The huge danger of destructive emotions.

Perhaps, it is appropriate to discuss the damage of destructive emotions on relationships, marriage, career, indeed, every facet of the human experience.

If you were to ask someone whether anger or hatred was disrupting his or her life, the most likely answer would be that the anger and/or hatred is justified. “My wife totaled my new sports car.” “My son dropped out of college.” At face value, the anger appears justified.

Upon deeper examination, we find that destructive emotions impact judgment. Bad judgment leads to suffering.

“If knowledge is treasure, wisdom is the treasurer. He that hath too much knowledge without judgment is made more for another man’s use than his own.”

We are all familiar with the hard lessons taught in the investment business from emotional decisions that are based on crowd psychology. Decisions based on emotion—or clouded by emotion—are bound to be faulty. Even investment professionals hardened by the battle for investment survival often act irrationally under the influence of fear and greed.

How many times have we encountered repetitive patterns in ourselves and other people? The same mistake made over and over again. While there is a conscious effort to break the repetitive negative pattern, in many instances it continues—seemingly with a life of its own.

We recently completed a fascinating book entitled Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? The book was based on a collaboration among Western psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers, the Dalai Lama and Buddhist scholars. The exchange was narrated by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, who has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for his writing on the brain and behavioral sciences.

There are many destructive emotions. But, the primary ones are anger, hatred, ignorance, doubt, desire and jealousy. The essence of destructive emotions is excessive focus on the self. Throwing your ego into a cause or purpose much greater than yourself, on the other hand, leads to happiness.

Few people would disagree with this conclusion, but fewer people are capable of leading a selfless life, which is why destructive emotions are so prevalent.

One of the participants at the collaboration was Matthieu Ricard, PhD, a Buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Katmandu. “Destructive emotions are precisely what prevent one from seeing things as they are…Obscuring emotions get in the way of a correct ascertainment of the nature of reality and of the nature of one’s mind. When one sees things as they are, it becomes easier to rid oneself of negative emotion and to develop positive emotions, which are grounded in sound reason—including a much more spontaneous and natural compassion.”

Ricard also explains how frequently attachment is confused with love. “Excessive attachment—desire, for instance—will not let us see a balance between the pleasant and unpleasant, constructive and destructive, qualities in something or someone, and causes us to see it for awhile as 100% attractive—and therefore, makes us want it.” Likewise, aversion blinds us to the positive qualities of a person or object, making us completely negative.

In such a state, good judgment is nearly, if not totally, impossible.

When do emotions become destructive? The Dalai Lama answered this critical question as follows: “The moment they disrupt a mind’s equilibrium.” As soon as a destructive emotion enters the mind, “the calmness, the tranquility, the balance of the mind are immediately disrupted”. On the other hand, those emotions that do not disrupt the sense of well-being—but enhance it—are considered positive or constructive.

It’s good news to hear that the American Psychological Association, with 45,000 members, has launched an initiative called Positive Psychology. Another participant, Richard Davidson, PhD, William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin/Madison, said that psychologists are generally recognizing they have spent too much time on negative traits and attention now needs to be switched to the positive. “I think there is some recognition in the academic community that the time is right to turn our attention to these things.”