GIVE ME THE DETAILS!!

What’s the story?
It's no secret that I've had a lifelong interest and passion for emotional intelligence. The topic has fascinated me long before the world even had a name or it! Growing up I was your stereotypical ‘little aspie anthropologist’, trying to figure out (from the outside) how humans worked, and ultimately, how to get along with them. Since discovering my own autism nearly 10 years ago now I've realised that there are many, many others out there asking very similar questions. The types of questions no one could satisfactorily answer for me when I was growing up. So now, decades of learning will be captured in my upcoming book.

Working Title: Unlocking Your Emotional Brain
The working title for the book is “Unlocking Your Emotional Brain”. It's for intelligent people who struggle with the social and emotional side of life. The basic premise being that when we over rely on our rational side it makes dealing with people incredibly difficult. This was my experience growing up. My natural analytic skills did little to help me socially. In fact, as I’ve now learned, they no doubt got in the way!

Audience
Intelligent people who find social/emotional dynamics difficult.

Basic Premise
When we over-rely on our rational side we spend way too much energy trying to ‘figure out’ social stuff. The book outlines a structured way to learn to increasingly utilise our intuitive emotional capacity, thereby making ‘dealing with people’ significantly easier in every respect.

Note
This mirrors Daniel Kaneman’s description of the brain’s ‘fast’ intuitive system and ‘slow’ methodical system - in his book ‘thinking fast and slow’.

Goal
By the end of this book you will have the Emotional Intelligence tools, knowledge and understanding, to build a life that works for you. (A step-by-step guide on how to use those tools will probably be book two! But one step at a time!!)

SNEAK PREVIEW?

If you're looking for a sneak preview, you can read the preface of the current draft below. In it, Paul gives the answers to the following questions:

• Why am I writing this book?
• What's the story behind it?
• Why is it personally important to me?

PREFACE DRAFT

Hello Dear Reader!

Needless to say I'm very excited to share this book with you! It represents 35 years of trying to figure out the world on my own. It contains so many things I wish someone had told me growing up and I hope you find it just as valuable in your own life. 

Emotional Intelligence For Engineers:

My original concept for this book was ‘Emotional Intelligence for Engineers’. Before discovering my own autism I diagnosed myself as an ‘engineer’. This explained  why I liked systems and structure. It explained my systematic, structured, logical, organised, brain. It explained why I found facts and data easier to handle than people. Later on I realised there was much more to the story that merely ‘being an engineer’ didn't come close to explaining, but this was my identity for a long time and perhaps it always will be despite leaving engineering behind as a profession over a decade ago now. 

So, back in 2010, around the time I originally conceived of the idea for this book, I was working in an engineering office. I was a structural analyst doing design and certification work for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  I loved my job. I liked working with data, doing calculations, creating models, crunching numbers. I was surrounded by very intelligent, systems oriented people. Engineers are professional problem solvers. We are good at design. We are good at analysis. What we're typically not quite so good at are people skills.

An Anti-Emotion Attitude:

Working in this environment I noticed this was more than a simple lack of ability. It was a positive disdain for what we commonly call ‘soft skills’. The attitude of many of my colleagues was essentially that emotions are dumb. Emotions get in the way. They cloud our judgement and lead people to make irrational decisions. Decisions often based on fear or wishful thinking rather than common sense. Wouldn't everything be so much simpler and easier if we didn't have to deal with them?

TRUTH I FOUND IS: (mini truth bomb)

It turns out emotions are not dumb. Far from it! Emotions, as I eventually discovered, are actually the basis of all good decision making. They don’t cloud our judgement and cause misunderstandings. Instead, our emotions allow for connection and communication. In other words, without them there could be no understanding or communication at all. And as it turns out, they are also necessary for sound judgement. We cannot get rid of our emotions and retain only our intellect, any more than we can get rid of our body, and be dissociated minds. In fact, learning to utilise our emotions is the key to better communication, better decision-making, better conflict resolution, and optimising just about every other task imaginable.

Bridging the communication gap:

I don’t blame my colleagues for undervaluing emotions. I’d thought the same thing many times. All the talk we heard about getting in touch with your emotions was so fluffy. What did it actually mean? How is turning off my rational brain and listening to my feelings supposed to help anyone? Where’s the value in that? How is improving my ‘aura’ supposed to make me a better team lead? Shouldn’t I be focusing on practical strategies like streamlining information sharing and other efficient work practices?

These are all valid and important questions, which were not being satisfactorily answered.

