Being (becoming?) emotionally unintelligent is the best way to move forward in life

All right, I’m exaggerating a bit. But the truth is this: to move on in life, to overcome your repeated struggles and failures, you need to … move on. Among other things, this means erasing the memories of your past self, of those struggles and failures. This means NOT being aware of yourself, which goes against being emotionally intelligent.

The other day I wrote a story of a failed relationship in my teen years. It was painful enough at the time to define my character, my disposition towards future relationships, towards women. But it didn’t. I was lucky then because a new chapter in my life allowed me to totally rewrite the plot of my life.

Right now I’m going through a rough stretch on the professional front. I’ve had a lot of these rough stretches, lots of failures, and lots of botched endeavors that looked promising at the start but ended in failure. Just this past week I’ve lost work worth tens of thousands, without much of a notice.

When hardships come, when self-doubt overwhelms me, the memories of my past failures become as sharp as ever. It’s as if you’re putting glasses on and seeing everything with clarity. In this case, the clarity is of a depressing kind. You’re seeing patterns, you’re questioning your ability to escape them; your past start to define you. You want to write an inspiring note of how you overcome failures, but can’t — because you haven’t overcome them.