Life in Spirals

It’s claimed that one character trait that correctly predicts success in nearly every sphere of life is delaying gratification. Of course, makes sense. How? When it comes to accomplishing high aims in life, one has to undergo grueling challenges, face fear, and embrace uncertainty. None of these is gratifying. But people who aim high in life view challenges as opportunities to grow and self-transformation and believe that the reward in the end is worthwhile.

Coming to emotional intelligence, how should one manage oneself? Two ancient philosophies, namely, Stoicism and Buddhism, come to mind when we search for solutions to self-management. Both life philosophies bring forth the fact that human volition is malleable, trainable, and hence can be grown. A common principle to both philosophies is accepting the fact that we cause our own suffering and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

This, however, doesn’t mean that it gives a license to others or anything in life to subject us to pain or suffering. And we should do all in our capacity to forestall such happenings. But following thought experiments helps us to put things into perspective. What if, what happened to us, happened to us due to pure chance? Like, For example, market conditions rendered your latest project unamenable. Should we blame ourselves, our luck, our fate, or whoever is in charge of the Universe? Obviously, no. If yes, will it help us?

You'd of course question that tragedies in life stress us, make us anxious, and eventually depress us. Coping with pain, suffering, loss, or failure in a healthy way and learning to move forward in spite of the emotional burden they bring is a way to lean into resilience. This is where these two life philosophies have a crucial role. They help us to accept cognitively as well as emotionally all that has stressed us, or has made us anxious, or depressed, and also welcome thoughts and emotions that are otherwise banished away, misattributed and as a result develop a deeper understanding of ourselves and everything around us.

Once what was unwelcome, is welcome and then dissipates. This is why it is so crucial to carve out time for self-maintenance, to accept, to see things as they are, and to realize more options before us, to expand the sphere of volition, that would have, otherwise, dwindled in our emotional reactivity.