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Emotional Intelligence

Response Ability
Harveen Salaria, Instructional Designer, The Business Workshop

Responsibility - “Response-ability” - the ability to choose your response. Between a stimulus and the response, man has the freedom to choose. In the words of Roosevelt, “ No One can hurt you without your consent”. And likewise, Gandhi said, “ They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them”. It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens in the first place.

It is a point to note that no other animal species - no matter how intelligent has this ability. They are programmed to respond by instinct and/or training. The innate qualities that lend us the capabilities to make the best decisions are—self awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will. Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal kingdom, but we need to exercise and develop these endowments to realise the full potential of our own capabilities.

We need to distance ourselves from our current social paradigm - of the opinions, perceptions and judgmental attitudes of those around us. We all tend to fall into the trap of letting conditions and conditioning govern us. We believe that we have no control over these social maps which determine who we are.

By nature we either blame our present state on one of the three -our genes, our psychological conditioning, which is basically the way our parents treated us all though our dependent years or the social environment we live in. Between all these we ensnare ourselves in the trap of blaming these for our state of mind. It would be incorrect to tell yourself that these do not play a part as that would tantamount to blaming oneself, a seriously harmful practice. The key lies in finding the appropriate response to the triggers that present themselves. I will give a simple example of how realisation can change our perspective at any age.

Last year we conducted several workshops on emotional intelligence. In one of these there was a middle aged gentleman working in the public sector who at the end of the workshop came to me with his specific problem. Although his wife and he shared a healthy relationship they faced a deadlock almost every morning.

They both were rushed to leave at 8:15 am for work. Invariably at the last minute she would ask him about breakfast. This always irritated him as it was too late to eat anything and they would end up quarreling. This little tiff would ruin his morning at work. Similarly he found that even a little incompetency and small differences at work could find him in a foul mood which would last for hours.

I asked him to stop blaming others for his state of mind. Instead if he took stock of things it would help him. He had to take full responsibility for what he did and how he felt. He always had the freedom to choose. He had to realise that nobody wanted to see him in a bad mood, he was doing it to himself. In fact his wife was asking him for breakfast out of her concern for him or probably just habit, even though it was irritating him. It was entirely in his hand to monitor his own reaction and spare himself the agony.

No on can disturb your peace of mind unless you let them. It is a very hard exercise, especially if for years and years we have explained our misery in the name of circumstances or someone else’s behaviour. But once we choose to get on the track and take responsibility for the way we feel, behave and act - we will feel truly liberated.

Apparently this did hit home. His wife attended a later programme simply to witness what it was that had brought about such a profound change in her husband’s life.

This also explains the difference between proactive and reactive personalities as explained by Stephen Covey. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. They are like the proverbial “social weather”. if they are treated well they feel good, if not, they feel defensive or protective. Proactive people are driven by values - carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Tolstoy sure knew the crux of human nature when he said - Everybody wants to change humanity but nobody wants to change himself. The essence of emotional intelligence is that one needs to begin with oneself and that too from deep within. And then when we have traversed our journey into self discovery we will arrive at the same place only to see it in a totally different light.

Graphic Done By Himani