Are you as intelligent as you want to be? Has anyone ever told you that you’re bright or smart? If you answered yes to these questions, you’re likely thinking of traditional intelligence. However, what about your “emotional” intelligence?
There are a lot of smart people in the world. They are inventing things, running successful companies, building skyscrapers and advancing technologies. At the same time, do these smart people know what they feel and what to do with that?
In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle said that anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy.
Perhaps you’ve heard of EQ, or Emotional Intelligence. Much has been written about it. In a nutshell, EQ is the capacity to know what we are feeling, and to then make the most appropriate choices in the presence of those feelings.
We’ve all been in situations where we were flooded with emotion and then said the wrong thing, made some unproductive choices or were downright destructive. Why did that happen? Why were we emotionally hijacked?
In the function of the human brain, a “fight or flight” response mechanism is the root of our reactions. Since many people don’t have a vocabulary for what they feel when they feel it, instead of intellectually interpreting what is happening, they go into react mode. If, however, they had a greater EQ, they would have the capacity to make choices that are more appropriate in a given circumstance.
This has significant implications in the business world and in relationships in general. With higher EQ, we tend to have meetings that are more productive, better functioning teams, higher motivation, and retention of key employees. It’s when we are bogged down in feelings that we waste time complaining, resisting and undermining our best objectives. It’s also a time when conflict increases and good employees quit.
The starting point is awareness and developing a “feelings” vocabulary. Most of our emotions fit within seven feeling categories. These include pain, shame, fear, loneliness, anger, guilt and joy. With these, do an experiment this week. See if you can raise your own awareness of what you are feeling, when you are feeling it. Use the list of seven feelings as a guide. Let me know how it goes.!
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