Emotions can help or hinder you, but you cannot know until you understand their essence. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 will help you deal with your emotional states and learn to deal with them.
We have chosen five tips for you that will help you to correctly perceive your own emotions.
Stop perceiving feelings as good and bad
Humans tend to divide their emotions into two simple groups: good and bad. For example, most people automatically classify guilt as a bad emotion. You do not want to experience this feeling and are ready to struggle with yourself, wanting to get rid of it. In other situations, you unleash your arousal. Sometimes you pump yourself with energy, and sometimes you spray it in all directions.
The downside of labeling emotions is that you can't really understand exactly what you're feeling when you label them that way.
When you give yourself the opportunity to calmly deal with the emotion and understand what it is, you get a chance to find out what causes it. Relinquishing judgment about emotions will allow them to do their thing and disappear without a trace. And constant thinking about whether you should feel what you feel, awakens new emotions to life and does not allow the original feeling to be realized.
Therefore, immediately pay attention to situations when certain emotions begin to develop in you. Refrain from labeling your emotion as "good" or "bad" and then you will be able to understand something important.
Write down your emotions
The main problem in developing self-perception is objectivity. It's hard to get a perspective on your emotions and tendencies when you're trying to start climbing a mountain from the bottom every day. By writing down your thoughts, you can record what events triggered your emotions and how you responded to them.
You can write about what happened to you at home or at work - there are no restrictions on this. In just a month, you will notice a stable pattern of your behavior and the emergence of emotions, and this will allow you to better understand your tendencies. You will begin to better understand which emotions make you feel depressed, which makes you feel elated, and which emotions are the most difficult for you to deal with.
Watch carefully for people and situations that push your buttons and unleash your strongest emotions.
Describe the emotions you experience every day. Don't forget to also describe the physical manifestations that accompany them. You gain the ability to see more clearly because putting your emotions on paper makes it easier to determine what your tendencies are. Your diary can serve excellent source which you resort to when evaluating your self-perception.
Notice the presence of your emotions in books, movies and music
If you're having a hard time looking inside yourself to understand what your emotional patterns and tendencies are, you can discover the same information through movies, music, and books that you feel comfortable with. intercom. If the lyrics of a song or its mood resonate with your feelings, then this can tell a lot about your inner feeling, and if you constantly remember a certain character from a book or movie, then this may indicate that his thoughts and feelings are parallel to yours. careful study these moments can teach you a lot about yourself. In addition, with this tool, you can tell a lot about your feelings to other people.
Finding the reflection of your emotions in the performance of artists allows you to learn a lot about yourself and discover feelings in yourself that are difficult to express in words.
Sometimes you just can't find the right words to express the right emotions... and suddenly you hear exactly how the hero of the film pronounces them. Listening to music, reading books, watching movies, and even looking at an artist's painting can open the door to your deepest emotions. The next time a movie or book grabs your attention, try to dig deeper - you never know what you'll find as a result of your search.
Don't let bad mood fool you
We constantly succumb to a bad mood, when it seems to us that the whole world is against us. This state covers our thoughts, feelings and everything that happens to us with a thick and dark fog. Your brain has one focus. As soon as you fall into the power of a bad mood, you lose sight of all the good things in your life. Suddenly you start to hate your job, your friends and family annoy you, you are dissatisfied with your achievements, and your optimism about the future disappears like smoke. Somewhere deep down you know that everything is not as bad as it seems now, but your brain remains deaf to it. 
Part of our self-perception is awareness of what we're going through, even if we can't get rid of it. Admit to yourself that you Bad mood is a kind of cloud covering everything that you see. Remind yourself that your mood is transient. Emotions change constantly, and bad mood will pass - you just need to wait a bit.
Bad mood - no best time to make important decisions.
You must be constantly aware of what mood you are in. If you think you can make sound decisions no matter what your mood is, you will end up with even bigger problems. It is important not only to reflect on what events led you to the current mood. Sometimes these reflections themselves (if you do not get hung up on them too much) can be enough reason for a bad mood to pass by itself.
Understand how you behave under stress
If you learn to recognize the first signs of stress, you will be doing yourself a huge favor. The human mind and body speak to you in their own way. own language(at least when there is stress). Through emotional and psychological reactions, they let you know when it's time to slow down and take a break. An upset stomach, for example, may indicate that you are overwhelmed with nervousness and anxiety. Indigestion and fatigue are the way your body asks for time to rest. Indigestion may indicate tension and anxiety, and symptoms such as headache, stomatitis or back pain may be an expression of other internal problems.
