The new frontier for leadership, excellence and reaching the highest human potential is the work that’s happening in our lives around emotional intelligence.
We all kind of have a basic notion of it but do you really know what that means and why it’s important? This week and next I’m going to share with you what I know as emotional intelligence and why you need a second helping tonight for dinner.
There are a vast number of factors to emotional intelligence but I’m going to share just a handful in a clear, articulated manner so you can understand even more what it is, how it works and why it’s good for you. Essentially we’re wanting to heighten effectiveness and likeliness in creating what we want. We’re wanting to manage mood and affect. We want to have more access to more parts of ourselves like; creativity, resiliency, drive etc. etc..
This week I’ll tell you about these three; self knowledge, self regulation, and self motivation.
Self knowledge/awareness is knowing your strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and how you impact others. Strengthening this provides the benefit of higher self confidence, realistic self assessment, ability to keep a positive mood amidst challenges and a thirst for constructive criticism. Criticism is tough but it’s how we grow and how we learn to manage the interface between us and what’s happening around us.
Self regulation is the ability to control and/or redirect disruptive thoughts, impulses, or moods. Strengthening this provides the benefit of deeper trustworthiness, higher integrity, comfort with ambiguity and change and use of dissonance to precipitate creativity. This is basically mastering not doing things that you want to do that aren’t helping you get what you ultimately want, like drinking less for instance.
Self motivation is the ability to relish and take pride in achieving for it’s own sake. Strengthening this provides the benefit of providing passion for work itself and for new challenges with unflagging energy to improve and retain optimism in the face of failing. We know this about failure but it deepens our resiliency to face it and keep going. This is basically mastering doing things that you don’t want to do that will lead to you getting what you ultimately want, like exercising so you have that six pack or the perfectly round ass you want. I joke… or do I!? But how about that book you want to write or the challenging conversation with someone who means a lot to you?
Thanks for your time. I’ll see you again on Monday for Petrol for the Soul and next Friday for another couple pillars of EQ.