EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

DEVELOP EMPATHY AND INCREASE

YOUR EMOTIONAL AGILITY FOR
LEADERSHIP. IMPROVE YOUR SOCIAL
SKILLS TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT WORK
AND DISCOVER WHY IT CAN MATTER
MORE THAN IQ | EQ 2. 0

BRANDON BRADBERRY
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 .              WHAT ARE EMOTIONS FOR

CHAPTER 2 .              EMOTIONAL BRAIN
CHAPTER 3.               HOW THOUGHTS AND HABITS AFFECT YOUR EMOTIONS
CHAPTER 4 .              THE ROOTS OF EMPATHY
CHAPTER 5.               HOW TO DEVELOP EMPATHY IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
CHAPTER 6 .              EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE APPLIED
CHAPTER 7 .              TRAUMA AND EMOTIONAL RELEARNING
CHAPTER 8.               SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
CHAPTER 9.               SOCIAL AWARENESS AND RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
STRATEGIES              

CHAPTER 10.               THE PERSONAL COMPETENCIES OF EMOTIONAL

INTELLIGENCE              

CHAPTER 11 .              MOTIVATION AND SELF-REGULATION

CHAPTER 12 .              INTROSPECTION, MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION
CHAPTER 13.               THE SOCIAL COMPETENCIES OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
             

CHAPTER 14 .              EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AT WORK

CHAPTER 15.               HOW TO DEAL WITH A LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENT
PARTNER              

CHAPTER 16.               EMOTIONAL DRAIN SIGNS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH ENERGY
VAMPIRES

CHAPTER 17. TRAINING AND HONING YOUR EMOTIONAL ABILITIE S

CHAPTER 18.               BUILDING EMOTIONAL BRIDGES TO CONNECT WITH OTHERS

             

CHAPTER 19 .              SIGNS OF LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER 20 .              OBSTACLES TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF EQ
CHAPTER 21.               BUSTING THE MYTHS ABOUT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
                           

CHAPTER 22 .              EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE MODELS

CHAPTER 23 .              HOW TO MASTER AND CONTROL ANGER
CHAPTER 24 .              GETTING RID OF NEGATIVITY IN YOUR LIFE
CHAPTER 25.               MINDFULNESS, VISUALIZATION, GUIDED IMAGERY AND
RELAXATION TECHNIQUES FOR INSTANT RELIEF FROM STRESS, ANXIETY AND
ANGER              

CHAPTER 26 .              TROUBLESHOOTING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER 27 .              THE NATURE OF EMOTIONS
CONCLUSION
 Introduction