Your self-perception in times of stress and tension should serve as a third ear, listening carefully to your body's voice or its cries for help.
When you push too hard, your body has a lot to say to you. Take the time to listen to these signals and recharge your emotional batteries before the emotional stress causes permanent damage to your internal system.
It so happens that EQ is often associated with the ability to influence people. In fact, his role is wider. Developed emotional intelligence is a useful "background" skill that improves life in almost all areas. Investing in work with own emotions, we care about our well-being and success.
What is emotional intelligence
Sales people joke: “Ordinary intelligence will help solve the problem. Emotional - will help convince others to solve it for you. In a broad sense, intelligence can be described as our competence in something. If we are good, freely operate with abstract quantities, think with formulas and algorithms, we have a well-developed mathematical intelligence. Emotional intelligence is also competence, but in the field of feelings and their expression.
In the 20th century, psychologist Richard Lazarus came to the conclusion that emotions are involved in the process of knowing and evaluating everything that happens to us.
The raw data from the senses that we receive “at the input”, the brain processes into sensations, and then evaluates what they should mean. John Meyer and Peter Salovey later described this system as "emotional intelligence".
If our internal “logistics” are clearly organized, we get an adequate picture of the world and our own reactions as a result.
If not, we get confused in our feelings and desires, ascribe fictitious intentions to others and behave inconsistently. Not the most pleasant situation, right?
The Importance of High EQ
Imagine that you work for a small company. The number of clients is still small, but things are going well, and the management decides to expand. New divisions are opening, deals with major partners are pecking, and all processes are organized in the old way. Problems begin.
The same thing happens to a person when he tries to take on more responsibility, but does not work with emotions. Constant communication is exhausting, stress and unresolved issues keep you awake at night, conflicts constantly flare up at home and at work.
The flow of tasks has become more intense, the experiences associated with them have intensified, but they are processed in the old way.
“A person with high emotional intelligence knows how to regulate his state - let go of emotions that take energy and hold on to those that give energy,” explains Elena Mechetina, psychologist, coach and founder of the development center emotional intelligence in children "D-A". - This does not mean that he avoids conflicts and tense situations. But he quickly returns to a state of equilibrium and does not succumb to provocations.
“Showing emotional intelligence means focusing not on the cause, but on the goal,” adds business coach Elena Sidorenko. - Emotional intelligence is directed to the future - as, by the way, rational intelligence. Do you want to change distrust or dislike towards you into curiosity? So, you should not do what your emotions tell you, but what will lead to the desired result.
Can EQ be developed?
AT in a certain sense the level of intelligence is a given, determined from birth. Upbringing, life and professional experience, one-sided knowledge about the world are layered on this given. Is it possible to change the emotional “firmware” that dictates certain reactions to us at a conscious age?
What matters here is the belief that we can change. Psychologist Carol Dweck and her followers argue that our results are influenced by the initial setting - stability or growth. If we believe that we can change (and in any case we change perceptibly under the influence of new experience), then we actually change.
“The style of emotions, like the style of thinking, is largely a matter of habit,” says Elena Mechetina. - The main charm of our body is that it can adapt to the loads that we give it. I can’t sit on the twine now - I’ll be able to after six months of training. Same with emotional reactions. Change is hard to believe because we are not used to purposefully working with ourselves.”
EQ Exercises
1. Review your beliefs
Recall Lazarus and his colleagues: feelings are formed after we have evaluated the event. This can happen at lightning speed, because there is a habit of thinking and feeling in a certain way. And it is formed by beliefs.
Misunderstood, out of touch with reality, or outdated beliefs can become an emotional trap.
“I had a client - a doctor who had been building up a database of contacts for a long time,” recalls Elena Mechetina. - Her professionalism also developed for a long time. The problem was that patients called her constantly, even at night, and she could not refuse: “I took the Hippocratic oath!” But does it say that a doctor should help patients at the cost of his personal life? This conviction at first helped her, but then - in the new conditions - it became a brake and a source of suffering.
An important part of working with emotional intelligence can be psychotherapy, where a specialist teaches us to be aware of our beliefs, understand the reasons for their appearance and relevance to our lives. And - if necessary - to revise these beliefs and abandon them.
