How Do We Develop Emotional Intelligence?
Itās all about re-writing your subconscious program!
I became aware of Emotional Intelligence when I worked as an IT project manager, my last position before experiencing an existential crisis.
In a moment of truth, I admitted to myself how much I sucked at this thing called life, I decided, and not without completely freaking out, to quit everything and start the most rewarding investment of my life - in myself!
I wonāt lie to you. My primary goal in this transformational journey was selfish; to recover from my perfectionism syndrome ā a combination of a pleaser and an achiever, which left me with no psychological breathing space.
It took me a while, progressively developing my critical thinking until I could recognise which knowledge could help me grow for real ā not simply numb the root causes of being stuck through exclusively using self-compassion and positive affirmations.
We can easily get trapped into the motivational āpositive attitudeā tools. It can work for a while, it worked for me. I had post-its everywhere. I read them daily and tried to trick my subconscious program.
It worked so perfectly I became relaxed, generous, eloquent, patientā all that I could ever wish for in myself, until an incident or two wholly destroyed my fragile balance.
Luckily, my family was supportive, and unquestionably respected my decision to commit to the real transformation. I wouldnāt have been able to provide any coherent answer at that time anyway!
Iām grateful to a friend of mine who recommended a life-changing book: The 7 Habits Of The Most Effective People by Dr. Stephen R.Covey. It was the beginning of understanding how many limiting beliefs I was carrying, how much hard work I had to do to destroy my conditioning constructs.
I figured out how much I was driven by ego, how little clue I had about who I was. Most importantly, I realized that my perfectionism was nothing more than a shield against my profound shame of never feeling good enough.
Why are we building shields?
Well, as the name denotes, shields are for protection. In this case, protecting ourselves from our insecurities.
There are many shields we can develop. We tend to use a variety of them depending on the circumstances and/or people we are dealing with.
Here are the two groups:
- The first persuades us to be a people pleaser, to achieve more than others, creates obsessions with material things, withdrawing and keeping secrets, etc.
- The second causes harm to people with whom we interact. Aggressiveness, intimidation, cruelty, etc.
Why can we feel we are never good enough?
We were all disconnected from our intrinsic worth to some degree. Everybody in our environment, mainly our caregivers, appeared to criticise us from an early age. Instead of teaching and motivating, they asked us to prove our worth.
Parents told us to be polite and behave decently, while they disrespected each other with horrible names and argued to the point of tears.
An extremely confusing and damaging environment for kids.
The problem is that the parents are looking for behaviors, emotions, and thinking patterns that their children have never seen modeled.
BrenƩ Brown
Ironically, those same parents are shocked when they learn their kids become bullies at school, and school bullies are likely to become cruel adults.
They use the lessons of their parents to put others down and act mean. They use cruel argument, toxic humour and hurtful sarcasm.
Their drive is to feel better about themselves, and donāt care if they hurt anyoneās feelings in the process.
You may be feeling lost here and asking: āWhere is this going, Myriam? Donāt get me wrong, but Iām honestly not getting your point! How is this relevant? Isnāt Emotional Intelligence supposed to be the topic of your article?ā
And it is! What we are looking at here is about destroying those shields and reviewing our distorted lens, to allow our minds to begin the process of developing our Emotional Intelligence.
That process concentrates on three main inner-work areas:
Moving from an insecure to secure attachment styles.
Letās face the truth. Most of us were loved conditionally and/or inconsistently. Our caregivers were conditioned themselves. They were unfinished, diving into life with a heavy baggage of emotional scars, unprocessed feelings, and mental patterns.
Very likely having kids when they were not ready for such a privilege!
As a result they were unprepared and unable to raise us without damaging our subconscious belief patterns, such as, insecure attachment styles.
There are three insecure attachment styles:
- The anxious-preoccupied.
- The fearful-avoidant.
- The dismissive-avoidant.
All our future relationships will conform to the attachment style created within us.
Hereās the point! The first step in the journey of growing and developing our emotional intelligence is to become aware of the existance of our emotional style, be honest about where we are, and start working on reversing the programmed negative styles.
It requires education and getting serious about the execution. Some might need the help of a therapist, which I wholeheartedly recommend.
Challenging the status quo and engaging in life by our rules.
This inner-work is about our limiting beliefs. Challenging the status quo helps us develop our critical thinking to reach a level of freedom.
This kind of self-awareness is limited and is concerned with our intellectual, logical and verbal part of the brain.
Diagnosing our patterns and limiting beliefs about the world in relation to the Universal Principles
What you tell yourself is what you believe. This can play a big role in how you see the world and how you feel.
We therefore need to analyze our thoughts and learn how they influence our actions!
What is such a process doing? It gives us access to our creative and emotional right brain, in addition to the left; thus, creating a synergy.
A simple example of this could be analyzing ābreastfeeding in publicā. If I perceive it as taboo, am I violating any universal principle? The trivial answer is Yes.
Given nothing in breastfeeding is causing any harm to others (unless their caregivers conditioned them to feel so, in which case it is their problem!), I am violating the right of the mom to love her baby. I am violating the respect of her free will, and I am violating human dignity.
A report in uk.blastingnews.com, in early January, 24-year-old mother Lucy Foster was left feeling humiliated by Tesco cafƩ staff in Plymouth when she asked if she could breastfeed her baby after ordering a cup of tea.
A staff member responded with, āit dependsā, and she was forced to feed her seven-week-old baby in a storage area, which was cluttered with tables, chairs, and Christmas decorations.
