Barking Up The Wrong Tree December 3rd, 2020 ---------------------------------------------------------------
Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller! To check it out, click [here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent ([Click here]( to read on the blog) None of them had died thus far. The raptors and trolls of the jungles of ZulâGurub were simply no match for the group. And now the 20 elite Warlocks and Hunters descended into the dungeon. But their greatest enemy was ready for them... Hakkar the Soulflayer, a winged serpent, stood over the group and cackled. The Hunters lifted their swords. The Warlocks prepared to cast their most powerful magic... But Hakkar had his own spells. As the first warrior charged him, he cast âCorrupted Blood.â The hero dropped to his knees, weakened. Barely able to lift his sword as hit points drained from him⦠Alright, alright... I know what some of you are asking: âWhat is this nerd fantasy crap? Barkerâs finally lost his mind.â Itâs relevant, I swear. In fact, this is a true story. Well, kinda true. It did happen⦠in the online video game World of Warcraft. On September 13, 2005, to be exact. Anyway, itâs relevant, I swear. Stick with me... Now the effects of Hakkarâs spell werenât just powerful â they were also contagious. âCorrupted Bloodâ spread from character to character in the dungeon. But hereâs the thing: WOWâs programmers hadnât properly planned this new section of the game. For one thing, they didnât predict how players would react to the unique challenge of a virally-spreading spell. Some characters found the battle so difficult that they teleported away -- bringing the contagion with them across the virtual world of Azeroth. The programmers had never intended âCorrupted Bloodâ to leave the dungeon but nothing in the code of the game prevented it. Only high-level characters could play this part of the game and the powerful spell just weakened them -- but lesser characters could be killed by it. In a matter of hours, entire cities in World of Warcraft fell. The dwarven land of Ironforge and the orc home of Orgimmar were littered with virtual bodies. Panic set in. Players fled the cities, spreading âCorrupted Bloodâ even wider. WOW had over 4 million players at the time. In days, hundreds of thousands of characters died. Yup: it became the first virtual global pandemic. And how did players behave in a video game pandemic? Pretty much like normal people would. The behaviors documented may sound quite familiar to all of us in the COVID-19 era... The gameâs creators tried to create a voluntary quarantine. But players didnât comply and the disease spread. When that didnât work they asked players to visibly mark themselves as infected to stem the tide. ("Test and trace" anyone?) But that failed too. Other players fled to remote corners of the game world to avoid exposure -- virtual social distancing. (I am unaware of any hoarding of virtual toilet paper that may have occurred.) It may have only been a video game but the people playing were quite human and they responded emotionally, as humans do. And many of those emotional reactions were quite unexpected... Some altruistic players traveled to the centers of the pandemic, casting healing spells to try and save the infected. Many of these âfirst respondersâ died or became vectors themselves. But other players were not so kind. A few deliberately infected themselves and then teleported to the homelands of their enemies, acting as virtual-epidemiological-suicide-bombers. (One guy even took on the role of Doomsday Prophet, shouting about the plague in the middle of the town square.) But this was just an incident in a silly game, right? Well, the CDC didnât think so. They reached out to Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of WOW, to get statistics on the virtual plague because the event was realistic enough that they could learn from it. And epidemiologist Nina Fefferman (a WOW player herself) wrote [a paper]( about the â[Corrupted Blood Incident]( that was published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. Some of this data has been applied to understand the sociological aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak. So what did they learn? Humans are emotional and hard to predict. Trying to figure out what the guy next door will do during a pandemic can be a total mystery; call it Schrödinger's Neighbor. In the past, the computer models that epidemiologists had used failed to account for human unpredictability. However, games like WOW â a âcomputer modelâ where the behavior was driven by real humans -- was far more insightful and predictive. They could be a tool to better study pandemics. It all became a lesson in emotional intelligence. And here we are in lovely 2020 which has thus far seemed like some alchemical hybrid of H.P. Lovecraft and the Discovery Channel. As our upside-down clown world finalizes its divorce from reality, it may seem like a really bad year to start having feelings. 2020 has thrown a flash-bang grenade into our happiness and the only rational conclusion is that this planet is haunted. So whatâs going to happen next? I donât know but Iâm in serious danger of running out of popcorn. What I do know is we need emotional intelligence more than ever. We need to maintain our connections with others, to empathize, and to work together to get through this. Problem is, the pandemic is actually reducing our EI. The virus has created an emotional landfill in all our lives so that for some of us the only thing weâre able to connect with is a phone charger. And technology has only exacerbated the problem in many ways. [Research]( shows too much time in front of computer screens actually reduces our ability to read the nonverbal communication of others and effectively deal with them. Yes, Zoom calls can be nice but itâs not the same as in-person conversation, just like Wii golf is not gonna turn you into Tiger Woods. So you and I need to strengthen our emotional intelligence. And we will not be getting our EI info from an Instagram carousel or the wise manicurist at the local strip mall. Yes, I have research and Iâm not afraid to use it. Now Iâm not saying this is going to turn you into a force-ten-charmer but it can help us all fight the empathy atrophy of lockdown. So what is EI? Itâs a concept that John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Yale professor Peter Salovey came up with in the early 90âs that was subsequently studied and popularized by Daniel Goleman. Hereâs Mayerâs definition. From [Harvard Business Review Guide to Emotional Intelligence]( From a scientific standpoint, emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and othersâ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and othersâ emotions.
