Emotional Intelligence for 2017 made easy!
Well we have all heard about the importance of Emotional Intelligence! There are now many books written about this very important topic.
The challenge is that we are born with the capacity to be emotionally intelligent but we live in a word that teaches us to use our thinking capacity at the exclusion of paying attention to 3 other ways of gaining information.
Carl Jung talked about the four functions of Consciousness, 4 ways of “knowing” or gaining information about ourselves, about others and our world
The Four functions are:
*Thinking( which our world as made KING)
*Sensing or gaining information from our body (which our world has taught us to ignore: Think Obesity, addictions, lack of EQ, etc, etc)
*Intuiting
*Feeling
This article is about our Feeling nature. And simply put, I think our feelings are little messengers that tell us how we are experiencing something. If we listen to our feelings, we can gain information about how we perceive something inside or outside of ourselves.
Because I want to keep this article simple and easy, here are the four main categories of feelings and what they are often telling us
Mad: Someone or something has invaded our boundaries. The reason that this feeling is avoided is that, we often have either witnessed anger being expressed in a toxic way, an inappropriate way or were told that someone’s anger was our fault. This is impossible. My anger can only be about my experience. It may be about what someone did or said, but my anger is about my experience. The only way to deal with anger is to express it in a healthy and calm way. The Feedback wheel, is an excellent tool to master if someone wants to become emotionally intelligent. Please contact me and will send you a version of this tool that you need to master in order to be emotionally intelligent.
Sad: We are experiencing a loss. Sadness does make us feel vulnerable. And, our world has taught us that being vulnerable is not a safe place to be. One of the worst things that parents do to their children when they have experienced a loss is to tell them to not feel sad but to think about how to replace the loss. When we learn to feel our sadness and we have someone who is willing to simply be present to the sadness, everything changes. One of the deepest ways to feel emotional intimacy is to have someone simply to choose to be present to our sadness without having to say anything.
Scared: We are experiencing something that might be dangerous. Our fear is a gift. Yes, that is correct. If we pay attention to ourselves when we have this feeling, we can then look and see IF there is something dangerous that we need to deal with so we can stay safe. If we choose to ignore this feeling, we are ignoring an opportunity to be safe.
Glad: We are experiencing something that is in resonance with our well-being. Humans are always seeking a way to be Happy. The truth is, if we listen to our deepest knowing, we will find that the ways to be happy are so simple and the way to happiness often begin with choosing to listen to our feelings first.