8 Mindsets You Need To Have If You Want To
Be Emotionally Intelligent
Emotional intelligence (EI or
EQ) is defined as “the ability to recognize one’s own and other people’s
emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately,
and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior”.
When you are emotionally
intelligent, not only can you understand people better, but you can relate to
them on a deeper level. They also inherently like you because they feel like
you understand them. Good EI leads to better relationships, promotions, and
more customers in business because you communicate on the primary level of
emotions – where all human actions begin.
Cultivating EI takes
practice, but by adopting the proper beliefs and mindsets, you can reap the
benefits. Here are several that you should start practicing, if you don’t
already:
1.
Connection is why we are all here, and what everyone desires. Everyone is a bit
lonely.
This was stated by Brené
Brown in her amazing book, Daring
Greatly. One of the worst things for your health is
isolation. Social isolation can have worse effects on your health than
alcoholism and drug abuse.
Everyone
wants to be heard, nobody wants to feel misunderstood or alone.
But just hanging out with a
bunch of people doesn’t mean you feel heard. In fact, having a deep discussion
for an hour with one person for the entire week might make more of a difference
than just having beers and talking about the weather for days on end.
The problem in society today
is that we have been conditioned to hide our deeper desires, feelings, fears,
and thoughts. So, we cover them up with lighter topics. But if these deeper
feelings never get heard or addressed, not only can they lead to very negative
behaviors that attempt to cover them up, but also anxiety, depression, and
sadness.
Of course, there’s nothing
wrong with light conversation! But, if something is troubling you, you should
talk to a trusted person (good friend, family, therapist, religious advisor)
about it. Self-worth, abandonment, feelings of loss, isolation, destiny, and
the reason why you were put on the Earth are common themes worth discussing.
In that sense, as someone who
wants to be emotionally intelligent, you should always attempt to go “one level
deeper”, Inception style, with whomever you talk to.
Why are they working at
this job? Why are they with this person? What are their hopes, dreams, and
desires?
You should try and connect
with everyone you interact with. Not only will you feel better because you are
feeding your connection desire as a human, but the other person will feel
better too and appreciate you!
2. Empathy trumps everything.
If
connection is so important and leads to so many amazing things, then empathy is essential for every single
person in the world to get better at it.
It’s the tool and guiding light the leads to connection and EI.
The reason why empathy is so
powerful is because it is defined as “the capacity to understand or feel what
another person is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of
reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s shoes” .
How do you connect with
someone? Make them feel heard.
How do you make them feel
heard? By showing that you understand some of what they are going through.
Sure, sometimes you might not
have lost a loved one and can’t fathom what your friend is going through… But,
is there a time when you felt immense sorrow and sadness? Can you live in that
emotion with them?
You might never have been
SUPER nervous for a date, but what about those times when you got anxious for
all the tests you took? Can you feel that anxiety with them?
What about the highs of life
too? Can you be happy with them as well, and not jealous?
In becoming emotionally
intelligent, make sure not to mistake SYMPATHY (“Oh poor you for feeling that, I
hope you feel better”) with EMPATHY (“I feel
what you feel, we’ll do this together”). Most people hate sympathy, as it
feels shallow.
3.
People, by default, are friendly and sociable.
Not to make people sound like
robots with switches (*in robot voice* SET
DEFAULT STATE TO FRIENDLY), but most people are fundamentally good. You
should hold this belief because it will allow you to connect with people. You
won’t be as afraid compared to if you assumed that people don’t want to be
bothered or will chomp your head off if you talk to them.
Of course, a minority of
people ARE defensive and mean by default. These are the people you want to stay
away from.
4.
Logic dictates nothing. Emotions drive all decisions and we use logic to
justify the decisions.
Dan Ariely
discusses this in Predictably
Irrational. You and I believe we are logical creatures.
For example:
I decide to be with X because
she has certain traits I like.
You turn down a job offer
because the pay is less and you like the money you have right now.
We don’t move to a new city
because it doesn’t feel right, it’s far away, we have our friends here, and we
already know the best place to get pizza.
Actually, we’re just BS’ing
ourselves.
I decide to be with X because
she makes me feel good, important, and loved. It hits on my abandonment trigger
of not feeling loved enough as a kid, as she makes me feel supported and
wanted. She supports my emotional needs and I enjoy supporting her too. I
feel stronger.
You turn down the job offer
because you are scared of not being able to afford new stuff/you might lose a
sense of your identity that’s engrained in that stuff. You don’t want to start
at a new position not knowing anyone (feelings of isolation) and not being that
great at the position (feelings of self-worth and importance).
We don’t want to move to a
new city because we’re scared of not being able to find good friends again
(isolation), we’ve already established a routine of where the best food and gym
are (security), and we’re just plain nervous about moving to a new place where
we might not know anything, especially if it’s in a new culture! We prefer the
comfort of the familiar.
