Leading With Emotional Courage

CHAPTER 37KNOW WHAT YOU ARE FEELING: DEVELOP YOUR AWARENESS

Over the 30 years since we met, my wife Eleanor and I have spent considerable time, money, and energy on our development. Individually and together, we've taken workshops, studied meditation, practiced yoga, written in journals, talked about our dreams, participated in training programs, and gone to therapy.

A few weeks ago, we were taking a walk along a rural road, questioning why we do it. Is all this inner work simply navel gazing? Or does it impact our lives in a real way?

Just as we were exploring the question, we turned a bend and heard a loud party at a house on the side of the road. As we approached the house we could see the deck was filled with about a dozen college-aged men joking around and drinking.

My body tensed and my emotions intensified. I felt a mix of fear, insecurity, competitiveness, and jealousy. I saw them as the kinds of guys Eleanor would be attracted to – big, alpha, confident – and I felt inferior – which made me feel aggressive toward them. It took me about a minute to realize what I was feeling and why.

I turned to Eleanor and told her what I was feeling. She laughed; she also felt aggressive and had an immediate, instinctual, emotional response, but the opposite of mine. She saw them as obnoxious, uncaring, sexist, and unattractive. She felt superior to them. And resentful that they would probably end up having power in our world.

Two seemingly simple but actually incredibly difficult ...