It’s been almost a week now that I am reading the book I mentioned in one of my posts before: “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” .
“What distinguishes human beings is that we are capable of positive change. This book succinctly explains how to deal with emotions creatively and employ our intelligence in a beneficial way.” (The Dalai Lama)
Some of us are born and grown in cultural spaces that sometimes let you feel like a prisoner: your life is not free, everyone is controlling, observing and judging you. This means you can not be yourself. Well, you think you are born in that way, so you actually don’t realize the fact that you are caught somewhere and you can’t escape, until you fly away, studying or working abroad. That’s where your real personality shows up, and you discover all your positive and negative points, all your strengths and weaknesses.
And that’s where you start understanding and give freedom to your thoughts and emotions. You start to create your own life.
But I will write about this matter more on details in my next post. For the moment I want to focus my today’s writing on why sometimes looks like I’m on fire.
I always use to say that I am from Italy, but I am made around the world.
Different aspects of my personality come from different places I used to live in, or from strong and unforgettable facts or experiences I had to face.
Let’s take as an example the fact that I hate when men treat women as an object, when they don’t respect them or when they are violent with them. I am not just disappointed about it, but completely angry. I can’t even read a news about it and my anger comes up. This is mainly due to couple of situations I faced by myself when I was in my first half of 20’s: something to do with my previous relationship, which I’m still not so comfortable to talk about it in details here and couple of scenes that happened when I was in Peru and Brazil.
My first time in Brazil was when I was 22, just after my graduation, I went for a short time to North of Brazil with my sister. We were having a very good time in the resort, on the beach, in the clubs until one night, we were trying to go out of the club to go back to the hotel by taxi and one man from our hotel stopped us in a very rude way:
“Where are you going? What are you doing?”
“We are just going back to the hotel..”
“Are you crazy? If you step out of the club alone, they will kidnap you!”
“Who?” (we didn’t understand exactly what he was talking about)
We went outside with this man and his other friends, got into the taxi and yes… we saw those people! they were just outside the gate of the club waiting for girls. They took those young girls in such a violent way and left. There were so many people outside, but they didn’t do anything to save those girls!
I was shocked and afraid, cause my (younger) sister had to see everything as well. And it was my responsibility to let her be safe during the vacation. We were lucky and blessed that night. But the fact I couldn’t do anything at that time still gives me pain. Well, of course I couldn’t do anything, and nobody couldn’t… but it’s sad, really sad.
One other uncomfortable situation I felt was in Lima, Peru. More than ones, honestly. I am not gonna describe it here in details, but everyday I was afraid to go out of home. And I am usually not. In Lima you can feel the danger everywhere and at anytime… and not just for girls.
I was working and volunteering there for about 3 months. Most of the people are very nice there, but as said, that feeling of fear never goes away. You can walk and being kidnapped, raped or shoot at anytime during the day or night. I arrived at a point where I called my boss in China crying and screaming:
“I cant stay here. They shoot you for an IPhone!!They don’t have a heart”
Anyway, I finished my work as I was supposed to. Everyday I started to walk around with a little knife in my pocket, but that doesn’t mean I was safe. I didnt even know how to open it.
That time, it was the only time I wanted to go back to Italy as soon as possible. The first thing I asked my dad was this:
“Can you teach me how to shoot?” (as he was a militar)
Of course I had a proper and official training with examinations before taking my “gun license” (I don’t even know how to say it in English). If I will ever have to use a gun for self-defense in the future (and I really hope not), at least I know how to use it.
All these facts plus cheating, men being violent with girls, men who feel superior than women, both in business and private life, dealing with fake and mean people, etc.. all this creates a flame inside myself. Most of the times I control it, but sometimes I don’t.
This book teaches you how to work with your emotions in an intelligent way. It clearly says you can not control emotions, that is the mistake.
Emotions are way too stronger than the mind and they come up when you least expect it, if you keep controlling them. Start using them intelligently. That is the answer.
=) Lots of homework to do!
feddysworld 