The Whys & Hows of Emotional Intelligence

Do you have everything you need to make your dreams come true? Many people feel dissatisfied with their work and despair of ever fulfilling their potential. Relationships seem to be a no-man's-land filled with land mines. Indeed, many live a life of quiet desperation, never quite sure if they are standing on solid ground or quicksand.

When you develop your emotional intelligence, you can lay these worries to rest by truly getting to know yourself. You come to understand your own motivations and analyze your belief system. This knowledge can help you to understand where you are and why you are there. With a solid starting point and a firm understanding of your own true self, you can begin to live an authentic life.

We are all used to the concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) as the measure of ability, but we are just coming to understand that it doesn't mean much. Far more important it seems is intuition - or what is now being called Emotional Intelligence (EI). Emotional intelligence is about managing, comprehending and utilizing your emotions rather than allowing them to run you. When you know and understand your emotions, you can turn negative to positive. Rather than trying to curb your desires and wishes, you can use them as your motivation. When your emotional intelligence is strong, it gives you the capability of comprehending and apprehending your potential. It helps you to create and maintain strong, healthy relationships. When you are able to read yourself and others well, you are better able to manifest success in personal and work relationships. If you are a leader, you will find that people will follow you more readily if they feel you truly understand them.

When you use your emotional intelligence effectively, your mind, spirit, and emotions are all working together in harmony. When you sense a shift in yourself or another, rather than brushing it off (as we have been taught to do in the age of reason) you stop and attend to it. By recognizing and honoring the spiritual and emotional shifts in the climate of relationships, you are better able to manage them. When you honor what is rather than what should intellectually be, your life will go more smoothly both at home and at work.

But how do you use emotional intelligence? How do you build it? How do you apply it? The first step in building up your emotional intelligence is to become mindful. You must become truly aware of each moment. Because you are in touch with your own emotions and the reasons behind them, you will be better able to see and honor them in others. Rather than attending only to what is said, you must also attend to attitudes, feelings, and non-verbal communication both in yourself and others.

Even though we have been taught to "say what you mean and mean what you say" few of us actually do it. Indeed, we may be incapable as a species of doing this because it is hardwired in our makeup to convey the majority of our thoughts non-verbally. In our facial expressions, our body language, our shaking or nodding heads, our crossed legs or arms, are the real answers to the questions of daily life. To be in tune with this, it is important to be present, to truly look at and attend to cues from ourselves and others. Essentially, trust your gut. Don't brush off your instincts. When you feel something shift or change in an interaction stop and ask about it. Ask yourself and/or the person you are dealing with, "What changed?"

This can be very useful at work. If you are a supervisor or a team leader, it is absolutely essential that you be able to read your team members. You must be in touch with your own feelings and those of your co workers. Thinking and communicating in words is just not enough. To truly connect with what is important, and therefore motivating, with each team member, you must be able to identify the things they feel strongly about and understand why. Once you have identified this, you have a "toe-hold" to introducing your agenda and your needs. When you have a way of truly connecting with your team members, you are able to get more than just verbal agreement to commit to the work at hand.

Of course, you can also apply this way of thinking to every aspect of your life. When you keep your relationships running smoothly at home, you are setting a good foundation for your relationships in the rest of your life. When you improve your own emotional intelligence skills by getting in touch with yourself and your own feelings, you are also improving your skills at being a partner and/or a parent. Better communication means a better family life.

When you know yourself, you are no longer a slave to your emotions or a pawn in someone else's game. You can make mindful choices because you are in the moment and considering all the input, not just the verbal input. Many of our decisions are made automatically. They are the result of years of conditioning that began early in childhood. Often we carry our childhood decision-making process into our adult life; even though, it may not be appropriate for the person we have become or the situation we have created. By stopping and taking stock of your decisions and your thought processes, you put yourself in a place of being able to halt and redirect them. If you discover that you have been making self-defeating decisions, you are in a perfect position to change your course. When you give yourself the gift of self awareness, you become mindful and present. You give yourself the ability to turn your weaknesses to strengths and to take true control of your life. You give yourself the ability to manifest your dreams.

So, what, exactly, must one do to learn emotional intelligence? Reading is always a good thing to do, but emotional intelligence also takes hands-on practice. Here are five steps to follow to raise your emotional intelligence quotient.

1. Take inventory of your life. Try to stand outside of your life and see it as an observer. See yourself and your actions. What part of your life could you change by simply changing your actions? How many of your own problems are you creating with skewed perception? When you identify these areas and see that you are creating many of your own obstacles, you free yourself of many things that are standing in the way of your own success.

2. Take inventory of yourself. Once you have looked at and evaluated your life, take some time to sit down and think about it. You can do this in the form of meditation, journaling, time in nature, enneagram profiling, whatever self awareness system works best for you, but take a look at yourself regularly and systematically to determine what motivates you. Why do you do the things you do? Look at the decisions in your life that have been successful and those that have been disastrous. Review them in your mind's eye and uncover your motivations. Why did you make those decisions? What did you want to get out of the situation? Did you get what you wanted?

3. Lay down your burdens. Now that you are able to stand outside of yourself as an unbiased observer, you can see where you are burdening yourself unnecessarily. Give yourself permission to simply set aside the beliefs you have carried all your life that are dragging the ground behind you and slowing you down. Understand that the picture you have carried of yourself is probably one that was handed you a long time ago based on someone else's hopes for themselves - and that picture was probably handed to them. Once you are able to stand outside of yourself and see your true self, you can let that picture go. Then you will be free to live in this moment and truly fulfill your own dreams.

4. Live as your true self. Now that you have taken the time to inventory your life and yourself and jettisoned all the dross, there is nothing left but you. At the core of your true self, you will find your own motivations, your own hopes, and your own dreams. The ego created by society is gone. The notions of the outside world that tell you what you must be, do and have in order to be acceptable and successful will mean nothing to you. When you are your own true self, you are self motivated. You are in touch with what is really important to you, and you are immune to the hysteria peddled by society to get you artificially motivated to pursue things you don't actually want. You know yourself, you are in touch with your intuition. Your joy and your enthusiasm come from within and they are genuine and lasting. You create your own life.

5. Choose the self you want to become. To know yourself is healthy self interest. Now that you know yourself and build your circumstances, you will never be herded along by the status quo again. Instead, you will make conscious, aware choices within each moment of your life. You will choose who you are, what you do, and what you will become. When you are self aware you desire true success and happiness in your life. You wish to be your best self for the world.

To this end you will:

• live in the moment
• be honest with yourself
• give honest answers to others
• see others clearly
• understand your own motivations
• be in touch with your intuition
• see the motivations and needs of others clearly
• know yourself and know your motivations
• understand and take responsibility for your own actions
• make your own decisions
• be responsible for your own life.

For more about mindful living and manifesting your potential, you may enjoy:

Advice On The Power Of Mindful Choices
http://www.advice.com/article.jsp?id=fb7907d359604d2aa0f4893fcad4af5c

Build Success on the Foundation of Your Strengths & Talents
http://hubpages.com/hub/Build-Success-on-the-Foundation-of-Your-Strengths--Talents

Affirmation Cards: Set Goals to Change Your Life
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1662694/affirmation_cards_set_goals_to_change.html?cat=5