How The Cold Calculated Choice Is A Dangerous Habit To Develop
The bell just rang, the doors fly open and an avalanche of smiling faces come pouring out into the yard. It’s recess.
There’s that period everyone goes through. Usually from grades 4 to 7 where you’re old enough to understand the world around you but young enough to still love to play.
These are important formative years.
I was an interesting mix growing up. I wasn’t an unpopular kid, but I wasn’t one of the super popular kids either. I was something else, somewhere in the the middle.
I always had friends, did sports, wasn’t shy, and was smart enough to do well in school while also being able to play the slacker card. For the most part, things were good.
The problem I had though, was that I was always bigger. Growing up a fat kid the 90s was less forgiving than what life is like today. Bullying was quite chic back then, borderline expected as part of growing up.
But I was too popular to be bullied openly but not popular enough to avoid it completely. In some ways I wonder if this is worse. Kids can be cruel. When they would break out the fat jokes it was ALWAYS at times to have maximum impact.
Learning to Cope
We’re wildly adaptable when we’re young. Our brains do us a great service in finding ways to cope with the challenges in front of us.
Mine took inspiration from Star Trek. While I never would have admitted it at the time, I’m a SciFi geek — it just works for me. Imagine the appeal of seeing characters like Data and Spock for someone who’s regularly feeling the pain of surgically structured zingers.
What does it matter what anyone says if you don’t feel anything from it?
Without a conscious choice, that seed was planted. It grew. I couldn’t tell you exactly how it happened. There wasn’t a defining moment. More like steps. Over time you begin putting in more effort to control your emotions. Someone says something, it hurts less, you “feel” good with your new armour, so you keep putting more on.
The Identity You Build
By the time I was in my early twenties I had my emotions under control most of the time.
I would still have fun, laugh and from the outside, you wouldn’t think anything about it. I had created a system that allowed positive emotions to come out and was getting better and better and suppressing (later in life I change my frame on this to repressing) my emotions.
I wore my control the like a badge of honour. I linked it to the idea of being a better person and more sophisticated (just like my futuristic fictional friends).
I kept building it.
Welcome To The World of Work
Moving into the professional world brings with it a lot of competition. Promotions, performance, deliverables … these are the buzzwords of daily life in corporate.
I mentioned not being a super popular kid at school. Life was a little different professionally. From the day I started my career, I have always been viewed as a “high potential”. I have high standards for myself, I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty and I don’t like not understanding something.
Because of that I do a lot of work. I force myself to learn more than an average employee would.
It paid off. I have had and am having a “successful” career. With success comes stress, and pressure to perform. A volatile emotional state can hinder your ability to perform — I wanted no part of that drama.
I continued to do my work, I continued to master my craft. I got myself dialed in pretty well, was under control the majority of the time, irrespective of what was going on around me.
That’s not to say I was perfect with it. No one is a robot. No matter how well you can control yourself, there are almost always cracks once and a while.
The challenge was that I stopped experiencing a lot of the positive emotions, and it was more the negative ones that would manifest when the cracks formed. That’s when I would take a vacation for a week or two and come back ready to push on again.
Changing the Frame
The more senior I got in my career, the more interested in leadership I became. Leadership is about people. When you can work with people in the right way, success follows.
Emotional Intelligence is a huge part of leadership. Being able to manage and deal with your own emotions as well as empathizing with those around you is crucial to be a better leader.
I started dismantling a lot of my control mechanisms about 9 years ago. I would spend more time checking in with my team, seeing how they were doing, and listening to them differently.
Just as important, I spent a lot of time challenging myself. Developing your self-awareness is a non-negotiable when developing your EQ. You won’t make any progress if you aren’t able to turn the lens around and onto yourself.
It’s been a slow road to recovery. It’s taken a lot of effort. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
The Focus I Have Today
The control I prided myself on took a lifetime to build. It’s taken the better part of a decade to undue a lot of it.
I still have work to do, but it’s gotten easier over the years.
The better your ability to know yourself, the better you will connect with others. You will never completely know yourself by stuffing parts of you away in a box.
I’m more successful today with my teams and those around me because I decided to change. To let go of an identify and “asset” that at one point served me well (or so I thought).
It’s never too late to start.
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