My Secret to Improve Emotional Intelligence
It is not for everyone, but I highly recommend you to consider it!
All this started in 2012 when I read The Servant, which mentions a retreat. Since that day, I have wanted to find a retreat where I could have a similar experience. Also, I read a book about Meditation by Daniel Goleman, the main reference for emotional intelligence today, and he mentions the retreat of Vipassana. On that day, I felt that I had found the retreat I wanted, and in 2022, I completed my first 10-day retreat for the first time. It changed my life, and I will share with you what the second retreat I did in the last days was like.
Imagine that our mind is a potent supercomputer. It processes millions of information in real time and is intelligent enough to eliminate all the unnecessary information we do not need to live our daily lives. Imagine that while you are reading this, you have a lot of body sensations, environment sounds, and distractions, but your mind is capable of focusing on reading this text. Is it not incredible?
Unfortunately, not everyone can read a text without being distracted. Many people today suffer from multitasking and have agitated minds. They cannot stop to read a book because they are always busy doing something else. That was my case when I started reading about Daniel Goleman. I wanted to have focus, not emotional intelligence, which is what Goleman is famous for. But Goleman helped me to realize that focus is part of being emotionally intelligent.
How do I increase my Emotional Intelligence?
We have many ways to increase it; my favorite is Meditation, which is what Vipassana is about. Vipassana is a kind of meditation, a retreat of Vipassana is a retreat dedicated to practicing this kind of meditation.
Some people are unaware that we have emotions. They live a life in which they are unaware that their bodies are giving signs to their minds. So imagine: if you do not know your emotions, you are not emotionally intelligent, right? The best way to improve your Emotional Intelligence is to become aware of it and understand where it comes from. This is why meditation is one of the most used techniques for becoming aware of mind, body, emotions, and life in general. When you stop to do “nothing” and only focus on your body, you start to create the awareness we are discussing.
Some people will think they are aware, but I would ask: how much are you aware? Are you aware of the sensations inside your muscles while you sit in a chair? How about sensations of your spine? All this is to tell you that I am not aware of everything; I am on the path of learning, and I am writing to make you aware of this path.
How is a Vipassana retreat?
Let’s talk again about the supercomputer called the mind we have. Imagine that the mind has limited information space, like a computer. So you start your life as a baby and start saving all your life experiences as memories. Some memories are light. Some are really heavy. Some hurted you in the past. Some made you feel good. Now, you are an adult and carry many memories and life experiences with you. Also, now you have an attachment to good memories, creating an attachment to objects and people. At the same time, you have an aversion to bad memories, which influences you to avoid bad experiences in life again.
Example: a person creates a trauma about a place because this place was part of a bad experience in her/his life. So, the person cannot go to the same place again because she/he will feel the same sensations as when she/he had a bad experience. Crazy, no?
Vipassana helps us eliminate all attachment to sensations. It is a meditation that helps you eliminate all the memories that cause suffering in your life. It is similar to a disc dump and cleaning. You focus for a “short” period of your life on getting your mind clean and fresh again.
A Vipassana retreat lasts 10 days. You arrive on day 0 and leave on day 11, so you have a full 10 days of meditation to work on yourself.
Also, you have nine days in silence. Silence is extremely necessary because when you talk, you create thoughts in your mind, which will return when you start meditation again. Silence will help you go deep into your mind and clean all the old and heavy stuff you carry with you for years.
Do you know the expression “sweeping issues under the rug”? This is what happens when you try to forget an experience that caused pain in your life and still affects you. If you do not face the experience and sweep it under the rug, it will go deep and deep in your mind, with the feeling that you forgot it, but it is still there, under the “rug”.
Vipassana is not for everyone. 5 minutes of meditation is challenging for many people; imagine 10 days! Also, silence! Some people are not capable of staying quiet for 10 minutes; 9 days is a real challenge.
If you are able to finish a Vipassana retreat, you will see that the second one is not as hard as the first seems to be. I can't wait for my next one; I still have a lot of work to do in myself. I hope this text creates curiosity in you about a retreat like the first 2 books I mentioned created for me. Feel free to ping me if you would like to know more about this amazing experience.
May all beings be happy! - S.N. Goenka.
Just an update related to this newsletter:
By making the retreat, I identified some behaviors that I was doing that were killing all my energy and not helping myself. Writing one newsletter every week was one of them. Unfortunately, I cannot maintain that pace, especially by having a job of 40 hours and making 2 podcasts at the same time. So, for now, I will write often but not every week(try once per month, no compromise). I will also start sending many jobs instead of only one in the jobs session to compensate for the weekly compromise with you about sending jobs.
I am also thinking of a way to give the document I created to help people find a job abroad FOR FREE. You will know more about this soon.
Finally, I created a telegram group to organize monthly meetings about soft skills and professional and personal development. If you want to be part of it, please join here: https://t.me/+Nws-GHZtq1ZjMjIx
Podcast:
The last episode of Tech & Accent Podcast:
EP 07 - The Life of a Software Developer in Sweden with Lucas Santos
New Episode Every 2 Weeks, Listen now on:
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Youtube
Here is one thing I've enjoyed in the past few days:
I started to learn Unreal Engine for Game Development. It is a long path to learn, but I am excited to keep learning. I love games and have decided to play less and learn more about them.
I followed this tutorial to get started:
Jobs to share with you:
Senior React Developer at Lumenalta - Full Remote.
Gameplay Programmer at Epic Games - Porto Alegre.
Specialist Java DevOps at SII Canada - Montreal.
QA Engineer at CGI - Halifax.
I wish you a nice weekend! :)