Iâve intellectually shrinkwrapped a lot of the data down to four Râs: Realize, Recognize, Refine, Regulate. Maybe this is the caffeine talking, but I think itâs time to get started. Letâs get to it... 1) Realize Self-awareness is the most essential of emotional intelligence skills. Why? Because without this guy youâve got no way to evaluate what skills you have, what you lack and what you need to work on. Youâre flying blind. So whatâs the formal definition? From [HBRâs 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence]( Self-awareness means having a deep understanding of oneâs emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful. Rather, they are honest with themselves and with others. People who have a high degree of self-awareness recognize how their feelings affect them, other people, and their job performance.
So how do you increase self-awareness? By introspection? Wrong. That doesnât work. In general, we are terrible at self-awareness and spinning stories in our heads only makes it worse. Ironically, you get self-awareness from other people. From [Insight]( Psychologist Timothy Smith and his colleagues powerfully demonstrated this in a study with 300 married couples in which both partners were being tested for heart disease. They asked each participant to rate both their own and their partnerâs levels of anger, hostility, and argumentativeness -- all strong predictors of the illness -- and found that peopleâs self-ratings were infinitely less accurate than those of their spouses.
If you want to know yourself better, do an informal survey. Yeah, one friend might be polite and flatter you but ask five or ten pals and youâre going see some very accurate trends. You understand yourself by connecting with others, which gives you the self-awareness to better connect with others. Itâs not a paradox; itâs a virtuous upward spiral. (To learn more about how you can lead a successful life, check out my bestselling book [here]( Okay, self-awareness is powerful but by itself only confers an al dente level of emotional intelligence. To really get better, we have to learn how to deal with our own emotions in the moment... 2) Recognize And Label You need to check in with yourself during the day. How do you feel? Asked this question, most of us, even if standing in the middle of an active volcano, will respond, âFine.â We often donât pay attention to our emotions until the needle is already in the red zone. And if we donât recognize how weâre feeling we canât  prevent it from unconsciously affecting our behavior. So how do we get answers? That's right: waterboarding... Whoops. I mean, by asking yourself. Make it a habit. Set an alarm on your phone if you have to. Check in with yourself a few times a day and just ask yourself how youâre feeling. Sounds silly but weâve all made terrible decisions only to later realize it was because we were in a bad mood. (Ever make the mistake of shopping while hungry? Exactly.) And once you know how you feel, label the emotion to get a handle on it. Your brain canât deal with something if you donât know what it is, so give it a name. Neuroscience studies by [Matthew Lieberman]( at UCLA have shown the incredible power of labeling to help us control and dampen powerful emotions. From [Permission to Feel]( ...participants who were identified as having extreme fear of spidersâarachnophobiaâwere placed in a room with a caged spider. Some subjects used emotion words to describe their feelings in that situation, while others used emotion-neutral words to simply state the facts. The result? Members of the first group were able to take more steps closer to the cage than the other participants. Additionally, greater use of words such as âanxietyâ and âfearâ during exposure to the spider was associated with reductions in those emotions.
