The 4 Signs of Emotional Maturity
Many people confuse communication with neediness.
The ‘Neuroscience-based Tools’ section is a companion for The Stoic Manual to help you become wealthier, happier & more powerful by boosting your resilience, drive, mood, motivation, relationships, focus, and overall health—by Dr. Antonius Veritas.
"Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I'd like to see a Stoic" — Epictetus
There are four signs of emotional maturity according to The School of Life. These include:
1. Self-love
“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” — Seneca
Self-love is a healthy narcissism.
It's the story you tell yourself when you face criticism, failure, or how you act and feel in the presence of people wealthier, smarter or more powerful than you.
It helps you get comfortable with the vulnerabilities and irrational desires within yourself and probably use them to your advantage.
This state of mind is what drives you to look for a better partner when the one you have doesn't meet your standards. Or when they don’t treat you as you’d like and deserve.
It gives you the audacity to ask for a raise in your company. Or to quit and start your side hustle because you're not well compensated.
However, it’s not only a delusional self-belief, it’s not arrogant.
This relationship with yourself ennobles you to be humble enough to see your mistakes and apologize without losing your confidence or tolerating disrespect and becoming a doormat.
You get to make and defend a case for yourself because you believe you’re worth a fair hearing.
Self-love is a measure of how good of a friend you are to yourself by how adamant you are to stick by the accurate assessment of yourself and your values instead of agonizing about what a rude person would say about you.
2. Candour
“If anyone can refute me—show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone.” — Marcus Aurelius
The truth is unpleasant. Nobody likes to hear it. The news of shattered dreams, wasted effort, and time, is distressing. Even (for a bit) to the nihilist.
We imagine a flourishing career, long-lasting relationships, thriving businesses, or people in a dazzling light — only to get our hearts broken by a crude awakening: death is the worm at our core.
The truth about the darkness lingering in all of us can also be disturbing to most people.
You’re capable of having the excessive pride, envy, wrath, lust, and gluttony you observe and condemn in others. You’re not as perfect as you think you are.
And in the light of another person seeing your errors and flaws, how good are you at taking criticism?
To view and accept this imperfect reality full of inconveniences and troubling facts as life itself, not without an assertive melancholy and without drowning in sentimentality, traversing the meadow of thorns without denial or avoidance, is a mark of emotional maturity.
3. Communication
“Every event has two handles—one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” — Epictetus
“Let’s not be angry at good people.” — Seneca
Many people confuse communication with neediness.
They feel as if they're begging when they tell another person what they desire. Or complaining when they have to air their disappointments.
Others fear to communicate their wants because of the consequences that could arise from doing so.
And sometimes if they do speak up, they do it in a manner the other party, unless gifted with self-control and magnanimity, find it hard to be receptive to their wants.
People who do that end up angry, contemptuous, defensive, and resentful.
The individual wrongly assumes that any human they're close to must know all about them by default of the connection.
If not, do they even love us?
However, what this person misses is that they’re not the center of the universe and that doesn’t have to be existentially catastrophic.
We can have the big heart to think that people aren’t deliberately misunderstanding us or committing errors by us because they have bad intentions. We can teach them, helped by the buttress of patience and communicating our needs effectively — with assertiveness rather than aggression or passivity.
4. Trust
"Don't you see how much you have to offer? And yet you still settle for less." — Marcus Aurelius.
Mistrust does a lot of damage as does trusting everyone you meet.