Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, comprehend, and control our feelings, as well as react intelligently to those of others. In contrast to IQ, EQ is a collection of intrapersonal and interpersonal traits that enable us to manage social encounters with compassion and knowledge. By understanding our inner world and resonating with others' experiences, we respond thoughtfully instead of mindlessly. This supports personal growth.

Do you ever feel like you’re just going through life without truly knowing yourself or living to your full potential? Does a little voice inside whisper that you were meant for something more if only you could peel away the roles and labels to unveil your unique essence and purpose?

"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." As Carl Jung wisely stated, fully embracing the entirety of your being allows for profound freedom and fulfilment. Yet how often do we reject, hide, or mould certain unwanted parts of ourselves to gain love, acceptance, and status? "I distinctly remember that for most of my early professional life, I looked at other people's approval to live my life. I thought if I made them happy, I would be happy. I shied away from intense emotions to fit in. After a while, it all became exhausting!

All of us desire the joy of feeling good about ourselves. However, what happens when our belief in our worth is undermined? Can low self-worth affect our relationships with ourselves and with others?

Far too often, we either use our feelings and desires and skip responsibility to our word i.e. we don’t take into account our impact on people and the world around us if we don’t follow through on our commitments. This is our propensity towards the conditioned feminine.

OR

We cling to our word aka commitments in such a way that we ignore our feelings and emotions and then torture ourselves in the process i.e. we do not practice self-love. This is our propensity towards the conditioned masculine.

In a conversation with a coaching client, we talked about how easy it is to fall into comfort.

The people we connect with, the jobs we do, our bland relationships, how we live our lives, our relationship to money - once we start getting habituated to our environment we can find comfort literally anywhere.

My experience is that the answer lies in a very simple and yet very powerful question. And that question is:

“What do I want?”

OR

“What kind of experience I would like to have?”

I have always been a big fan of learning about Archetypes ever since I started my own personal growth journey.

Archetypes really helped understand different facets of my own unconscious behaviours that I wasn’t in approval of and didn’t want to even acknowledge or see.

In her book - ‘Sacred Contracts’, Caroline Myss proposes that all of us have agreed to play out an energetic contract even before we are born, and the way we play out these contracts is based on how we live our lives.

I have been thinking about this for a while now and the best way I have found to describe it is that I think there is a spot in everything that is true. 

Once we have touched or experienced the spot, it stays with us and we crave going back to it, and feel empty when we are not experiencing it. 

I have been remembering this moment when I was 14 years old when my grandfather and grandmother passed away within 24 hours of each other.

Over the last couple of days, I have had this image that keeps flashing in front of my eyes - it is of my father sitting on the floor in the room next to where my grandmother laid in the verandah at our home. He is surrounded by all the extended family members and is crying and losing control. I am standing next to him, completely stunned. I had never seen him that emotional in my life I never will again.

He touched something deep at a meditation retreat. When he was really young, he lost one of his parents and convinced himself that people he loves will always leave him.

At a glance it might not look like it's a big issue, but let’s examine some of the ways in which this is projected in life.

Why is it so hard for men to show feelings?

I wrote an article about my experience running a men's workshop at the Ministry of Justice in London

Calming your mind when you have negative thoughts

Growing up in India, talk of Karma was all around me. “You reap what you sow,” I would hear people say. I grew into adulthood believing that I needed to do good deeds to get good results later in my life. It was like a carrot and stick — “you better do good deeds or God/Universe is going to get you”.

In my writing practice this morning, I hit a place where the voice of fear was getting louder and louder, especially the fear of failure and what that means to my financial and social existence.

I noticed that the voices in my head tend to go to an extreme place where I end up believing that won’t have roof over my head or be able to feed myself

So, I have been out of a typical nine to five/corporate job for almost four years now and I still have quite a few amazing friends from the previous organisations I worked for.

In the last few days, I have been catching up with some of my old colleagues — primarily men — who are passionate about their work and find that they are very much aligned with their purpose.