Yes, ironic as it may be, saying the word âanxiousâ makes you less anxious. Gotta name it to tame it. And the better you recognize emotions in yourself, the better you can eventually recognize them in others. (To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click [here]( Okay, recognizing and labeling is necessary -- but not sufficient for our purposes. Time to take it to the next level and develop some truly ferocious EI skills... 3) Refine Labeling is good but if you can only call things âgoodâ or âbadâ you barely qualify as sentient. Being black and white about emotions demonstrates a lack of EI. If complex, nuanced emotions are no more perceptible to you than ultraviolet radiation, the world is going to be a very distressing place, especially in the age of COVID. We need to develop âemotional granularity.â The more you can refine your understanding of your emotions, the better you can deal with them. Knowing youâre angry is good but being able to distinguish that youâre âhangryâ provides a solution to the problem. And with positive emotions a more fine-grained recognition allows you to do what is needed to amplify ot extend them. So broaden your emotional vocabulary, examine your feelings and start keeping track of the differences. Maybe you feel âstressed.â More granularly, is it anxiety about an uncertain future? Or fear of what you assume will happen? Or pressure because of too many responsibilities? This level of understanding allows you to better solve the problem. Studies show emotional granularity leads to mucho good things. From [Permission to Feel]( ...participants who were deemed granular were better able to differentiate their emotional experiences. Subjects who were low in granularityâcalled clumpersâwere less skilled at differentiating emotions (e.g., angry, worried, frustrated). When the two groups were compared, she reported, granular individuals were less likely to freak out or abuse alcohol when under stress and more likely to find positive meaning in negative experiences. They also were better at emotion regulationâmoderating their responses in order to achieve desired outcomes. The clumpers, on the other hand, scored worse on those counts, tending to be physically and psychologically ill at a higher rate than the granular crowd.
A thesaurus can help. Seriously. A better emotional vocabulary means a better understanding of yourself and others. Pinpointing exactly what youâre feeling allows you to better label and helps you make someone else feel you really âgetâ them. Now this is where things get weird. The latest research shows that emotions are not set. Youâre not programmed from birth with them. From [How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain]( Where emotions and the autonomic nervous system are concerned, four significant meta-analyses have been conducted in the last two decades, the largest of which covered more than 220 physiology studies and nearly 22,000 test subjects. None of these four meta-analyses found consistent and specific emotion fingerprints in the body.
Emotions are concepts we learn from culture. Physiological feelings like trembling hands are real and concrete but your brain has to interpret those though the lens of what youâre been taught to decide if it's ânervousnessâ or âexcitement.â Ever see a little kid fall down and immediately look at her mother to determine how to react? Exactly. And if mom wigs out, the kid wigs out. If mom is cool, the kid doesnât freak. Emotions are constructs and that means other countries literally have emotions youâve never felt. From [Permission to Feel]( Iktsuarpok is the Inuit word that describes the anticipation you feel when youâre so impatient for a guestâs arrival at your home that you keep going outside to check⦠Kvell is the Yiddish word that describes the feeling of overwhelming love and pride you get when you see what your child can do⦠In Mandarin, there were more than one hundred different shame-related terms...
And whatâs that mean? Yup: you can create your own new emotions. Youâve felt plenty of things that werenât exactly happy but not really bad⦠but mixed. So give that thing a new word instead of dumping it into the blurry âmiscellaneous box.â Thatâs true emotional intelligence and this is the path to a deeper understanding of yourself and more control over your life. That dread you feel on Sunday night, knowing you need to go to work tomorrow? âSunday-nitis.â Or that special something that you feel around your partner? âPassion-o-rama.â Yeah, it might feel a little silly at first but donât let that hold you back. In Japan they have âage-otoriâ â âThe feeling of looking worse after a haircut.â Weâve all felt that. It just took one emotionally intelligent genius to give it a name. Be that genius. Share your new emotions with others and you can feel them together. This is the path to increased understanding and closeness. Others can help you and you can help others in a much better way when they know more specifically what the heck each of you are feeling. (To learn the 4 harsh truths that will make you a better person, click [here]( But sometimes negative emotions are going to get the best of us. What do we do when they grab hold of the wheel and threaten to possess us? Alrighty, itâs exorcism time... 4) Reframe To Regulate Harvard researcher [Shawn Achor]( did a study of bankers right after the 2008 crisis hit. Most of them were incredibly stressed. But a few were happy and resilient. What did those latter folks have in common? They experienced the same events but their brains didn't frame them as threats; they saw them as challenges to overcome. And just by showing the normal bankers a video explaining how to perceive stress as a challenge, he turned sad bankers into super-bankers. Hereâs what Shawn told me: And we watched those groups of people over the next three to six weeks, and what we found was if we could move people to view stress as enhancing, a challenge instead of as a threat, we saw a 23% drop in their stress-related symptoms. It produced a significant increase not only in levels of happiness, but a dramatic improvement in their levels of engagement at work as well.
