EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
What is Emotional Intelligence? - The Importance of Our Emotions - It Pays to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence - How to Develop Emotional Intelligence - Linda's Method of Emotional Intelligence Training - Fast Track To Emotional Intelligence - Become an Emotional Intelligence Mentor
What is Emotional Intelligence?
The term Emotional Intelligence has become something of a corporate buzz word. It refers to the ability to perceive and interpret our own and others' emotions in a way which enables optimal response to personal and professional situations.
The Importance of Our Emotions
Emotions have traditionally not been welcome in the business world where it is usually believed that decisions are made rationally. But logic is inadequate for decision-making. Debating, in which either side is considered to have an equal opportunity to win, illustrates this well.
Emotions motivate us to do things. The word emotion derives from the Latin ex movrere, meaning to move out. Every emotion includes a tendency to action.
There are four basic emotions: joy, fear, sadness and anger. The purpose of these emotions is to provide important information for decision-making and motivation.
There are a number of well documented cases of people who have suffered damage to the emotional (limbic) section of their brain. Such people have normal intellectual functioning but struggle with making even simple decisions such as when and how to tie their shoelaces. People with impaired emotional functioning can think and analyze perfectly but are unable to act appropriately or make effective decisions.
It pays to increase your Emotional Intelligence
The result of increasing your emotional intelligence is personal empowerment. This includes:
- increased understanding, insight and compassion;
- increased energy level and better health;
- greater creativity;
- better decision-making;
- higher motivation;
- better personal and business relationships;
- freedom from self-sabotaging emotional patterns; and
- more life satisfaction both personally and professionally.
Emotional Intelligence has been recognized as more important than either experience or normal intelligence (IQ) in determining career success and the profitability of business organizations depend on the Emotional Intelligence of their managers. Emotional Intelligence has also been found to be a good indicator of who will keep out of the divorce courts. Click here to review some of the evidence (Word 6 Doc)
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence
Most Emotional Intelligence training programs tell people what Emotional Intelligence is, why they need to develop it, and what the optimum responses to situations are. However, intellectual understanding of optimal responses does not lead to optimal response or increased emotional intelligence.
For example, traditional assertiveness training programs teach unassertive people which words to speak in order to be assertive. Unfortunately the words usually come out apologetically or aggressively, if at all. This is because no-one has helped these trainees to deal with the anxiety which is the real cause of the lack of assertiveness.
If instead of intellectually teaching people what the assertive response is and getting them to practice it, we help them to release their anxiety, then assertiveness naturally arises without any intellectual instruction being necessary. It seems that optimal response is our true nature when we deal with the emotions which get in the way.
These emotions which get in the way are 'old' emotions, that is, they are not relevant to the current situation, even though they feel that they are. They are actually left over emotions from the past; emotions we did not fully experience when they originally happened. They muddy the current situation and detract from our clarity. It is only the emotions which are relevant to the present situation which provide important information for our decision-making and motivation. If we make decisions based on 'old' emotions, our decisions and motivation will be less than optimal.
For this reason, Emotional Intelligence Training offered by Dr Linda Edwards is focused on helping people to reach a state where they only experience the emotions relevant to the present situation. Such a training is necessarily experiential and the easiest way to do this is with the assistance of an Emotional Intelligence mentor.
Linda's method of Emotional Intelligence Training
Involves -
- Learning how to identify old, inappropriate emotional response patterns which prevent one from reaching one's full potential, personally and professionally.
- Learning how to gently accept the full experience of inappropriate emotions so that their energy naturally dissipates. These gentle yet rapid emotional release methods are experiential and involve the pioneering work of the psychologists Eugene Gendlin and Fritz Perls as well as extensions to stress reduction techniques which Linda developed through her own research.
- Developing these skills under the direction of a trained mentor. Just as we need a coach for the development of practical skills such as tennis or dancing or driving a car, we also need a coach to help us develop the practical life skills which increase our emotional intelligence. These skills usually work quickly and effectively and they are easy enough for most people to eventually learn to do by themselves.
Fast Track To Emotional Intelligence.
Anyone interested in raising their Emotional Intelligence as fast as possible should consider doing Emotional Intelligence training with Linda. This intensive life coaching approach which involves weekly mentoring for three months will be practical and challenging. Click on the Life Coaching and Career Mentoring button at the top left of this page for more details on the way Life Coaching Works.
Become an Emotional Intelligence Mentor
Skilled emotional intelligence mentors are expected to be in big demand as organisations and individuals begin to realise the enormous benefits. The time to get in on the ground floor is now and the most important factor for success is a high Emotional Intelligence. Talk to Linda about how you might go about becoming one.
Copyright Dr Linda Edwards 2002-2006, Art of Living Psychology (Consulting Rooms are in Melbourne in the Camberwell, Surrey Hills, Burwood and Canterbury region, also serving Ashburton, Balwyn, Box Hill, Glen Iris, Hawthorn, Kew and Malvern).
