The Power of the Herd (42 page)

11.  C
ULTIVATE
E
MOTIONAL
H
EROISM
(C
HAPTER
23)

Great deeds depend on keeping your heart open through the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows of life. To face tragedy, betrayal, and injustice with the compassion, creativity, bravery, endurance, and power necessary to effect change in the world, you must use impossible or seemingly hopeless situations as opportunities to strengthen your heart. This advanced emotional-intelligence skill parallels an ancient rite of passage performed by traditional herding cultures, which have much to teach us about a courageous, balanced approach to leadership used by people who live with animals ten times their size.

12.  E
NJOY THE
R
IDE
(C
HAPTER
24)

No matter what's happening around you, emotional-agility, social-intelligence, and fear-management skills allow you to deal efficiently with technical difficulties and interpersonal challenges and then go back to “grazing.” Over time, as you learn to ride life's roller coaster with ease, an underlying sense of deep peace emerges and grows stronger. You find that you can let go of the stories that tie you to the injustices of the past. And you can fully enjoy the present, knowing that you are courageous, empowered, and agile enough to meet the future with the relaxed and expanded awareness of a mature herd leader.

M
ost of us are taught to suppress troublesome,
inconvenient, or socially unacceptable feelings. But wearing a mask of confidence or compliance to hide fear, anger, jealousy, or sadness only works in the short term. Over time, the internal pressure of unresolved emotion builds, causing seemingly sane, well-adjusted people to explode at inopportune moments, reinforcing the belief that these “irrational” sensations are by-products of a “lowly animal nature” that overrides cool, objective reason for some nefarious purpose.

This idea goes back, way back, to the ancient Greeks, particularly the stoicism movement established in the third century
BCE
. Early explorers of human potential, these men thought that negative emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage who reached perfection would no longer experience such disruptions. Over time, an outright war of reason against feeling developed, suppressing positive emotions as well. As Jay Griffiths observes in her book
Wild,
René Descartes and the rationalists of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cultivated
“a hatred of ‘enthusiasm,' for its emotional, wild surges of knowing
were too natural, too bodily, too animal. Rationalism demanded superiority to, and separation from, nature and nature's ways of knowing.”

Around the same time, a Protestant Christian sect known as the Puritans adopted a similar philosophy toward nature and the emotions, inadvertently creating a strange stoic alliance between science and religion during the settling of the New World. Considering the influence of these powerful movements on U.S. history, you have to wonder how the “pursuit of happiness” slipped past
their stern, uncompromising gaze to become one of three inalienable rights cited in the Declaration of Independence. As H. L. Mencken famously observed, Puritanism is the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be happy,” a perspective that still influences people whether or not they have an obvious scientific or religious orientation. This is especially true of hierarchical authority figures in some business and political organizations, schools, and even families who model a physically rigid, intensely critical, unfeeling approach to life and work.

And yet … the same culture that mistrusts emotion rewards actors, dancers, poets, painters, and musicians. These lucky people not only are encouraged to feel the full range of what everyone else denies, they inspire us in the process, bringing us back to life at the end of a stressful or exceedingly boring workday, reminding us that logic can never touch the mystery, passion, beauty, and power of what it means to be fully human.

As the excesses of famous artists throughout history so aptly illustrate, however, civilization's fear of unbridled emotion isn't entirely unjustified. I spent my formative years playing in orchestras and chamber music groups, eventually making a living as a music critic and marrying a talented composer in the process. And I can tell you, from years of observation and direct experience with musicians in all genres, that people trained to express emotion do not lead more functional lives than those taught to suppress emotion.

Unlike the rationalists, Puritans, and a good portion of the modern general public, artists certainly aren't afraid of intense emotion. As a result, they're less likely to hide their true feelings, explode at inopportune moments, and feel profoundly embarrassed about it afterward. Still, they do suffer, often on purpose. With respect to emotional intelligence, this creates its own equally disturbing, counterproductive pattern.

Think about it for a moment: Which emotions dominate rap and heavy-metal music? Rage, lust, and rebellion, right? What about blues, or traditional, crying-in-your-beer country music? Sadness, frustration, jealousy, and, well, once again, lust or even love, but usually with a “he or she done me wrong” kind of twist.

To create a hit song — let alone the next, and the next, and the next — great musicians and mediocre wannabes alike have been known to immerse themselves in situations that give rise to these tempestuous feelings. Classical and jazz artists express a much wider range of emotions, but music history books are filled with accounts of all the ill-fated romances, tragedies, and glimpses of insanity that inspired these people to compose masterpieces. Suffering
for one's art may lead to success, it's true, but it's suffering nonetheless — not only for the artist but for everyone in his or her general vicinity.

By the early 1990s, I was so tired of the overt drama and sublimated conflict I encountered in the worlds of music and business that I came to an unmistakable conclusion: suppressing emotion and expressing emotion are two sides of the same dysfunctional coin. Luckily, around that same time, I bought a horse, hoping to ride into the desert to blow off steam and find a little peace. And it was at a rustic Tucson boarding stable that I glimpsed a surprising alternative to the turmoil civilized humans unnecessarily endure when they treat logic and emotion as uncompromising opposites. The answer, quite simply, involves taking action informed by the melding of both.

While observing horses and doing plenty of follow-up research, I realized that there were predictable, rational messages behind emotions like fear, anger, frustration, sadness, grief, disappointment, and even depression, information I shared for the first time in the 2003 book
Riding between the Worlds.
Horses
use emotion as information
to engage surprisingly agile responses to environmental stimuli and relationship challenges. Rather than suppressing uncomfortable feelings or outlandishly expressing them, these powerful animals employ a simple four-point method that any human is smart enough to learn, one that provides an antidote to the stress we mistakenly create by denying the body's intelligence and its incredibly efficient use of emotion as a nonverbal communication system.

