Emotion is as important to our professional lives as thinking. For far too long, emotion has been discounted out of the American concept of professionalism. This makes sense since by simple observation, emotion would appear to be the more complex element of humanity between the two, and regardless of whether we pay attention to it or not, it is there. It informs us when something isn’t right and needs to be corrected, resolved or redirected. It underlies our decision making, and so much more not readily delineated.

It has also been observed that some personality types are more subject to, even driven by, emotion. So, there are at least two development tracks when it comes to emotion. One either needs to develop attention to emotion in order to be more consciously informed by it, or one has a need to separate from emotion in order to manage one’s response to it, to move away from reacting to it.

Neither is new. The practice of meditation in yoga has been around longer than American society, and one of the great many benefits yoga provides is the practice of observing the physical body, thoughts in the mind body and feelings of the emotional body. In my experience, emotion has been the most difficult to observe simply because I am one of those on the emotionally reactive side of the equation. For a good length of time I confused emotion with my intuition and proverbial gut instinct, which made it harder to come to terms with the separation required to observe and consciously apply it.

Emotion is much less simple than thinking, and it needs great care to develop awareness of it and a conscious response to it. Truth is, it is always there, underlying intuition, gut instinct, decision-making and even informing our thoughts, so we would do well as a society to take heed and incorporate emotion rather than continue to deny and combat its existence.

Fare thee well,
~ Jacqueline