Are you having the intended impact on your relationships, the world, your health, business, etc?
I know lots of people who put tons of effort into things. Tons. Plenty of times it doesn’t mean they create what they want to. It doesn’t mean they have good relationships or they accomplish what they’re wanting either.
One of the key points to emotional intelligence is self knowledge. I’d argue this is THE key point to EQ since most of everything else is based off of this. Do I know at the deepest levels who I am, how I operate, and what’s actually driving everything I do? Only then can we begin to modify what we’re doing to have the impact we want. It’s also where we can figure out why we’re still creating what we “think” we don’t want but part of us does…
Here’s where I’ll remind you of that classic analogy of having oarsman rowing our boat towards a destination and having part of them rowing in the wrong direction. Gonna be a lot harder to get to where you want to go!?!
We’ve all heard that classic excuse of… well, that’s not what I intended… people who can shift their intent on actually creating the life they say they want learn to look past that old trap and figure out how to actually impact their reality to create what they want. I know how frustrating it can be to not be able to create what I want. I’ve been there and still end up there from time to time.
So why do we focus on our intent? Well… because we’re self oriented and thinking about ourselves rather than the connection we’re looking to impact. Or because we’re concentrating on our effort rather than recognizing if it’s actually producing or moving towards producing the result we want at a rate that makes sense.
For the most part, we’re been taught that results are from hard work and while it is a major component, if that’s all you’re bringing to the party it won’t work very often. So if we’re practicing, training, or working hard at something that’s not hitting the mark we have to use that grey matter between our ears to course correct and do what’s actually needed.
I’ll be blunt, many of us are practicing failure. It so easy to bullshit ourselves. We keep doing the same thing over and over that’s not producing the result we want. We’re not slowing down to take inventory to create better goals to help us achieve what we want in our relationships at home, at work, with our bodies, our money, etc.
The opportunity:
Where in your life are you frustrated? (Wanting something you can’t seem to get.)
What can you do to work smarter not harder in your personal life?
What can you do to work smarter not harder in your professional life?
Thanks for your time, have a great day!