Emotional Control

Emotional Control
There is a constant battle of internal emotions that we experience and it is this war of emotions that has been compared with a battle field in the Mahabharata. We all have a Mahabharata raging in our hearts most of our waking hours.

We all are born with a multitude of emotions like laughter, sorrow, grief, jealousy, anger, ambition and above all, a need for love and peace. However, a need to survive in this world of 7 billion, gives rise to feelings such as competition, envy and jealousy. The Kuravas and Pandavas begin to play their drama in our heart – the jealousy and envy battle against the need for love and peace. Who will win depends upon the courage you have to look inward and understand your personal Kuravas (demons) and vanquish them one by one.

Organizations often conduct team building exercises. This need arises either due to competition and comparison at peer level or lack of open communication or simply because people maybe from diverse cultures. Most inter-personal issues arise at peer level because of jealousy, envy, comparison. Desire to work collaboratively and for organizational goals are often usurped by a desire for individual goals and gains. In this desire to get ahead, who wins – actually no one! That’s the irony of the whole situation. Each team member believes he is getting ahead of the other, albeit temporarily, but this happens at the cost of the organization as well as the true potential of the executive. The executives are motivated by their individual need for power, wealth or recognition and they compromise their personal as well as organizational need for growth.

Now, let me clarify, the executives do not behave competitively on purpose. It has become part of their DNA and hence they don’t know any different or better. We perceive the world as a jungle, an animal kingdom rather than a land of human beings. We grow up to believe that we have to over power other people to survive.

As a new born child we learn this because we start with controlling our parents. Each time a child cries, the parents jump to attend to the child and this belief gets reinforced. The same gets tried amongst siblings and friends. The aggressive ones try their luck with the quieter ones and the game continues. From days of schooling children are taught to compete with their peers, not share notes, withhold information – anything that may keep them ahead in the game. A student is rarely taught to have faith in his own abilities and work from there. There is no subject that teaches you how to tap into your inherent potential and the leader within. Each one of us has a leader inside of ourselves and each one of us is gifted with a unique skill. Since we remain ignorant of its existence, our survival instinct kicks in and we behave against our inherent nature of contribution and growth.

Now, let’s pause and ask ourselves, can we control the external world. Actually, this is the ego speaking. Each time we feel out of control, we start looking for ways to control the external world. We expend tremendous energy looking for ways to maneuver everything and everyone. We spend our lives with this veil of ignorance and get blinded to such an extent that we end up damaging ourselves and the people around us. What’s worse - we don’t stop there – we expend a lifetime blaming the world for our pain and anguish. We write our life story and the underlying theme of “life’s unfair” keeps repeating itself in different shades and shapes ie with different people and in different places, yet we don’t learn.

How can we break out of this vicious cycle and self imposed trauma?

My coach often calls me “video on demand”. It took me few years and many knocks to understand this phrase. Pain is a part of life, however, suffering is optional. All of us experience pain when there is a loss of anything of value to us. We can choose how long we suffer for this loss. The ability to exercise this option lies within us.

I was taught that the way to success was to get committed to a goal and pursue the same. We don’t even realize when this commitment converts to attachment. I was not aware of this thin line. It is this attachment to win, to succeed, to control the outcome that creates the emotional drama of suffering.

I didn’t even know I was playing a drama. I was simply living like everyone - feeling pain, happiness, working hard for success and blaming the failure on circumstances or sometimes getting all too emotional and thinking that I don’t have the ability to achieve.

I can appreciate if a child feels that way. But for an adult to think like that is a colossal waste of human life. We are gifted with treasures like courage, perseverance, determination, generosity, humor, compassion and love. Do we truly use these gifts – they often lie buried like treasure in an ocean. Our emotions of fear, jealousy, incompetence, helplessness create barriers to reaching within and tapping into this wealth. We instead play games of power and combat with each other using weapons of wealth, position and even love in relationships, to get an upper hand. Do you ever win! Look within – you lose far more than you started out with. Above all, you lose yourself!

“Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear,” Dale Carnegie

I too have been a victim of my own emotions. All is not lost. I am one of the fortunate few who have been shown that there is a way out of this everyday pain and that life can actually be lived effortlessly. Like any other aspect of life, success comes with effort and commitment to a goal.

Few years ago, I committed to having a life of contentment and peace. Phew, heavy words. We are conditioned to believe that this is available only for saints and like, not commoners. I remember I was happy child, full of fun, laughter, content with my family and life. Where had that person disappeared? I had grown into a cynical adult with a judgmental mind. Everyone was full of faults, including myself.

I cannot even remember what triggered me to start introspecting about my relationships – friends and family. I started asking myself who are my friends and who are my acquaintances. It may sound harsh and cruel, but actually it’s phenomenal once you start getting clarity because it realigns your expectations. To get this clarity I had to ask myself why the relationships were at different levels. It was not always about them, it was mostly about me – I had made the choice not to get too friendly with some people or behave in a certain way, sometimes inadvertently and sometimes not. Now that meant taking responsibility for the status of my life.

I found myself gradually going onto a journey of self reflection. I did not expect to find so much dirt – I too have lived my life in fear of losing and have been competitive, aggressive, manipulative and adopted unfair means to stay above and in control. Was it intentional? Yes - to survive, No - because I didn’t know any better or different.

That’s the fun of life – growth and self discovery. If there is one thing that binds us all, are emotions and thoughts. Life can be lived effortlessly. Life can be enjoyed. It requires surrender to action without a constant need to being in control of the outcome. The ultimate reality is that something once lost, cannot be regained in the same shape and form. Its past, its historic. Now that requires the courage to accept that I am human and it is beyond my control to get it back. So let go! Oops, now that’s not what I was taught from birth. I was taught to work hard to succeed and constantly look for solutions. I discovered over the years, anyway the outcome was not in my hands, because future is uncertain and a factor of multiple aspects which remain unknown. I was better of doing my best (in relation to others) and learning to control my video on demand than constantly trying to control the unknown. This answer is not new - its been written and rewritten in all our scriptures and self help books. Its been tried and tested over centuries. Yet, this knowledge has become uncommon in practice and that is the reason the level of suffering has increased in the world.

“A man who is a master of himself can end sorrow as easily as he can invent pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them,” said Oscar Wilde