Emotional Agility Vs Emotional Rigidity

The country of my birth is India, where we have the largest proportions of population in the younger age groups in the world. Some even call it Young India. A country where people hesitate to say NO to anything. We are the master of being OK but back in our mind we struggle to say NO to the other person.

At the time of technology and machine, we are seeing people’s tendency is more and more to lock down into rigid responses to their emotions.   Normal natural emotions are being considered bad and staying positive is now considered as moral correctness. People with cancer are asked to be positive, Its cruel and unkind when we do this to ourselves and others. We don’t want to try something because we don’t want to feel disappointed. We are making ourselves dead by avoiding discomfort.  The rigid denial does not work, its unsustainable for human existence. Internal pain always comes out and who pay’s the price? it’s the people around you. Reflecting on your emotions and their origin help you handle the feeling.

Emotional agility is more than emotional acceptance, we usually use an emoticon to express our feelings while chatting with our friends. When we are sending the smiling emoticon we may be sipping our coffee without any expression on our face. When we experience emotions, we are able to generate responses. We need to learn that Emotions are something we are born with and we own our emotions they don’t own us.

Have you ever thought about why people judge, why they bully each other? its because of insecurity , due to lack of emotional intelligence, because its hard to understand yourself and someone else , and even harder to connect at an emotional level where someone else is coming from. In order to change that we need to consider emotional intelligence as a crucial skill in our society and also take time to consciously work on it.

Therefore, Emotional agility is the ability to be with your emotions with curiosity, compassion and special courage to take value connected steps.

What is it look like in practice? Learn what is the emotion telling you. When you say you are angry in your mind, you are noticing that you are angry. Some call it emotional truth or individual realization which allows us to understand what is our emotion telling us.

May be you scroll your Facebook page and 5 secs of your time, how could it be hurting me? But researchers say’s envying your friends on Facebook actually lead to depression. One of the traps that the mind may setup for you. Unhealthy belief about ourself keep yourself focused on the problem.

Like a gymnast who learn to move beyond the rigidity of denial into what we call emotional agility. Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility.

Emotional intelligence is managing your own emotions and controlling other’s emotions, this involve three skills -

Unhealthy belief about others is another type of mind trap. When you say your parents drive you mad you give away your power to control the situation.  We blame them for holding us back but you need to accept the fact that its actually you not them. The world is what you make it.

This will lead you to a path for self-realization, different emotions inside you will also bring towards your values, In seeing yourself you will see others too.