not expanding it.
A conflict like the example above is very common in our personal and professional relationships and sinks us in depression. Then it becomes horrible, and will let us in a life destroying condition (at least temporarily). Only the right sort of emotional intelligence can inoculate us against it, because most of us don’t understand why the counterpart can’t get our point?
Another example is when we are in a worst situation; where we might feel in a really bad mood and if we don’t control our emotions or understand others emotions, it will create a huge disaster on very small problems. This happens a lot in our day to day family relationships and at time of financial pressures.
Can we get it? Yes, we are born with a common emotional intelligence; it’s not a talent or skill. It’s something that can also be learned and developed to achieve our highest in performance. We all have some thing in common and some differences.
Can we improve and put it to practice? Yeah! We can improve our emotional intelligence by realizing and exercising it in our daily life. The truth is that it needs to be learned as any skill, you need practice until you get to the point where you can control your emotions and understand everyone else emotions and feelings. Believe! Life becomes much more enjoyable with good emotional intelligence.
Let me share an incidence that happened in Avan’s Life, as a proof to understand the impact of emotional intelligence. But slow down enough to listen, hear not only those words that are written, but the struggle, the strength and the hope carried between the lines as I narrate. Feel the warmth that fills our soul.
Sometimes it takes years for something to change our life. And sometimes, it takes only moments for every thing in our life to change. A boy was born to Avan after eleven years of his marriage. They were a loving couple and the boy was the apple of their eyes. It was the boys second birthday. That was exactly the time it happened. As if synchronized by fate, a Monday morning, Avan was in a hurry to his office, saw a medicine bottle open, as he was running late, he asked his wife to ‘cap’ the bottle and keep it in the cupboard.
His wife, preoccupied in the kitchen totally forgot the matter. The boy playfully went to the medicine bottle and, fascinated with its color, drank it all. It happened to be a poisonous medicine meant for adults in small dosages. When the boy showed signs of poisoning she took him to the hospital, where he died. She was in a state of shock, her son’s smiling face flashed through her eyes constantly. She was terrified how to face her husband.
Avan rushed from work, came to the hospital and saw the dead child; distraught Avan looked at his wife and uttered just four words........
....
“I Love You Darling".
She was stunned. This, totally unexpected reaction is a proactive behavior. The child is dead; he can never be brought back to life. There is no point in finding fault with his wife. In fact, she had also lost her only child. What she needed at that moment was consolation and sympathy from her husband. And that is what he gave her. Avan is strong, not in physical sense of the word but emotionally, he is indeed a genius in human relationships. Only emotional intelligence can do great things in personal and professional relationships.
If every one can look at life with this kind of perspective, then there would be much fewer problems in this world. I know, we cannot change the whole world but we can change our life by getting more and better relationship forever. Understand that Life truly is what we make out of it! Take off all your envies, jealousies, selfishness and fears, definitely you will find that things are actually not as difficult as you (we) think.
Let a ‘journey of thousand (s)miles begin with this single step’.
அன்புடன்,
நான் (அவன் இல்லை).