By understanding the fact
that people make emotionally-based decisions, you can begin to understand the
deeper motivations of why they do certain things. And hopefully, you will
discover why you might also be carrying out certain patterns or choices in
life.
5.
Life is 20% the events that occur to me, and 80% my interpretation of those
events.
The funny thing about life is
that you can draw whatever conclusion you want from events.
So the time you lost your job
was actually the best thing that happened to you because it pushed you to
pursue your dreams of starting your own business.
The time you broke up with a
past girlfriend or boyfriend led you to the person you want to marry, and
taught you what you did wrong/what you could do to improve in relationships.
You can choose to be
optimistic given any situation, after an initial emotional impulse that might
be negative. Of course, suppressing negative emotions doesn’t work and can kill
you (storing negativity leads to anxiety, depression, disease, and premature
death), but that doesn’t mean you have to live in them forever.
6.
Meditation and mindfulness will save my life.
Some form of thought
observation is necessary so that you don’t get pulled into a negative thought
or emotional spiral.
In the Vipassana tradition of meditation,
the theory is taught that all of our emotional impulses begin as sensations in
the body. For example, anxiety begins as the tightness in our chest, clenching
in our jaw, and so on. This leads to thoughts saying “I don’t like this”,
“I feel nervous”, and then subsequently, the emotion of anxiety.
But by training yourself
to use some form of meditation or mindfulness, you can see thoughts for
what they are…
Transient brain farts.
See, learning how to meditate
shows us that if thoughts come and go, then we can’t be everything we think.
And, we don’t have to identify or believe all of our thoughts. We can also
input more positive thoughts into our heads on purpose, always seeing the glass
half full, so to speak.
For example, in a situation
where you don’t get as much work done as you want to, if you are a workaholic
that expects A LOT of yourself and is also very hard on yourself (like me), you
could have a thought that says “You suck. You should have worked harder and
faster. You don’t deserve to relax, what’s wrong with you?”
If you do that, you miss the
other side of the story: “Hey, awesome job getting that much done. That was
some heavy hitting and important stuff. We can always do the rest tomorrow, no
big deal.”
The difference in how you
feel and how you treat yourself can literally add years to your life. You can
save others’ lives. too — if you see them getting caught in negative habit
patterns.
Meditation and mindfulness
make you aware of your possibly unconscious thought patterns so you can begin
unravelling them.
Get on it.
7.
All things arise just to pass away, including emotions.
In Buddhism there is
something called The Law Of
Nature, which states that:
All things arise just to pass away.
Thoughts, emotions, events,
people… Everything arises just to leave this world.
So negative thoughts aren’t a
huge deal because they go away, eventually. Sadness eventually passes. You
should know that an awesome event won’t last forever, and expect it. And the
same with the emotion of happiness.
Using this, though, you
should become aware if there is a pattern that happens over and over. Do you
have any consistent, negative thoughts? Do you always feel sad? Are you
always hard on yourself?
This is one mistake people
make when they think mindfulness will save them no matter what.Look into it.
8.
Reflection is important, and making emotional decisions is a very poor idea. I
need time to reflect if possible, and those feelings probably won’t seem like
a big deal in the long run.
If you had one fight over
something silly and because of the impulse of anger you decided to throw an
entire relationship away, that’d be terrible. While all decisions are based on
emotions, making decision based on impulsive feelings in the moment is ONE OF THE WORST THINGS YOU CAN DO.
It’s how a lot of slimy sales
are done. Afterwards, when you feel a bit bad but can’t return the product or
change your decision, you use logic justify it somehow via anything creative
you can cling on to in order to convince yourself that it WAS actually a good
decision!
But let’s say you don’t make
a decision based on an impulse. Let’s say you broke up with someone because of
consistent unhappiness, they treated you badly, and so on. Totally justified.
The break up really hurts
in the moment and may hurt for months or years. You still loved that person.
But eventually, you will heal
and be able to reflect on what went right or wrong. You will learn from it.
Perhaps you can become friends with the person.
We draw meaning from the
events in our life over time.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can
only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will
somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut,
destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect
down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it
leads you off the well worn path. – Steve Jobs
Realize that reflection of
your life allows you to become stronger and see where you have been led.
It teaches you how to be better. It builds up your emotional
resilience. It makes you smarter.
And it makes you a stronger
person.
http://www.lifehack.org/315954/8-mindsets-you-need-have-you-want-emotionally-intelligent?ref=mail&mtype=daily_newsletter&mid=20170103_customized_editor_pick&uid=687414&hash=707e797f7e757e6d794c856d747b7b3a6f7b79&action=click
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