BEING EMOTIONAL ISN’T A FLAW, IT’S DESIGN EXCELLENCE …

I am a very emotional person. Being a woman and also sensitive, crying comes naturally, I cry, cry a lot. It was only today I cried the last, majority of my early mornings or when I slip into sleep I do shell some tears. Please don’t ask me why, I really cannot explain. 

As I grew up, entered the male dominated corporate world, I learnt that displaying emotions is considered negative and can badly effect my career. I get very emotional but usually in solitude, so I tried not to display emotions often when others are around. A very few people even are considerate about those who display their emotions, I am saying it out of my experience, I have had tough times when people consider all of it fake. 

How long can we control emotions? That depends, irrespective of the duration we can catch hold of our emotions, they are going to come out one day. The same happened with me very recently at work. I am the kind of person, who takes in a lot of pressure, take-up challenging tasks at work but yet try to be contained. It has been over an year I was handling one such task, we were due for some thermal tests for our equipment, there were a ton of issues, people refused to accept the root cause. I tried my level best to handle the situation, but it was way out of my control, it is hard to stand against a group of leadership defending against what they think is absolute ‘nonsense’ isn’t the case.

One fine evening, after a two hour long meeting while I stayed all in silence, at the end of it, I uttered 3 sentences, my voice had a shiver, tears in my eyes, it felt like the moment where I was breaking down. Before so many people I really felt embarrassed, this one instance gave me a tag of “an emotional person” in my team. Anywhere people encountered me, they just used to say, “she is very emotional”, because of my already established understanding of being emotional as not so good thing, I was worried. 

Last Thursday, I was almost done with my lunch, about to leave but was waiting for others to finish. Meanwhile my teammate and very good friend of mine asked if he can join, I replied, “sure”. He noticed all of us were almost done and said “may be I joined at the wrong time”. Everyone was talking about something, one person said “she is very emotional, very much , she cannot just handle”, pointing a finger at me. My friend replied “Yes, she is but you cannot find such people easily”, I looked at him with an expression of surprise on my face. 

“Look, I am not trying to convince you, but I will tell you what I have learnt in life. I am not talking only about you but people similar to you who are adding value. One of my previous teammates was just like you, very sincere, at the same time she was intelligent, if she thinks her design would make the architecture better she used to sit for hours to prove its worth. Tell her there is an issue, she would sit all alone in the night to fix it. There are many people who just don’t do anything, not only in our team but many teams, sincere people are making projects succeed. Emotional people are very sincere. Being emotional is not at all negative and in fact your sincerity along with the emotion makes others really consider it. Emotions, let them be, they are only going to help you. Don’t even think of changing yourself, it’s not worth”, these were his words. 

It is very true. Every word of his is true. Emotions are really good and turn out to be helpful. If any of you have the habit of watching TED talks, there are many videos where people just break into tears. Their emotion displays their sincerity, as an audience I have always felt more involved when I watch speakers feeling emotional. When they knew few hundreds of people are watching them live, they are being video-graphed, and the video is going to stay in history forever, people don’t feel the need to hide their emotions.

I personally do not consider being emotional as negative. My emotions have always helped me discover who I am, they have taught me to a great deal, they make me dwell into situations better, make better decisions after I am over the emotional turmoil. Being emotional helps me make deeper connections with others, in some way if I can be of some help that’s really awesome. 

Men or women, it is important for us to display our emotions when appropriate, or when we cannot handle anymore, people who love us would understand us. The expression of emotion could be anger, frustration, ecstasy, many other feelings which can be overwhelming, but trust me, we would be loved the same by people who really know who we are. Let yourself be, let your emotions flow ….

“Eyes that do not cry, do not see.” ~Swedish Proverb

 

 

 

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