It took me several years to translate this aspect of equine behavior into a process that seems obvious to me now. But the split second I began to use emotion as information, my life became much saner and more enjoyable. Over the past decade, my colleagues and I have taught this Four-Point Method for Emotional Agility to thousands of people on five continents with similar results.

Here's how it works: by becoming more horselike in your responses to emotion, you can successfully align thought, feeling, and action for optimal performance, enriching your personal and professional relationships in the process. Horses, especially those who haven't been traumatized by abusive human handling, are models of emotional agility. They

1.   feel the emotion in its purest form;

2.   get the message behind the emotion;

3.   
change something in response to the message; and

4.   
go back to grazing.
(In other words, they let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax, enjoying life fully. They don't hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over the details of uncomfortable situations.)

The vast majority of humans never get past step 1. Suppressors do everything possible to refrain from feeling a troublesome emotion to begin with. To some, even positive emotions are anathema to logic and are outlawed as a result, creating a subculture of emotional flatliners who act like robots. For these people, the intersubjective, emotional- and social-intelligence skills needed to nourish fulfilling relationships “don't compute,” remaining grossly underdeveloped.

In business, those who obsessively promote logic over feeling also have trouble succeeding, either remaining in technical jobs, repeatedly passed over for more lucrative management positions, or sometimes simply failing as leaders if they are promoted. As an oft-cited UCLA study showed, even in scientific fields,
high emotional intelligence is
four times
more important than raw IQ and training in overall professional success. After all, to get a major grant, you have to network, inspire, and influence others. And to carry out a large-scale experiment once it's funded, you have to build a winning research team, which includes managing, motivating, and in some cases wrangling others, many of whom know more about their jobs than you do and have egos to match (or exceed) their level of expertise.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, drama queens (or kings) and artists rewarded for expressing emotion tend to wallow in their feelings without moving to step 2. In other words, expressers rarely get the message behind the emotion, let alone change something in response. These people can be equally ineffective in leadership positions. While suppressors tend to ignore important nonverbal cues, appearing disengaged, even clueless at times, expressers are more prone to overreact to challenges, stir up emotion, and hold grudges. At the very least, some have significant trouble with step 4 (going back to “grazing,” meaning getting back on task) as they replay — over and over again in emotional Technicolor — tempestuous scenarios of conflict, betrayal, injustice, jealousy, disappointment, and triumph, usually against a background of ecstatic love affairs, tragic endings to those relationships, and the deep despair, transcendence, or longing that follows. This impulse, which might serve someone well as a playwright, actor, or singer, tends to wreak havoc in daily life. Bands that break up at the height of success also suggest that emotional expression
and artistic talent do not necessarily coincide with the development of effective leadership and interpersonal skills.

Horses, by comparison, are models of emotional sanity. By collaborating with the nonverbal wisdom of feeling, they conserve energy for true emergencies. At a distance, they can sense whether a mountain lion is on the prowl or simply passing through. In the former case, the herd races to safety without hesitation. In the latter, alert yet relatively relaxed horses will often continue grazing as the cat saunters through the field on his way to an afternoon nap. These animals don't waste time fretting when they have to run from a predator.

Same with anger: horses use this momentarily uncomfortable rise in energy to help set boundaries. A stallion may get a little feisty and try to push his mares around. If they're not in the mood for his shenanigans, they'll pin their ears and warn him to back off. If he doesn't listen, they'll become more emphatic, kicking out and squealing if necessary. When he finally gives them space, they'll relax, joining him later for a nap under a favorite tree. These horses don't need hours of counseling to work out their resentment and disappointment. Both offender and offended get the message behind the anger, change something in response, let the emotion go, and resume their enjoyment of life.

As it turns out, letting the emotion go is easier than you might expect. Contrary to popular belief, fear, frustration, and anger are actually quite reasonable if you know how to work
with
them. When you get the message behind these “negative” feelings, and change something in response, they dissipate on their own. Psychotherapy and sainthood are not prerequisites for emotional mastery. Most people can learn the necessary skills in a weekend, and life itself provides plenty of practice.

The problem is that most adults have been suppressing emotion for so long that these simple warnings have fused into monstrous complexes that truly are disturbing when they rear their ugly heads. We've grown up fearing feeling itself, and
that
is the root of our discontent. To put this strange human habit into perspective, imagine the check-oil light coming on in a teenage girl's first car. Rather than encouraging her to check the manual to see what it means, her parents strongly advise her to ignore it. A week later, she covers this deviant signal with duct tape and continues to drive around, hoping none of her friends will notice. She begins to smell smoke, but she's afraid to check under the hood
and too embarrassed to bring the issue up at dinner. When the engine starts to seize, her father tells the confused and frightened young woman that she better get control of that unruly vehicle, or else. In their purest forms, feelings are no more sinister or irrational than dashboard warning lights, and our attempts to reject them no less ridiculous.

And here, perhaps, is the best news for people new to the field of emotional intelligence: When you learn to use emotion as information,
you don't actually look emotional,
at least not in the classic sense. You appear engaged, thoughtful, and present. Since you're not reacting to feelings of fear, frustration, anger, or disappointment in unconscious, unproductive ways, you begin to adopt a poised, problem-solving stance in relation to the somatic signals arising from interpersonal challenges and occasional threats in the environment. Over time, you literally lose your fear of fear itself, gaining the ability to calm and focus others in situations that would normally breed panic and conflict. And finally, because you no longer waste energy suppressing emotion, you free your body, mind, and spirit for creative pursuits and innovative solutions to problems that overwhelm others. Your passion for life and work becomes contagious, as does an underlying sense of deep peace developing from the confidence you gain in riding life's emotional roller coaster with grace, ease, and at times, even amusement.