More About Emotional Intelligence
Key Areas of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Awareness
Building the skills to sense and understand how emotions come in and may have unintended and unwanted consequences. Learning how to understand anger, frustration, being overwhelmed, confusion, etc leads the way to building skills that change our response to situations so that we can create much healthier outcomes.
Communication Skills
Understanding how emotions impact how we talk to each other and changing how we go about talking with each other so that we have far greater understanding and empathy for each other.
Triggers
When old memories from our subconscious become active (called a trigger) then they take over our responses in various ways and can have quite negative effects that repeat over and over. By exploring these events and uncovering their sources, allows them to dissipate and you have better choices in how to respond to a previously “triggering” situation.
Learning Emotional Intelligence
We recognize there is no "right" way to learn EI. The way a person learns is very much dependent on where they are currently at and that will change with time.
The key for us is to support that learning need, wherever it may be currently.
Curiosity and acceptance are important perspectives to bring to the journey.
If you can embrace your emotional responses you open the doorway to advancing your learning quickly.
Understanding Our Emotions
Our emotions are a natural part of how our brains work. They provide a way for our unconscious to communicate to our conscious so that we can take an action to respond to something that is stimulating us.
Most of the time this works fine and we are unaware of what is happening.
This system breaks down when we have negative emotions that get in the way of us taking actions we would like.
Using the Learning Opportunity in Emotions
Feelings of uneasiness, anger, frustration, disempowerment, disconnection, loneliness, etc. are indications that needs are not being met.
These feelings can be used to identify needs that are expressed. This is a skill we have sorely missed out on and can build with practice.
Identifying and communicating on needs, moves our communication from the everyday upset words we can easily fall in to.
About My Emotional Intelligence Journey
There came a point in my life where I needed to learn more about myself and my emotions. It was not clear what I had to learn. I eventually came upon Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication (NVC) teachings and courses.
These opened the door for me to insights that added enormously to my understanding of myself and others.
Since that start I have continually built my skills with curiosity and enthusiasm.
I have run a Meetup for a number of years on emotional intelligence topics and have the satisfaction of knowing that many participants have used what they have learnt, to make a difference in their lives.
I moved in to coaching as a natural follow on from my own learning and supporting others. Very much enjoying supporting people to make breakthroughs in their lives (see the Videos section). The coaching work has covered a very wide range of depth from intellectual understandings of EI to delving deeply in to old memories that have counterproductive influences in peoples present lives.
Along the way, I had (and still have) the joy of supporting Sri Ram Timilsina in Nepal who is spreading EI and NVC across Nepal in a truly remarkable effort to bring peace and happiness to his country. He and his supporters have given teachings to over 50,000 participants and over 1100 schools. Sri Ram stands out to me as an inspirational example of what can be achieved at the grass roots.