Emotions and the Petraeus Broadwell Affair

The Petraeus Broadwell affair got me thinking about the important role emotions play in the workplace and in our lives.  While focus and discipline are essential tools for healthy and productive professional and personal lives, if they are not accompanied by emotional awareness and self understanding, all hell can break loose. Imagine if Paula Broadwell or David Petraeus had added time for reflection and emotional connection with themselves to their hard charging schedules? Such contemplation  might have given them pause to ponder  the cost of dishonoring marital vows and betraying their own standards of integrity. Paula might have discovered, for example, deeper parental abandonment and sibling rivalry issues which needed healing in her psyche.  David might have found an inexplicable well of insecurity about his desirability and/or fears of aging (likely rooted in his own childhood abandonment and sibling issues). We can not deny, avoid, suppress,  work away, exercise away, drink away or run away from our emotions forever. Emotions let us know what is true, how we really feel and what unattended wounds, just beneath the surface, may be about to wreak havoc in our lives. We can do this the easy way, by taking time for self reflection and allowing ourselves to privately and safely feel our sad, mad, scared emotions  thereby regaining clarity and peace.  Or we can do this the hard way, by blowing up our lives so we are overwhelmed with panic and despair, faced with the brutal reality of our selves at worst, and left with way too much time to ponder what just happened.

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