2. Keep an emotional diary
Research by psychologist James Pennebaker has shown that those who have mastered the habit of regularly writing down their feelings find the solution to a complex issue faster and easier.
Here is one way to do it. Step 1: Set a timer for 20-30 minutes. Step 2. Describe how you feel this moment or what you experienced during last week(month, year).
Write whatever comes to mind, disregarding style, mistakes, and other imperfections. Leave the entry or delete it - it doesn't matter.
The very process of writing will teach you to systematize emotional thinking, to “unstick” feelings that have stuck together in a lump and more accurately find their causes.
3. Practice Expressing Your Emotions
Who is the most masterful in controlling their emotions? theater actors! Of course, this statement is not undeniable, but consider: it is work for these people to demonstrate a deep range of experiences. The skill of an actor has a lot to do with the ability to let in a certain emotion and let it out without being imbued with it.
Elena Mechetina advises everyone who wants to develop their emotional intelligence to read the book by Konstantin Stanislavsky "The work of an actor on himself". The writer or journalist owns the word as a tool, just as the actor owns the emotion. A developed emotional intelligence just implies the ability to own an emotion, and not surrender to it.
4. Expand your emotional vocabulary
Susan David, Harvard psychologist medical school and author of the book Emotional Flexibility, advises not only to listen to yourself, but also to expand the emotional vocabulary: study the nuances of emotions, name them and find a range of applications for each.
The language has amazing magic - it sets emotions a certain development scenario, and it obeys it.
When you picked appropriate name for feeling, try to find at least two more words to describe its shade. What is experienced as sadness can be disappointment, depression, emptiness, or regret. Unwinding these threads woven into the common fabric, you will reach the causes and foundations of your reactions.
5. Remember the goal
According to Elena Sidorenko, the ability to manage one's feelings is associated with such a quality as self-denial. If we are willing to surrender to the mercy of an outburst of anger or irritation, then we allow these emotions to control us. We follow the lead of those who evoked these emotions, without thinking about their own interests.
While inside the situation, develop an inner observer who matches intuitive reactions with goals. For example, if someone draws you into a conflict, think: “What are the goals of this person? What are my goals? What emotional response would be more in line with my goals?” This is a difficult exercise because it requires good practice of mindfulness and the ability to switch quickly. But over time, you can master it.
The amount of emotional intelligence, abbreviated as EQ in the specialized literature, depends on how much a person understands, understands them, can recreate, manage them, and therefore apply them to solve tasks. A person with a well-developed emotional intelligence can significantly reduce the impact of negative emotions on their lives. The development of emotional intelligence contributes to the recognition of negative influences from the outside, a calm understanding of the situation and a normal, balanced reaction to it. A person who is emotionally developed lets go of negative emotions, does not experience them again and again, thereby destroying his psyche in particular and life in general.
To understand in more detail what benefits the development of emotional intelligence provides, you can use the diagram below:
If you want to easily find mutual language even with unfamiliar people, to be friendly and open, and therefore pleasant in communication, if you set as your goal the achievement of maximum success in any business, then you just need to work on developing your own EI.
How to develop emotional intelligence
1. Recognize emotions and identify critical moments.
Lose control over your own behavior, explode because of someone else's words, lose your calm on empty place? Ah, how familiar! Each person has a certain boiling point caused by a situation that leads to a loss of self-control - the so-called emotional trigger. People who know how to recognize them, and therefore accept them, can stop in time and not succumb to destructive emotions.
How to learn such control? Analyze your emotions, fix them on paper, highlight your own emotional triggers.
2. Repeat mentally over and over again those situations that lead to emotional breakdowns.
Constant scrolling in the head of this or that situation helps to find the right solution and not react as violently as it could happen in real life. When considering a case that could lead to an emotional breakdown, come up with a different course of action than your usual one. This exercise will allow you to correctly accept the emotional trigger. This means that you will get a chance to act differently when a real explosive situation occurs.
3.Load up your brain.
Anyone can control their mind and. As soon as you feel anger rising, switch to something else, such as solving difficult problems. math problems. Agree, it’s hard to get angry and nervous when you multiply three-digit numbers in your head!
Whether you solve the problem correctly or not does not matter. The main thing is that you tried, used your brain to its fullest and did not let your emotions defeat you.