Reframe stress as excitement. Studies show the physiological states are the same, itâs only how we choose to see them that is different. Emotions are concepts formed by the interpretation of the things happening in your body. So you can choose to experience the tingling and tremors as anxiety or excitement. Reframe the info coming in. Are those tears of sadness, tears of joy or tears of relief? It can be up to you if you try. Donât feel trapped by the first frame that comes to mind. Donât be so sure of what youâre feeling immediately. Emotions are malleable and subject to interpretation; theyâre not the laws of physics. Step back. Observe your emotions. Label what youâre experiencing. Ask what else it could be. Give the more positive option the benefit of the doubt. Yes, this takes practice but it can be one of the most powerful skills you can learn. Itâs the difference between handling your anger like an emotional intelligence Jedi or discussing it with the court appointed therapist. (To learn the most fun way to make your life awesome during the pandemic, click [here]( Okay, I definitely feel my newly minted emotion of âcomplete-itude.â Letâs round it all up, find out how the âCorrupted Blood Incidentâ ended â and the important lesson we can all take away from it... Sum Up To become more emotionally intelligent, remember the four Râs:
- Realize: Self-awareness, ironically, comes from others.
- Recognize and label: Ask yourself how youâre feeling. If you answer âfineâ, please slap yourself. Be specific. Label the emotion. Name it to tame it.
- Refine: Broaden your emotional vocabulary. Distinguish emotions to find better ways to cope or to amplify them. Create new emotions and share them. (If youâre not sick with COVID but youâre sick of COVID, thatâs obviously the emotion of âpandemicitisâ and we can all relate.)
- Reframe: Itâs not anxiety; itâs excitement. Itâs not stress; itâs a challenge. Emotions are not destiny, they are stories. Rewrite them.
The World of Warcraft pandemic was similar to other real-life plagues, almost to the point of absurdity. What did the researchers discover was the greatest source of spread? Animals. The in-game âpetsâ characters had could not die from âCorrupted Bloodâ but they did act as ongoing vectors for the contagion... Just like bats with COVID or rats with the bubonic plague. Crazy. The virtual pandemic only lasted for a week, though. So how did it end? Ummm, they reset the game servers. Yeah, thatâs where the comparison ends. Sadly, we cannot reboot Earth. But thereâs still a lesson here... In 2008 there was another plague in World of Warcraft. But it wasn't due to evil spells this time. Nope, this time it was zombies. But this pandemic was intentional. To promote the âWrath of the Lich Kingâ expansion pack, WOW created the âGreat Zombie Plague of â08.â Blizzard deliberately incorporated lessons from âCorrupted Bloodâ to make a challenging experience that was a lot of fun for players. And it was praised as being even more realistic than the ârealâ pandemic Azeroth had faced three years prior. They learned. The creators of World of Warcraft learned from their mistakes and â quite literally -- created a better world. Hindsight is 20-20. (Well, pandemics are very 2020 too, but you get my point.) We can learn from this. Reading the typical YouTube comments section you might not think humans are very smart but you canât keep the human spirit down. No matter what faces us, we bounce back. Youâd have better luck trying to circumcise Wolverine than getting our species to give up. Right now things are bad. The only thing multiplying faster than the virus is podcasts. But weâll get through this. But itâs not enough to merely survive; we must thrive. And we will. We have spent so much time apart due to the virus but we cannot let this degrade our ability to connect, to empathize, to grow and learn from one another. Emotional intelligence starts with you but it quickly extends to others. Practice these skills and you no longer have to use the tired expression âI know how you feel.â You will know how someone feels. Youâll be able to describe it and understand how it differs from other feelings. You'll relate. And one of the greatest gifts we can give to others, now and forever, is to make them feel they are not alone in this world. ***And if you want a daily insight, quote or laugh, you should follow me on Instagram [here]( Email Extras Findings from around the internet... + Want to know how to order tasks for maximum productivity? Click [here](. + Want to know how to help your kids reframe their anxiety? Click [here](. + Want to know how Facebook can make you happier? Click [here](. + Miss last week's post? Here you go: [6 Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day](. + Want to know how to feel better after you screw up at work? Click [here](. + You read to the end of the email. I feel seen -- and I thank you... And now, as foretold in the ancient prophecies, it is Crackerjack Time: If you've ever tossed and turned trying to get to sleep, you'll relate to this. For a laugh, check out McSweeney's "52 Stages of Insomnia" [here](.
Thanks for reading!
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