How Failure Improved My EQ and Can Improve Yours Too
It’s never too late to start
Do you like to win but can’t imagine what failure is?
As a kid, did your life only revolve around making your parents happy?
Do you understand books, but cannot connect with people?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then you can relate to this.
I am going to share a story from the time I was a little kid in the sixth grade at a school in North India. This was an era when I won at everything I did. I didn’t know what it meant to fail.
If you lived to give boasting rights to your parents, you’ll know what I am talking about.
Revisiting childhood psychology is a great way to evaluate your biases in situations. It is useful to assess how far you’ve come. For example, not knowing what it’s like to fail could make you avoid failure later on. As a result, you’ll stick to your comfort zone and perhaps end up stuck or dissatisfied.
It’s never late to learn to fail. My failure helped me understand more about social behavior and emotions at an early age. It was a far deeper learning than what came via academic achievements.
This is how it goes…
The Story From The Sixth Grade
The Question
I was used to winning debates, essays, calligraphy, poetry and every subject in the curriculum. I heard about an upcoming ‘Hindi’ language essay competition.
For those not familiar, Hindi is the national language of India and the most widely spoken across the country, especially in North India.
Having already won the first place in the English essay competition a few months earlier, I could imagine myself winning this one and giving my victory speech in the school morning assembly.
No, they didn’t ask winners to give a speech. I enjoyed fantasizing winning from an early age.
Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy — Daniel Goleman
The competition day arrived, and the topic for the essay was “what will you be when you grow up”.
Sounds simple, right? How did you answer this question back when you were a kid?
India of the 1990s
It was one of the most popular question asked by the adults.
You may have had a similar experience growing up, regardless of where you lived. If you answered this question, you may remember getting swooning responses when you said doctor or engineer or something similar.
Ironically, people expect you to know ‘what will you grow up to be’ with confidence at an age when you can hardly tie your shoelaces.
The charades the world expects you to pull with finesse!
The first lesson you learned if you were amongst the majority middle class population was on ‘survival of the fittest’. To succeed in life, you were required to excel at academics. It was touted as the only way to get ahead.
Thankfully now, things are changing courtesy, technology and opportunity in every field.
Unfortunately, many of us are still stuck in repetitive patterns of survival mode and scarcity mindset without questioning.
My Answer to the Question
I sucked at answering this question as a child because I did not know.
I never replied I would be a doctor, engineer or an Indian Administrative officer, even though my parents expected me to all of this within this lifetime. Phew lucky I didn’t aim for all of those!
For my essay, I wrote a philosophical view, one that was not expected out of a sixth grader.
I wrote about how it is more important to be a better human being before anything else, and I can be anything I want to be, but I need to make the most effort to be a better human first.
Then came the part when you chuckle to yourself in overconfidence, thinking your response was unusual.
The Result
They announced the results in the morning assembly. I had won nothing.
Nothing! Zero! Zilch!
Apparently, the shock was severe. I ran away crying. First taste of failure.
My best friend at the time tried to assure me this was temporary and I can win next year. I even remember some kids ridiculing me and inquiring with my teacher why I didn’t win.
As though the indignation of failing wasn’t enough, facing the blow of the teacher answering to an entire class why you didn’t win seemed humiliating.
Anyhow, the teacher said I did not write on the topic, but wrote something else altogether.
This was one of those times everyone laughs and you realize you don’t have many people rooting for your success.
Initial Days After The Failure
The world came to a standstill for the next few days.
The whole matter stumped me.
I became stuck in an over-thinking cycle. The topic was ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’. And I wrote about being a good human — responsible, caring, honest, in control, accepting and non judgmental kind, something the teacher said was not an answer to the question asked.
I might still answer this question the same way, despite being an engineering and management professional with more than a decade of global assignments, if I was being honest with you.
How I Changed My Perspective
As per Daniel Goleman, the world’s leading expert on Emotional Intelligence, EQ (Emotional Quotient) has 4 parts:
Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Relationship Awareness and Relationship Management.
My first failure became a major life lesson, as it taught me lessons in each of these four areas. Of course, it’s only now I see how those were lessons in EQ. This isn’t something you can learn from academics. It molded me much more than any wins.
1. I learned to question myself (Self- awareness):
Asking myself what I liked and what was driving my actions helped.
I enjoyed being a nerd, but the pressure of the family’s expectations was a bit much.
Experimentation was fun. A few years later, I lost interest in mastering text books or being a topper — the only thing which mattered earlier. I spent a lot of time thinking or reading.
For a long time, winning at anything wasn’t important. It gave me more freedom than the vicious cycle of trying to win every time. I failed many times over without any guilt.
It’s great to be rewarded, but it’s more important to enjoy and learn from failures.
2. I learned to not be a sore loser (Self Management):
I learned that despite my best effort, I’ll not immediately see success.
This is when it will be important to persist where it makes sense or change direction after a practical analysis of the situation.
This required me to remain calm.
It’s up to us to be gracious in the face of failure, accept reality, and continue to move forward with no loss of enthusiasm.
3. I realized how I appeared to others (Relationship Awareness)
I could see how others saw me: engrossed in books, the first to raise their hand to answer a question, the one who wanted to win at all costs and didn’t care about them.
This wasn’t the real me.
But I could see how my blind pursuit of my parents’ expectations made others think I didn’t care about anything else. I cared.
Even at this age, I wanted to see others succeed. Did I want something in return, perhaps to be more in harmony with the environment?
Once you learn to walk in others’ shoes, you learn to empathize and do it at every opportunity. As a result, you make different choices in your life.
4. I learned to consider others even when I won (Relationship Management)
I changed my behavior over time. This meant cheering for others when they won, and offering to help.
Still, I fulfilled my parents’ key expectations, but without blinding myself to others around me.
The first reaction you notice when you change is disbelief.
It was hard for people to believe why I was doing this. I couldn’t explain because I didn’t understand it back then myself fully.
The way you feel when you help another person is unparalleled. Someone felt like a winner, like they could do anything and you made it happen.
How wonderful!
In Conclusion
The super nerdy side of me may still hold all her annual performance reports since kindergarten close, like they are the ultimate wealth. I have them all well-saved.
However, these are the lessons you’ll find more useful to work on your emotional intelligence from my journey:
- Understand yourself better by questioning yourself.
- When you understand yourself better, you’ll know how to manage your emotions.
- When you manage yourself better, you’ll empathize with others more.
- Once you empathize with others more, your actual behavior will be in line with your desired behavior for your life’s objectives. And you will build beautiful relationships.
These 4 steps will make you unstoppable. No kidding. Your future self will thank you.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. ― Daniel Goleman