4. Move away from reality into memories.
If in Hard time if you find it difficult to concentrate, then use a different technique: abstract from what is happening and immerse yourself in pleasant memories. Surely there is something in your life that puts a smile on your face. It could be your favorite song or a book you recently read. Remember them, quote your favorite lines to yourself. Such thoughts will help to avoid an emotional breakdown, as they will switch your brain to a different situation.
The main thing is not to perceive this technique as a cowardly escape from reality. This is done for your benefit.
5. Before sending an angry letter to the addressee, reread what you have written.
Thus, you will take at least a few minutes of time out, once again experience what you experienced when writing, you will be able to rethink the overflowing emotions. You take a break - and it's wonderful. You have a chance to change your mind, to fix everything. If, after reading, you still want to send a letter, ask a friend or loved one read it. Listen to advice from the outside and think twice about whether to offend the addressee. Learn to keep your emotions in check!
Research confirms that all people think differently. A rather neutral message can actually cause aggression on the part of the recipient. To understand how the addressee will react to your letter, remember the character of the person to whom you are writing. Correct the message so as not to offend your addressee.
6. Get away from the immediate answer.
Modern life sometimes requires lightning-fast decisions from us. But often you can not force events and take a minute to think. Do you need a clear answer? Avoid having to respond right away. Say that you will return to this conversation and take a break to think. This will allow you to understand what is really important, and not let emotions prevail over reason.
7.Respect the interlocutor in any situation.
Remember that, in any situation, you need to remain educated, an educated person, express your thoughts clearly and clearly, avoiding profanity. This will characterize you as a serious, solid person who is a pleasure to deal with. Emotions may rage in your soul, but you should not show them. To curb them, it is better to think over your vocabulary in advance and highlight those words that are better not to say out loud.
Once you make the decision to be calm and composed in any situation, you will take a big step towards curbing your emotions and developing emotional intelligence.
About emotional intelligence began to write actively and many years ago. There was even a common meme that " good man"In the XXI century - quite a" profession ".
When your emotional intelligence is high, you perceive reality more adequately, react to it more effectively and interact with others. Emotional intelligence has become one of the new tools for managing business, building effective communications and finding happiness.
But the question immediately arises: is it possible to develop emotional competencies in the same way as ordinary intelligence, logic, thinking and creativity?
Do you feel that the business environment is sometimes hostile to you? For example, does your boss not appreciate you, or does the client treat you like an empty space?
Regardless of which level career ladder you are now, I am sure that you have at least once encountered a misunderstanding. You felt left out, not appreciated enough, not treated properly. And as a consequence, you experienced suffering.
Let's face it, business isn't always fun. Some may argue that "that's how it works." However, I am sure that we can improve our situation by developing one useful skill - emotional intelligence (EI).
Darius Foroux
Entrepreneur, author of three books, podcast host https://soundcloud.com/dariusforoux. "I write about how to be more productive to build a better life, career, and business."
What is emotional intelligence, how to improve it and how to use it in a business environment?
Term emotional intellect was popularized by John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Peter Salovey of Yale University.
Mayer defines EI (also called EQ) as follows:
In the current economic situation, the skill of solving problems related to emotions is very important. Plus, we often have to work together to find a solution. So success in business is not based on your diploma, IQ test scores, or any other grade-based metrics.
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If you want to reach meaningful results you will have to learn how to work with other people. From this point of view, EI is a key skill that will bring you better results and greater success.
In addition, studies show that high EI is an indicator of mental health. Therefore, it affects not only your success rate, but also your level of happiness.
Better self-awareness leads to higher emotional intelligence, which in turn brings more happiness.
EI characterizes a person's ability to recognize emotions. And not only others, but also their own. I believe that before you manage and direct others, you need to understand your emotions. Therefore, EI dough is associated with self-knowledge.
Thus, emotional intelligence is important factor that determines our success in life and in business:
- The result of high EI is self-knowledge.
- Self-awareness leads to greater happiness.
- A high level of happiness is an indicator of job satisfaction.
- Getting the joy of work, you show the best results.
- Good results lead to recognition.
- Recognition of our successes makes us feel important.
- This feeling leads us to greater happiness, better results, and so on.
Step one. Recognize your emotions.
Daniel Goleman, another pioneer in the study of emotional intelligence, is the author of Emotional Intelligence. Why it might mean more than IQ” states that we have two minds: “We literally have two minds. One thinks, the other feels.
