What is it that drives you in your life today?
Not five years ago. Not a month ago. But NOW.
Maybe you have everything you ‘need’ and yet you don’t feel as excited, productive, or fulfilled as you thought you would.
Are you running the same patterns? Restlessness? Boredom? Anxiety? Fear?
If so, how do we get that spark back and create a consciously designed existence, so that what we do fills us with joy and satisfaction?
Emotion is the force of life
Everybody is looking for something, but he or she isn’t sure what it is or where to look for it.
Knowing oneself is not an easy journey. Life change is hard. Change takes time. It will take you through some uncomfortable roads (believe me, very uncomfortable roads) but will lead you to design and live your best life.
It all begins with decisions. Decisions, says Tony Robbins, author of Awaken The Giant Within, shape destiny. So first you have to decide what you focus on.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]What will you focus on? Consciously or unconsciously, the minute you decide to focus, you must give it a meaning, and that meaning produces emotion. An emotion creates what we’re going to do, or the action.–Tony Robbins[/perfectpullquote]
So if emotion is the force of life. We should start taking care of our emotional life. The sooner, the better.
The good news: Emotional competences are learned abilities
One of the most important messages in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
is that emotional competences are not innate talents; they are learned abilities. In other words, emotional competencies are something you can deliberately acquire with practice.
Golemand adds a very useful structure to emotional intelligence by classifying it into five domains:
1. Self-awareness: Knowledge of one’s internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions.
We have the ability to put whatever we desire on the conscious dashboard of our minds, so we ought to decide what we shall monitor and pay attention to.
⇒You should ask yourself several times during each day: Where shall I focus my thoughts right now? and How should I feel right now?
These questions direct the mind to the current situation and allows you to define how you feel in order to frame and attach meaning to any given situation.
2. Self-regulation: Management of one’s internal states, impulses, and resources.
You cannot control everything in life. But you can control you.
You can control who you are. You can control how you are treating others. You can (find and) control what purpose is driving you.
Controlling the quality of your character in a day-by-day, interaction-by-interaction, situation-by-situation kind of way is what fashions and forms the quality of life you will live and your legacy too, says Brendon Burchard, author of The Charge.
⇒Set an intention and relentless focus on living your life as the greatest person you can be, in all situations.
3. Motivation: Emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals.
Motivation requires attention. The real downfall for many people isn’t that they are ‘unmotivated’ people, but they are simple distracted, too absentminded to sustain motivation.
But we cannot merely think our way to sustained motivation; we must work our way toward it. We must put real effort into reaching our ambitions, states the author of The Motivation Manifesto.
⇒ Don’t fill your life with regrets. Discover who you are, be the director of your life and empower yourself mastering motivation each day of your life.
4. Empathy: Awareness of others’ feelings, needs and concerns.
Empathy feels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.
There are four qualities of empathy:
1. Perspective Taking.- The ability to take the perspective of another person or the ability to recognize their perspective or truth.
2. Staying out of judgment.
3. Recognizing emotion of another people.
4. Empathy is feeling with people.
But in order to connect with others, you have to connect with something in yoursef that knows that feeling.
5. Social skills: Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.
We all have individual values and beliefs that we feel important. The lack of understanding, acceptance, or validation of other’s uniqueness and individuality makes us struggle to form better, deeper and more empowering connections and relationships.
In The Charge, Brendon Burchard gives us two activators for connecting and loving others:
Activator #1: Define and design your ideal relationships.
*What exactly do I want in my relationships in life?
*What kind of friends do I want, exactly?
*What kind of lovers do I want?
*And how shall I attract, keep and deepen my relationships with them?
Activator #2: Practice positive projection.
Project positive traits and expectations onto others. This is the mightiest of all social truths: you get what you look for.
The best illustration of emotional intelligence as a learned ability came from the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol
In the beginning of the story, Scrooge presents an example of low emotional intelligence. His intrapersonal intelligence is so low, he is incapable of creating emotional wellness for himself despite his wealth. In fact, his self-awereness is so bad, it takes three ghosts to help him figure himself out. His interpersonal intelligence is, of course, legendarily bad.
Near the end of the story, however, Scrooge presents an example of elevated emotional intelligence. He develops strong self-awareness, he becomes capable of controlling his own emotional destiny, and his empathy and social skills blossom. Scrooge demonstrates that emotional intelligence is something that can be developed.