E motional Intelligence is the ability to be aware, understand, and control

personal emotions. A person with emotional intelligence is also able to
understand other’s emotions and feel them as if they were the ones
going through such emotions. Emotional intelligence involves some skills
which are:
Emotional awareness: this is the skill that helps you realize your emotions
in terms of what exactly are you feeling. Most people are not aware of their
emotions and for this, they cannot tell when they are happy, sad, angry or
depressed. If you need to work on yourself, you need to be aware of what
exactly you are going through. You are also able to explain to others exactly
what they put you through, something most people struggle with. When you
can describe your emotions, others will know how to handle you or even
know how to help you overcome the emotions. Emotional intelligence goes
beyond personal awareness because just as you are able to label your
emotions, you are also able to label the emotions of others around you. You
will be aware when they are happy or when they need your help because
you can tell their emotions.
Understanding- once you are aware of your emotions, it is easier to
understand them in terms of what causes them, and how often they recur.
This means that when dealing with others, you will be able to understand
what will cause them pain or what will restore their joy. This means that as
a person with high EQ, you are empathetic towards others and once in a
while, you will have to put yourself in their shoes. By doing this, you will
now be in a position to view things in their eyes and therefore understand
them better as individuals without being too judgmental.
Control- when you are aware and understand the emotions you and the
people in your life go through, you are then able to control them. You avoid
situations that will provoke the anger in you and avoid people who bring
out the worst in you. When dealing with others, you are also able to avoid
doing or saying things that will provoke them. You are not only able to
regulate the emotions you go through and those of others but you are able to
look for solutions. You are now in a position where you can help yourself
and others become better than the emotions coming your way. Usually,
what this entails is anger management, knowing how to deal when anger
strikes you or the people around you. This then means that once in a while,
you will need to be flexible and adapt to people with different ideologies
from yours and be open-minded. It also means that you have to take
responsibility when necessary and also be trustworthy and practice
integrity.
Social skills- a person who has a high EI is able to communicate better with
others. They are better listeners as well, and people find it easier to confide
in them. Communication skills are also paramount in the workplace since
you will the negotiation skills to persuade and maintain clients. This skill
also makes people with high EI become better problem solvers and are able
to solve conflicts amongst themselves or between other people.
Most critics of emotional intelligence argue that it does not exist simply
because it cannot be measured like the Intelligent Quotient. They, therefore,
argue that emotional intelligence is just an interpersonal skill that is being
labeled differently. However, emotional intelligence continues to be very
popular and proves that, indeed, being emotionally intelligent is much
needed in every human being who wants to succeed all around.
According to the World economic forum, emotional intelligence is number
six out of the ten skills that people need if they desire to work in their
workplace. It is for this reason that most employers have introduced
emotional intelligence tests as part of job interviews. This is because people
with high intelligence are the best team leaders that any organization can
hire. An emotionally intelligent employee also performs better than any
other employee and that is why it is important to find employees who have
some level of emotional intelligence. Emotion intelligence also consists of
social skills that help you deal with your family, friends, workmates and
even in your relationships. The reason why some people are able to make
friendships so quickly but are unable to maintain the networks is that they
lack social skills from emotional intelligence. People who have high
emotional intelligence are able to relate better with their friends and their
relationships work better since they understand the people in their lives.
This is because when a person who has a high emotional intelligence is
dealing with people, they are able to identify things that will frustrate them
and therefore, will keep away from them. On the other hand, people with
high emotional intelligence are able to tell when someone is being overly
sensitive and will be able to keep away from them until they are calm and
reasonable.
EI gives everyone the ability to find joy in every situation. For this reason,
experts seem to insinuate that emotional intelligence is much important than
IQ. This is because while IQ is all about the brain and how smart one is in
school or in taking exams, EI is all about overall success as an individual.
You will succeed in school, family, work, your health, and in your
relationship when you apply EI.
It is important that you know having a high EI doesn’t make you different
from others. You will still be predisposed to both negative and positive
emotions. Anyone who wants to achieve emotional intelligence has to work
hard within themselves to ensure that they are only entertaining positive
thoughts. Whenever negative thoughts strive, one should be able to reframe
to positive thoughts. To achieve this, you have to ensure that you are always
trying to be a better person each day. It’s not going to be easy, but everyone
can be emotionally intelligent since it is a skill that can be learned.
Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence
A Great overall balance- being able to strike a balance of all the activities
you need to do every day can be overwhelming. Sometimes because of how
much is expected of a person, people sometimes easily become stressed. An
emotionally intelligent person is able to overcome that by finding a balance
that will allow them to find peace and happiness despite the hard
circumstances. When such a person realizes that work, relationships are
getting them worked up. They know how to step back, take a break, and
find themselves first. On the other hand, when there is a lack of emotional
intelligence, people will get worked up by every little thing because they do
not the time to play and the time to work. Such people will continue doing
the same thing over and over instead of finding something different or a
different strategy. This is because they are not aware of how much that is
affecting their emotions and they will there be always angry and frustrated.
Therefore if you find someone who is always able to strike a balance in
everything and is always happy even when everything is not working out,
that is someone with a high EI.
Great Focus: Ever seen people who are easily distracted at anything they
do? One minute they are so focused, and then after a small distraction, they
are no longer as focused? That is someone who is controlled by their
emotions. Such people will only work depending on their current moods. If
they are angry at someone in their workplace who is in their team, they will
refuse to work with that person simply because they are angry. This will
then affect their performance because they have allowed their emotions to
control them. People with high EI, on the other hand, are always focused no
matter how overwhelming their work is. Sometimes there is so much to do
that it may lead to confusion as you do not know what to do or where to
start and that can bring worry which will cause distractions. The difference
between those who lack high EI and those who have it is that those who do
have what we call laser focus .
Easy going: Sometimes, people think that having a high means that you
always get everything right. However, this is not necessarily true because
every human being faces different challenges. It is, therefore, most likely
that they too will go through hard times but they are easy and understand
that it is part of life. People who do not have EI tend to be very shaken by
tough times and never move past that. They will always focus on their
failures and forget all the success they have achieved over time. If they do
not get something right, they think that they have now become life failures.
Such people are always trying to be perfect and if that doesn’t happen, then