I wanted to bridge that communication gap. I wanted to share what I’d learned, to explain emotions in a systematic structured logical way. They do make sense. And we don't need to suspend our reason either. As we'll see later though, we do need to embrace an entirely different way of approaching the world, one where our rational capacity takes a back seat. It's still there. It's still important. It's just less dominant. It stopped trying to run the show, like an arrogant dictator, and is instead facilitating a collaborative approach where other players are invited to contribute.

As one of my coaching clients reflected to me recently, “I used to think my woo woo friends were crazy talking to me about auras and the like. But it works. It actually works! The energy I give off (my aura if you will) affects everyone around me. Getting it right can make me an effective manager, a better leader. And getting it wrong can sabotage the whole process before we’ve even begun.”

Communicating the truth: A massive ego hit.

Ironically though, emotions can get in the way of seeing the truth when it’s hard to accept.

And this truth was very hard to accept, as it was a massive hit to my ego. As much as it pained me to admit it, emotions are actually very important. I just didn't like them because I wasn't good at using them. When I was tempted to say “wouldn't everything be easier and simpler if I didn't have to deal with people and their emotions”, what I meant was “ wouldn't my life be easier if that thing I'm not good at wasn't so vitally important in every aspect of life”. In other words, I wished I could find a way to get by with skills I’d already developed, without the need to learn new ones. I wished the world was more like an engineering problem (which I was good at), and less like getting along with a group of people (which I was not good at).

My journey - over-relying on strengths:

I was very good at being rational; very good at analyszing and problem-solving. And for a long time I didn't realise how over-relying on these strengths could be making my life so much more difficult than it needed to be. Leaning in to develop my emotional capacity felt so counterintuitive, but it was exactly what I needed. It was the missing piece of the puzzle, and now, with it in place, the whole picture (previously confusing and overwhelming) was finally coming together.

Emotions do not merely influence decision making. Emotions are the ground of decision making, the atmosphere in which any rational thought takes place. So, no. We can't ignore them. And no, they're not dumb. But, how to explain what I'd learned to my colleagues? And why would they care?

Why would anyone care?

It turns out a lot of people are very happy believing that they’re smart, and the rest of the world is dumb. I get it. It's tempting. It even feels right. What I've learned recently is that, in general, we’re inclined to change our beliefs when there's something in it for us…. 

So why switch from “I'm smart and logical, and other people are dumb and emotional” to “I have yet to learn a crucial life skill that many others have already mastered”? The answer is simple. Life becomes easier when we unlock our emotional brain, when we tap into and utilisze our emotional capacity.

It’s a choice between:

     Be right. Be smart. Live a hard life.
     vs
     Take a big ego hit. Let go of blame. Start making life easier right now!
 

For me the choice was easy. The path most definitely hasn’t been easy, but the choice itself was (rationally) a no-brainer once I realised my options. Somehow, I needed to recognise that my own strategy is part of the problem.

As many of us have already discovered, trying too hard leads to masking and burnout. So for many, finding a new way may not be an optional choice but a non-negotiable necessity. For everyone else though, why wait until crisis point? Unlocking your emotional brain can improve your life right now. It can start making things easier right now. So that we don't have to reach burnout or breakdown.

I feel like, in my life, I had to learn these things the hard way. The brute force, trial and error, fail a thousand times before you succeed, hard way. That's not necessary. With a little bit of guidance and some core principles within a useful framework, the social emotional world of people doesn't have to be a scary, confusing place.

Bit of a summary:

As we'll see later, understanding emotions is the key to understanding people and behaviour.  In fact, our emotions make life simple, cutting down the near infinite complexity of the social world, and transforming it into something straightforward and manageable. In other words, when I was trying to avoid dealing with emotions, I was actually making life much harder for myself, much more complex than it needed to be.

If you find dealing with people difficult and confusing it's likely you may be falling into the same trap. If you wish that people would just be direct, say what they mean, and be honest without pretence, it’s likely you’re missing the reason these behaviours exist. Once we understand their purpose and function, these behaviours become not only clear but necessary.

Sign Off:

So, as I said earlier, I’m very excited to share this book with you! Personally, I love books that teach me something I already know. And by that I mean, I love books that give me frameworks and language to understand the experiences that I’ve been vaguely aware of, but was never able to name or put into words. That’s what I’m trying to do here. I hope you like it! I hope it addresses questions you’ve been asking yourself. And, most of all, I hope it will make your life easier and more enjoyable. Starting… now!

YOUR FEEDBACK

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