Emotional Education
This is not an oversimplification. Let me explain to you, what I show in great detail in the book.
First, some simple definitions. Most of you may know about them, but this is so that we all start on the same page.
- Mind : everything in us that is related to the processing of information so that we can interact with this physical reality as human beings.
- Conscious : the facet of our mind that we are aware of in our daily activities. For example, you are aware of who you are as a person, where you are, the conditions of the environment in which you are, etc.
- Unconscious : the facet of our mind that operates below our daily awareness. This is the part of the mind that takes care, for example, of our heart beating, our lungs breathing, digestion, etc. It also stores all the events that we have experienced in our lives. Some of them can be accessed by the conscious part of the mind (like when you recall a past event), but many of them remain hidden from our daily awareness.
You could write whole books about each of these three concepts, but this is all you need to know for the purposes of my explanations here.
Contrary to what most of people believe, the power of the conscious is insignificant compared to that of the unconscious.
Just think about the functionality of our body. It is an amazingly complex piece of machinery. If you, the conscious, had to be in control of when your heart needed to beat again, you would not be able to accomplish anything in your life. And this is just one functionality of the body, out of the millions that need to be taken care of. That is the power of the unconscious. This is a crucial understanding that you must keep in mind, if you want to comprehend why you are the way you are and why you behave the way you do.
We, human beings, are emotional creatures. The instrument that we use to interact with this physical planet, our human body, makes use of emotions to regulate our behavior. Every experience that you have, creates an impression on you, either pleasant or not, with all kinds of varying degrees. What our unconscious is doing all along our lives, is compiling all the experiences that we are having in an internal database. It compiles not just the events of the experiences, but also the emotions that you felt while going through them. In other words, it is not just that you remember how you felt then, you have that emotion stored in you. If you find yourself again in a similar situation to one that you experienced in the past, you will feel the emotion that you felt then, as soon as your unconscious associates this present situation with the earlier one. This will affect your behavior in this new situation. It is very simple: we are attracted to events associated with positive emotions, while we avoid events associated to negative emotions. This is what determines our behavior in life.
Every single decision that you are making in life has an emotional component that is regulating its final outcome
At this point in the evolution of humanity, we are subjected to negative events in our lives that leave an emotional imprint that affects our decisions in very limiting ways. If we don't re-process these events and their associated emotions, we will be condemned to live a very limited life. We will not be able to reach our full potential.
The vast majority of the people are not aware of these simple facts, because our educational system does not teach these concepts. Then, they are left with the beliefs that "that is how I am," "that is how life is," "some are lucky," and even supported by religious beliefs like "that is what God intended," etc. They are victims of a universe that does not make sense and that they simply must accept as is. This problem gets compounded because, in spite of all the rationalizations that we may try to bring to our situation, all these unprocessed negative emotions result in a resentment that necessarily will express itself, in one way or another. This is how people turn to fanatism, violence, intolerance. Hence, the situation of humanity nowadays.
Yes, my explanations here are oversimplified. In my book I go into a great extent about all these concepts. Once you read it, it becomes very clear to you how this is true. It is imperative today that we learn about our mind and emotions. That we learn about tools to transform our negative experiences into positive resources that give us wisdom, compassion and empathy. It is imperative that this emotional education start right away in the first years of school, so that kids start developing compassion and empathy from the beginning, at the same time that they learn tools that will help them through the challenging emotional situations that naturally arise in their lives. Parents and teachers must have this knowledge so that they shape the next generation to express its full potential in harmony amongst all of its members and with the planet in which we live.