Similarly, in Australia, software executive, and mother of two, Kathy Smith, was forced to feed her child beside a toilet with no seat and several sanitary bins, whilst visiting the Qantas Club Lounge at Melbourne Airport. This, despite recommendations from the Australian Breastfeeding Association that nursing areas should be as hygienic as food preparation areas.
In short, I am violating three universal principles!
What is such a diagnosis implying? Tapping into our emotional brain triggers conscious shame and compassion.
It is also giving birth to writing a new algorithm in our subconscious program, which would replace the old distorted one.
One of the very practical results of being principle-centered is that it makes us whole ā truly integrated. People who are scripted deeply in logical, verbal, left-brain thinking will discover how inadequate that thinking is in solving problems that require a great deal of creativity. They become aware and begin to open up a script inside their right brain. Itās not that the right brain wasnāt there; it just lay dormant. The muscles have not been developed, or perhaps they had atrophied after early childhood because of the heavy left-brain emphasis of formal education or social scripting. When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative, and visual right brain, and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working. In other words, there is psychic synergy taking place in our head, and this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is because life is not just logical ā it is also emotional.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey
Developing our Emotional Intelligence skill
By becoming principle-centered, we progressively kill our insecurities. Thus, we move from being reactive to proactive. What is the difference?
If we are a reactive person, we think first of our own requirements; intent only on our position. We blame others for our troubles and for feeling stuck. We are argumentative, judgmental and fail to listen effectively. We label others and make assumptions.
When we become proactive however, we start understanding the triggers of our emotions, owning them so that we are able to manage them.
Stephen Covey calls this first step of developing our Emotional Intelligence the Private Victory.
Why victory? Because we have defeated a big part of our unhealthy ego fierce resistance. This step is a crucial pre-requisite to the second, which is involving others. In this step, we start developing our active listening skills.
So, what is meant by active listening skills?
Instead of listening to respond, we listen to understand. Instead of listening to the words, we listen to the body language & emotions. Instead of listening with the ears, we listen with the heart.
How is that even possible you may ask? Well, with the private victory, comes a paradigm shift ā namely, seeking first to understand othersā emotions, and then to be understood. This new paradigm is the foundation for building trust; hence, healthy relationships.
How to raise the Trust Reserve?
- Attending to the little things: free courtesies. In relationships, those little things are the big ones.
- Showing integrity: similar to honesty, but beyond it. While honesty is conforming my words to reality, integrity is conforming reality to my words.
For example, if I dislike negative humour and you tell a toxic joke that makes fun of a common friend, and I laugh, thinking itās okay as I was not the initiator, then, you guessed it, I still have some work to do on my integrity.
Integrity confrontations will not be pleasant. Friends may get pissed off with you becoming too serious for them! The good news though, is that people will respect you anyway, if only in secret.
Be a role model and take the risk of being rejected, itās fully worth it. In the long run, they might get inspired and start reflecting on their patterns! Be prepared for it to take a while to be able to make the difference between healthy and toxic humor.
Some tips to avoid teasing people could be:
1. Donāt attack their identity (of course, you need to aware how they identify themselves).
2. Donāt tease something unchangeable or really important to them.
3. Donāt tease them about a past they havenāt yet managed.
- Clarifying expectations: A common source of conflict is presupposing that our expectations are self-evident and shared by everybody. Itās vital therefore, to get all expectations on the table, aspecially whenever it comes to a new situation.
- Keeping our promises: we tend to build our hopes and decisions around promises ā especially when it comes to our basic livelihood.
- Apologising when screwing things up: it takes a great deal of character strength to apologise quickly, from the heart, rather than out of pity. It needs a lot of security. Thatās why reaching private victory is a pre-requisite. The internal security arising from unchangeable principles is stable and gradually becomes limitless. We are not afraid of people taking advantage of our exposure. We wonāt care because our new self-love value is courage, replacing the unhealthy ego need for protection.
This second step of developing Emotional Intelligence is called, in the words of Covey, Public Victory! When we reach this level, we move from the proactivity sphere to the interdependency arena.
When I am physically interdependent, I know that I can do any physical task alone. But, I also recognize that you and I, working together, could do much better than, even at my best, I can accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I am self-reliant, but I also admit my need for sharing the love. If I am intellectually interdependent, I can admit that our analytical skills put together could take us to the farthest places I would have never been able to reach alone!
Last thoughts
Forget about your job! (āCome on Myriam; you gotta stop confusing us!ā)
I know, most people tend to think developing Emotional Smartness is only required for people who are willing to become leaders and drive a change.
Well, Iām sorry to deceive you but itās not all about work. Emotional Intelligence is a must-have for your life, overall. Developing it is the key to building healthy relationships, a crucial component of our fulfillment and emotional health.
I can fully understand, that in the quality of human beings, we tend to accept and appreciate ideas and stories to which we can relate. Thatās why Iām telling you this is for ALL of you. We are no different.
We are all hardwired for connection, curiosity, and engagement. We all crave purpose, and we have a deep desire to create and contribute. We all want to show up, learn, and inspire. We all want to take risks, embrace our vulnerabilities, and be courageous
BrenƩ Brown.
That, to me, is the real definition of a leader. It has nothing to do with formal authority or social status. It has all to do with the interdependent person we can become if only we give ourselves a chance to pay the price and unleash our potential and divinity!
