Emotional Intelligence - allow your emotions to guide you in life!...

Emotions are very important...

The need for us ALL to have a good understanding about emotional intelligence is GREAT. Our emotions can either greatly help, or hinder us, in life and so therefore it is vitally important to be able to efficiently 'interpret' and manage them...

Before I babble on about emotional intelligence and why it's so important, let me point you in the direction of my article about the meaning of life. Click here and have a read...

You don't have to read the article, but it will give you the grounding to better understand this article, but if you can't be asked to read it (lazy), then let me briefly summarise it for you...

The Meaning of Life

Knowing the meaning of life is important, but I won't go into too much detail here. My theory on the meaning of life is this...


So what's this got to do with emotional intelligence?...

We are feeling an emotion every second of everyday, but here's the thing...


Take fear for example...

Fear - A Negative Emotion?

Fear is a negative emotion, right?...

WRONG!...

It can be negative, but it definitely has benefits. You see, fear is our 'safety mechanism'. Imagine for a moment, what would life be like without fear...

Let me give you an example...

People would run out in the road without looking, even though some people do anyway, but stick with me here. Would you put your hand in a fire? would you jump off a 50 story building?...

I hope you didn't answer yes to any of those questions, did you? :-0...

But seriously, thanks to our emotional intelligence, we know that we need to obey our fear, or potentially end up six feet under, and we don't want that, do we?...

So basically, if we're in a situation where there is danger of something happening, that we don't want to happen, fear kicks in. The bigger the desire to avoid a certain event from happening, the more intense the fear is...

Fear is a lifesaver in a situation where it's undoubtably a bad thing for the 'potential' event to happen, for example, dying after being hit by a 7.5 ton truck, because you ran out in the road without looking. This is an example of fear being our bestest friend...

But...

The Positive Side of Fear

What about when the situation posses the potential for a positive outcome?...

Think about it...

If you're human, and you are right?, you will have been in this situation yourself, probably loads of times. The most obvious example would be a money making opportunity...

Let's use me as an example for this one...

I've always had entrepreneurial desires, and trading the stock market was always a burning ambition of mine. Was I fearful about stock market trading? I wasn't fearful of getting into it, because it made intellectual sense, but when it can to laying my money on the line...

You guessed it, I was scared shitless...

The fear was so strong it crippled me from taking any action. I would not place a trade out of fear of losing money, only to find that the trade would have been a good one, sometimes really good. As a result, I started to 'program' my brain to 'face my fears'...

But here's the thing...

The cycle continued, over and over and over and over again...

UNTIL...

I expanded my emotional intelligence. You see, if I'm being really honest with you, I didn't have enough money to be trading the stock market, basically, one bad trade would have completely wiped me out. Moral to the story...

Emotional Development

When you develop your emotional intelligence, you are much better equipped to be able to interpret your emotions and take heed to what they are 'telling' you. Obviously this isn't easy - who am I trying to kid...


That's why it's important to embark upon some kind of emotional development, with the aim of enhancing your emotional intelligence.

Understanding YOUR emotions is very important if you want success. The success I'm referring to isn't restricted to just money making opportunities, etc. - it's bigger than that. I'm referring to EVERYTHING you do, whether it be within your relationships, your work, your leisure time...

To cut a long story short...

Success in the choices you make in life...

The choices we make are directly effected by the emotions we are feeling at the time of making the decision. Being angry in a given situation will affect the choices you make, just like if you're feeling happy or loving. Get my drift?...

Here's what we ALL need to understand...

Making any decision should involve some kind of logic. Listen carefully to this bit...

Logic  and Emotions...

Logic and emotions DON'T mix, similar to chalk and cheese. So my advise to you is...

DON'T MIX THEM!


Let me explain what I mean...

Suppose you have a teacher who is marking a students coursework, and the student's work really warrants a C, but the teacher has a 'soft spot' for this particular student, and so marks them with an A. Or alternatively, a student that the teacher absolutely can't stomach. Their work is of A+ standard, but yet they are marked with a B...

Can you see my point?...

That's why you should never mix the two together. In effect, you have to 'step outside of your body' and make a decision as if you were a complete stranger who is not emotionally 'attached' to the situation. Not easy, but mastering it won't do your emotional intelligence any harm!

Emotional intelligence is a vast subject and can't be given the respect it deserves in this article, for a start there are so many different emotions to talk about, and how to deal with them. So I'll give you a universal explanation...

Unravelling the Encrypted Clues

A handy way of looking at our emotions, is to see them as encrypted clues that can warn, and prepare us about potential dangers that may lie ahead. With good interpretation of these emotions, we can be guided into a more beneficial situation...

The trick is to know what emotion you are feeling in a given situation, then evaluate it's intensity. The stronger the intensity, the more notice and importance you should give it. Finally, try and decrypt the 'clue'. So in the stock market example I gave you earlier, (you know the one starring me)...

My emotional intelligence 'instructed' me to re-evaluate my situation and honesty decide whether I was fully prepared to be trading the stock market. I've already told you, financially, I wasn't ready. I also realised that I needed to better understand the trading strategy I was using, because of this, I discovered that when I was developing my trading system, I didn't properly look at the dangers because basically I didn't want to believe they were there, because that would mean I'd have to go 'back to the drawing board'.

Now can you see the how importance of emotional intelligence?...

The best way for you to develop your emotional intelligence, is to think back to previous experiences in your life where you was feeling a particular emotion, and then see if you can decrypt the clues your emotions were giving you.

Moving Forward...

So to sum up...

Your emotions can be your best friend OR worst enemy, but with emotional intelligence, emotions can be a the most powerful emotional development weapon you can ever posses in you emotions arsenal.

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