“Pop, how come that boat kept going and the other one got stuck?” Lori asked. Wanting Lori to be the smartest kid in gym class, I said, “According to scientists studying chaos theory, it’s due to deterministic non-periodic flow.”
“That’s what I thought,” replied Lori. “I think I’ll go ask Mimi.”
I never discovered Mimi’s answer, but Lori’s dilemma presents some difficult questions: Why did one boat sail swiftly with the current, while the other boat floundered in shallow waters? In somber times, we sometimes ask a similar question about our lives. Does the outcome of our life depend on the currents of fate or the structure of our life or something else? Are our actions determined? Do we have free will to sail the streams of our choosing?
Watch two bits of paper flowing side by side at the bottom of a waterfall. What can you guess about how close they were at the top? Nothing. Watch two people sitting side by side at church. What can you guess about the experiences they have had? Nothing.
Why do matchbook boats sail erratically? Why are our lives so unpredictable? Why does the kid voted most likely to succeed spend his life under a park bench while the class clown wins the Noble Prize?
LITTLE DID HE KNOW
Tiny differences in input can quickly become overwhelming disparities in output. A butterfly stirring the air in Scarsdale, New York can transform storm systems in London the next month. A man pushes the snooze button on his alarm clock. He leaves his house in the morning thirty seconds later than usual. A swerving truck misses his car by inches. Walking from the parking garage, a falling wrench at a construction site knocks him dead. Little did he know that thirty seconds was a half-a-minute too late. Just as there exist too many butterflies for the weatherman make an accurate forecast all the time, psychiatrists have a difficult time predicting how an individual will respond to the alarm clock. Thus, there is no definite explanation for why some lead successful lives and others are always a little behind schedule.
A WEIGHT WAIT
A British woman planning to start a new life with her husband in New Zealand was banned from entering the country because she is too fat. According to a British Newspaper, The Daily Mail, Rowan Trezise, 33 remained in England, while her husband, Richie, 35, had already made the move down under leaving her desperately trying to lose weight. When the couple first tried to gain entry to the country they were told that they were both overweight and were a potential burden on the health care system.
THE HIDDEN CONSEQUENCE OF COMPASSION
Compassion, a wonderful virtue, has the potential for generating a troubling consequence. Recipients of a "compassionate government" can develop an infantilizing sense of entitlement--an addiction as lethal as drug dependence.
A patient with six children had been admitted to our psychiatric unit six times with post partum depression. I suggested she consider a tubal ligation. She replied, “I couldn’t do that. I need more money. Every time I have a baby I get a bigger government check.” Unearned gifts kill personal responsibility.
LIVING SMART
We all know someone who scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT and flunked out of college by the second semester. That’s because success in college, and in life, has little to do with raw intelligence. IQ predicts success about 20% of the time. Behavioral scientists have discovered that 80% of success depends on emotional factors.
Harvard students from the 1940s—a time when there was a wider range of IQ at that school—were tracked into middle age. The high IQ men were not anymore successful than the lower in intelligence. Similarly, 450 boys from Boston slums were followed into middle age. Success in this social group was not dependent on intelligence. Ten years after 81 valedictorians and salutatorians graduated from their high school, only four were at the highest level of young people of comparable age in their chosen profession. Academic intelligence fails to predict how one will react to the vicissitudes of life.
Psychologists gave col¬lege freshmen tests to measure optimism. Four years later, the psychologists found that optimism predicted grades better than SAT scores or high-school grades.
In a Met-Life Insurance Company study, insurance executives hired a special group of applicants who failed the normal screening tests, but scored high on optimism. The first year on the job, the "dumb" optimists sold 21% more insurance than the "smart" pessimists. The second year, the optimists sold 57% more insurance than the pessimists. "Dumb" opti¬mists sell more insurance than "smart" pessimists.
Daniel Goleman, a former brain sciences editor of The New York Times, has written a follow-up book to his enormously popular, Emotional Intelligence. The sequel, Working with Emotional Intelligence is based on studies done by dozens of experts in 500 corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. An examination of these studies asserts that emotional intelligence is twice as important as either IQ or technical expertise in predicting career success.
Here’s good news for all of us with average IQ scores: Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence continues to grow with life experiences. Since emotional intelligence is essential to career success and leadership potential, let’s look at those areas that define emotional intelligence:
KNOW THYSELF
Knowing our internal states—our emotional strengths and weaknesses—can help us develop our talents while minimizing our defects. For example, if we understand that we have a weakness for impulsive decision-making, we can train ourselves to sleep on a decision or wait through a weekend before making a determination. On the other hand, waiting until we have enough facts to be confident that we have covered all the bases causes deal-defeating delay. Taking action when we have 50-60% of the information prevents “analysis paralysis.”
COOL UNDER PRESSURE
Those with high emotional intelligence know that they have control over one factor—their internal state. While we are unable to control other people or events, we can control our feelings by changing our belief about people and events. We can also learn to manage our disruptive emotions—control our temper, our pessimism, and our cynicism.
MOVED BY ACTION
Many talented people waste their abilities because they remain inactive. Productive action comes from the desire for pleasure, the urge to avoid pain, and the belief that goals can be accomplished. Motivation comes from craving success multiplied by the belief that we can accomplish our desires. Belief in ourselves is enhanced when we see others accomplishing their goals.
WINNING WITH PEOPLE
The art of getting along with people is more important than raw intelligence. Studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology proved that even in the technical areas of science and engineering, 85 percent of success depends on skill with managing people and 15 percent of financial success is due to technical knowledge. John D. Rockefeller said, “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”
EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, NOT EQUALITY OF RESULTS
All of us seek equality of opportunity. Opportunity, however, fails to guarantee equality of results. Some people can jump higher and run faster than others. Some have better minds than others. Some have more musical talent than others. Not everyone will win. We will not receive equal prizes. Doing our best is the best we can expect of ourselves.
OATMEAL COOKIES
Walking home from the creek where Lori and I had sailed out matchstick boats, my thoughts centered on the ideas her question had generated. As soon as I stepped over the threshold of our home, the aroma of freshly baked cookies wafted from the kitchen where I found Mimi and Lori taking the first batch from the oven. “Have a cookie.” Lori said.
Sometimes when we try to explain the unexplainable—nature and nurture, genetics and environment, normal and abnormal, we can thank God for oatmeal cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a warm hug, an act of kindness, a word of encouragement, or the gentle touch of a loving hand, not to mention, sailboats, basketballs, violins, butterflies, and reading The Chronicles of Narnia to grandchildren before bedtime prayers. These and other simple pleasures, the nuances, the incongruities, the subtleties, are what give life value. They are the unadorned enchantments that frame our lives. That’s the best I can do to explain the wonder of human behavior. And so it is that a simple question from a child gives me the hopeful assurance of life’s richness for us all.
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