In order to develop the part of the brain that is responsible for feelings, I like to write in a diary about my daily emotions. If you're not already journaling, start for the sake of your emotional intelligence.
Taking the first step, it is important to determine what you feel, what is the trigger for you experiences. Don't think why. Ask yourself some helpful questions:
What do you feel in different situations?
Do you get angry when you are criticized?
Do you get upset when people ignore you?
Do you freeze when all attention is on you?
Step two. Interpret your emotions
Once you have a better idea of how you react to different situations, it's time to figure out your reaction. Find answers to the following questions:
How do you respond to people when you're angry?
What do you really think of them?
What is the primary source of your feelings, what upsets you, makes you happy, sad, angry?
Don't judge yourself. Your goal is to understand your emotions. No more, no less.
Step three. Manage your emotions.
it most of business success. The leader does not go with the flow or follow the energy of the group. The leader sets the atmosphere. But before you can determine the mood of the whole group, you need to learn how to maintain an internal mood. Answer yourself a few questions:
Can you get out of being sad?
Can you cheer yourself up?
Can you hold yourself back if you get too excited?
If not, work on it. Before you can control your emotions, you must learn to control them.
I used a three-step method to better identify my emotions. After trying these steps for yourself, you will learn to recognize your emotions and identify the emotions of other people. This is exactly what constitutes emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to understand one's feelings and emotions, the feelings and emotions of other people and the ability to effectively influence one's own and others' behavior by managing one's own emotions and feelings and emotions, the feelings of other people.One of the wonderful results of developing emotional intelligence is the reduction of negative emotions. Developed emotional intelligence allows you to quickly deal with the causes of negative emotions, and then soberly assess the situation and respond to it reasonably, instead of experiencing them for a long, long time.
Since the 40s of the last century, studies have been repeatedly conducted, the purpose of which was to identify the relationship of school or university academic achievements with further success or failure. successful life students. It turned out that in order to achieve your goals, it is very important to be able to get along with people: to understand someone else's reaction and be able to predict it, negotiate and cooperate.
Not everyone succeeds in this: there are things that do not contribute to this:
Immunity to non-verbal cues. It occurs in about one in ten: this is a bad sense of the interlocutor's personal space, the inability to establish eye contact, the inability to start, maintain or end a conversation on time, a misinterpretation of the interlocutor's facial expression.
Conflict Avoidance Behavior. People who feel unloved, lonely, burdened with worries, are not at all inclined to contacts with others. They prefer to mope alone than to try to solve their problems.
Aggressiveness. Nobody likes aggressive people - neither children, nor even adults. People who have chosen aggression as the basic (and sometimes the only) reaction to everything that happens quite quickly find themselves in isolation.
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Majority successful people have developed emotional intelligence. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, the development of emotional intelligence allows you to get rid of many fears and doubts, to start acting and communicating with people to achieve your goals.
Secondly, emotional intelligence allows you to understand the motives of other people, “read them like a book.” And that means finding the right people and communicate effectively with them.
Third, emotional intelligence can be developed and improved throughout life, unlike IQ.
How to improve your emotional intelligence.
- Any emotion must be conscious. negative emotions- especially. You can lie to anyone but yourself, especially when it comes to socially acceptable behavior. You have the right to admit to yourself (and no one else): "This film is considered a ridiculous tearful melodrama, but I was terribly moved by it."
- How are you doing with your vocabulary? How many words do you use to describe feelings? Try to quickly list a dozen of any emotions. If you're stuck after "tough", "wow" and "freaky", it's time to expand vocabulary. Otherwise, how can one learn to distinguish one feeling from another, if there are not even names for them?
- What emotions are in general, you can learn from others. Moreover: it’s even quite good to be aware of the feelings of those people with whom you communicate. Are you sure that you are one hundred percent aware of their emotions? What if you ask? Or if you share your feelings and ask for a response?
- Surrounding - generally inexhaustible. I remember that the notorious Homer Simpson reduced Bart's upbringing to one thing: with a cry of "Oh, you bastard," he rushed to strangle him. In real life, such behavior does not look so comical. Observe others: in what ways they react to demands, to claims, to good news, to aggression, to compliments. Find (in your mind first) new ways of responding to typical situations. What feelings can they express?
- How is your locus of control? It is believed that the internal locus of control (there is a feeling that
