becoming an emotion scientist

Because the Intramuralist actually is a resolution setter — and because I feel great grace in most of what I don’t accomplish — I am pleased to share that one of my 2020 personal goals is to step up my reading. Remembering Charles T. Munger’s words in “Poor Charlie’s Almanack,” “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” And so in my third completed book of the year, I recently finished Marc Brackett’s “Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive.” Let’s face it; anything any of us can do to help our society thrive would be a very good thing.

Brackett is a Yale professor and the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Consistent with his professional endeavors, “Permission to Feel” encourages the reader to investigate the roots of emotional healthiness through an intentional process of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions. He also provides the concise “Mood Meter,” giving the reader 100 words to better label (and thus share) what they or another may feel or observe.

While I fully admit to (1) being on a quest for continuous growth, (2) that a mere snippet doesn’t do Brackett’s book justice, and (3) that I am well in touch with my inner nerd, one encouragement stood out to me in humble attempts to help society thrive. From Chapter 3, entitled, “How to Become an Emotion Scientist”…

“How are you feeling right now? Can you be sure?

That may seem like a ridiculous question — of course we all know exactly what we’re feeling. It may be the only thing about which we can be certain.

So if it’s all so completely, effortlessly self-evident, why would we need a science of emotion and emotional intelligence? We speak of emotion skills, but doesn’t that mean there is something to be learned — or not? Indeed it does: it’s a safe bet that no one in the story of the human race has ever known precisely what she or he is feeling, in all its complexity and contradiction and chaos, at all times. Our neurons are firing hundreds of times a second, and lots of what goes on up there is pure, rolling emotion.

Scientists refer to intelligences as hot or cold, hot being the emotional one and cold, of course, the rational one.

But they don’t take turns operating. If I’m computing what I owe in taxes, I’m using cold intelligence, though my reasoning powers will absolutely be affected if five minutes ago I noticed a weird lump on my dog’s neck or I had an argument with my next-door neighbor. We have one brain made up of several regions, each with its own functions, and sometimes they pull us in different directions.

Given all that, how could anyone but a scientist make sense of it? That’s why we all must strive to become emotion scientists.

You could be brilliant, with an IQ that Einstein would envy, but if you’re unable to recognize your emotions and see how they’re affecting your behavior, all that cognitive firepower won’t do you as much good as you might imagine…

Only by becoming emotion scientists will we learn the skills to use our emotions wisely. Not suppress them or ignore them — in fact, just the opposite. We’ll no longer be controlled by feelings we may not even perceive. We’ll also be able to help the people we interact with — loved ones, colleagues — manage theirs…

An emotion scientist has the ability to pause even at the most stressful moments and ask: What am I reacting to?…

To some observers, emotional intelligence or emotion skills signify something fuzzy or touchy-feely, like a retreat from reality. This is especially so in the business world. In fact, just the opposite is true. These are mental skills like any others — they enable us to think smarter, more creatively, and to get better results from ourselves and the people around us. There’s nothing squishy about that. Emotional intelligence doesn’t allow feelings to get in the way — it does just the opposite. It restores balance to our thought processes; it prevents emotions from having undue influence over our actions; and it helps us to realize that we might be feeling a certain way for a reason…

On the road to becoming emotion scientists, we need to avoid the temptation to act as emotion judges. 

In both cases, we’re attempting to recognize emotions and their source and then to foresee how they might be influencing our thoughts and actions. But an emotion scientist seeks to understand without making value judgments or rendering opinions about whether feelings are justified or not, beneficial or not, or reflecting an objective reality. An emotion scientist comes equipped only with questions and a desire to listen and learn…”

Still learning, friends… 

Still asking questions, too…

And refraining from judgment.

Join me. Let’s do what we can to help society thrive.

Respectfully…

AR