Michael Cornwall - Go Suck a Lemon: Strategies for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence

I received my undergraduate education in English. I fancied myself a fiction writer, a story-teller. I didnt become a fiction writer, gravitating, instead, into human service and helping, first as social worker, then as a clinical counselor and finally receiving my doctors degree in health psychology and behavioral medicine.

I often blend my interests in counseling, psychology and fiction writing into the hybrid before you. I am comfortable helping others improve their emotional wellbeing by mixing stories and anecdotes with a little science and philosophy.

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Over the course of my early training in psychology, I became particularly interested in psychological theories, of which there are believed to be approximately 700 +. After studying a handful of the more popular philosophies, I narrowed my own interests down to Rational Emotive Behavior Theory ( REBT ). This philosophy of the human mind provided me with personal insight and prepared me to understand myself . My interest in Emotional Intelligence theory came later.

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I attended a conference in Chicago, my last year of graduate school, organized to train new practitioners in the effective and professional use of REBT . While I waited for everyone to be seated, and the conference to get started, I remember hearing a commotion in the back of the room.

Its him.

Its Al.

Look, its him!

That isnt him.

Yes it is!

I turned to see a small, very thin and frail man heading up the aisle, carrying a can of juice and a cookie wrapped in cellophane. He didnt really say nor do anything unusual; but everything about him provoked an emotional response in me. Grumpiness wafted after him like dust. He grinned, but his grin was somewhat sinister, boyish. His long nose and horn rimmed glasses made him look unapproachable, yet he shook hands with those who reached out to welcome him, showing a certain measure of enthusiasm and caring.

The man could have passed for a janitor, the guy who adjusts the audiovisual equipment or the president of some small, impoverished eastern European nation. He was no one and everyone, all at the same time. His clothing was disheveled, pants pulled up well past his hips, close to the collar of his shirt, and he was hunched over, as if carrying a huge bundle of kindling in a bunch on his back. He ascended the single step to the stage, carefully shuffled across to his seat and sat down in front of the assembled audience. He paused for a moment, squinting through his glasses at everyone in attendance, as if looking painfully into the sun. He tapped the microphone, pushed his glasses up closer to his eyes, leaned to one side and farted!

How dreadful!

Is this a serious person?

What kind of crackpot is this?

I told you it wasnt him!

He continued squinting over his glasses, while inspecting the microphone and looking out over the crowd gathered in his honor. In his nasally New York accent, he groused, If I have a seizure, someone come up here and feed me this juice, and tapped the tin can with his yellowing fingernail.

It was 1992.

His name was Albert Ellis.

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Dr. Ellis (who liked to be called Al) was fond of quoting Epictetus, reminding his listeners at every opportunity that people are disturbed not by things, but by their view of things . Al is also remembered for his overuse of the word Fuck . He used the word in diverse and mixed company as a noun, an adjective, a verb and an adverb. According to Al, people possess a fucking innate human potential for deciding their fucking emotions. He stressed that this innate human potential was a product of our ability to think about our thinking.

According to Al, the potential for thinking about our thinking is frequently left undeveloped in most people; leaving emotional intelligence unaltered throughout life. Instead of thinking about thinking, we believe, instead, that our emotions are fixed and the product of how events unfold or how we are treated by other people, making emotion something outside our control.

Instead of taking responsibility for our own emotions, Al believed that people choose to whine and complain about how other people should, must, have to and need to change in order for them to be content in their own lives.

Al grumped and groused, People dont just get upset. They contribute to their own fucking upsetness. They always have the power to think differently. To think about their thinking. To think about thinking about thinking. Which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, cant do. People have much greater ability to change their thinking than any other animal, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do that.

Al made exaggerated squeaky and whiney sounds to emphasize his points. There are three basic musts that hold us back from our emotional potentials, he said, First, I must do well ; secondly, you must treat me well and, finally, my life must always be easy . Wed better work hard on getting rid of those ideas. Wed better do something about that, he said, And it will take the force of will to do it!

* * * *

Over the course of that weekend in Chicago, Al shared his bodily gases and unapologetically used cuss words to describe everything from his childhood, his inability early in life to get a date and his lifetime of precarious physical health. I was thankful for the opportunity, in its entirety, to get to know him.