they are very frustrated. Easy going people who are the people with EI
know that no one is perfect, and therefore, they understand that there will be
downs and ups and they, therefore, embrace this so well. Any mistake they
make they are able to brush that off and move on from it.
Open-minded: Remember one of the skills a person with EI has a great
understanding of others' emotions. This means that they are able to
understand other people’s perspectives. They are therefore very open-
minded and will always consider the opinion of people around them. On the
other hand, people who lack EI are very stubborn and only want to be
heard. They feel like they are always right and always want their idea or
opinion to be the only subject of discussion. You are very likely to end up in
a very bad argument with such people as you try to reason with them on a
different perspective from theirs. They are also people who will be easily
offended because when they are trying to express themselves, they do not
expect you to argue with them .
Guarded: EI doesn’t mean that someone will always be able to control their
emotions. They are only able to control or regulate to a certain extent.
However, sometimes it can be too much to handle. What people with EI do
is predict how certain people and situations will negatively affect them.
They will, therefore, avoid such people and situations because they
understand that happiness is in their own hands. People who lack EI, on the
other hand, think that people will make them happy and therefore find it
hard to stand for themselves. While a person with a high EI will say no
when the situations don’t favor them, people who like it will struggle to do
that and, therefore, will end up angry and frustrated. This is because they
were not able to stop the misfortunes in time; instead, they just rely on the
current mood which may, in the long run, bring them a bad outcome. If you
want to be like a person with a high EI, you have to always put into
consideration the current moods and whatever mood you are likely to have
after some hours. This is because something exciting you now may in the
afterward moment bring you regrets. On the other hand, you may find that
something or someone who you have not connected with at the moment
may turn out to be very rewarding in the end.
Embracing strengths and understanding weaknesses: one of the greatest
advantages of having a high EI is because you understand perfectly what
your strengths are. Such a person does not wait for validation from others
because they can see for themselves what they can do. They know what
they are good at and are not afraid to make it work for their advantage. For
that reason, such people are very successful because they keep on
perfecting what they already have. The other thing is that such people also
understand their weaknesses. Therefore instead of always trying to change
their weaknesses, they embrace them and try to improve once in a while.
However, when they are sure that focusing on the weaknesses makes them
frustrated and wastes their time, they will get other people to help them out.
For example, a designer who is very good at drawing but is not very good at
sewing will not focus all their energy on trying to sew. They will instead get
someone very good at it and they will work together. This is something that
someone who lacks EI is unable to do. They will instead keep on trying the
same thing over and over just because they cannot accept their weakness.
They will spend too much time trying to change their weaknesses that they
will forget about their strengths. Therefore even when they manage to
improve on their weakness, when they go back to their strength, it will feel
like there is no change made.
Empathy: People with high EI are usually very empathetic people. This
why IQ is not as great as EI because being able to co-exist with others is
overly important. Being smart is not enough if you cannot show empathy to
the people around you. Everyone can show some sympathy, but empathy is
way beyond that. This is because empathy allows you to feel for others and
if you are the one going through their situation. This is a very great skill
that allows people to live in peace and harmony with people who are
different from them. This is a skill that allows people to live together
despite the race, religion and cultural differences. People who lack EI are
very selfish and if something doesn’t affect them, then they don’t care about
it. They will, therefore, end up hurting so many people and everywhere they
go they will just cause chaos and conflicts .
Inquisitive: People with high EI are very concerned about the well being of
others. They will, therefore, tend to ask you questions as they are just
getting to know you better. They are not just being inquisitive for no reason;
they want to know you so that they know how to handle you. They would
not want to hurt you, and that’s why they want to know you. Plus you have
to agree that for someone to understand you better, they need to know you
well. However, a person who lacks EI will be completely different when
you meet them for the first time. All they will do is talk about themselves;
they do not care about whatever you are going through. All their care is that
you listen to them and understand their feelings, not the other away.
Ability to move forward: You will notice that some people are always stuck
in the past. They can’t move past a mistake they made 10 years back. Such
negativity is so damaging because you cannot prepare for the future when
you are still stuck in the past. Whatever you can let go of is something that
you probably cannot change now because it is already gone. What that does
for you instead is drain out all the energy and zeal that you could use in
your presentation. On the other hand, someone who has a high EI is able to
let go of all the past mistakes and focus on not repeating the same mistakes.
When you can let go of the past, you are able to concentrate on the present,
which will give you good results in the future. Instead of trying to correct
something that is way beyond you EI will help you move forward and
forget all the errors you made. When you let go of the past, your mind then
focuses on the present and you are able to give your all to current projects,
goals, and ambitions .
Forgiveness: EI people are very slow to anger and frustrations. This is
because they understand themselves and will, therefore, avoid anything that
will bring out these negative emotions out of them. When they are angry,
they are able to let go so easily. They will not dwell on past hurts and
arguments because they understand others. They know that everyone is
prone to faults, and therefore, forgiveness for them is not such a big deal.
On the other hand, people who lack EI always hold grudges. Very petty
things will make them very angry and frustrated and they will cut links with
people because of very small misunderstandings. You will, therefore, notice
that people who lack EI rarely maintain friendships. They are always
finding some fault from their friends and they cannot forgive even the
pettiest ones. EI helps people know that holding grudges just wastes time
and breaks important networks. The ability to realize that you need to move
forward even after someone else has hurt you is very important. Sometimes
when you let go of everyone who has done you wrong, you end up losing
the very people who could have greatly helped you with a great connection.
Plus, everyone has weaknesses so if you are just going to concentrate on
that, then you are damaging yourself unknowingly. EI helps you understand
others' emotions so that if they said something simply because they were
angry, you will consider that and forgive them.
 Chapter 1     What are Emotions For

What Is an Emotion

I ndebate
many years, psychologists and philosophers have been having a spirited
on emotions and its various types like happiness and sadness.
They have been trying to determine their nature if perceptions about
various philosophical dynamics or cognitive judgments that are about the
satisfaction of set objectives. Various theories in neuroscience explain
several suggestions on how a human being's brain can generate emotions by
combining bodily perceptions and cognitive appraisals. If something
thrilling in your life happens to you today, it is natural and very normal to
develop an array of emotions such as happiness or sadness if it is a paining
situation. There is a dualist view, traditional, that explains that a human
being’s body consists of a soul and a body. In this case, the soul is believed
to be the one that experiences all mental states and emotions. However, this
view can be disregarded and just termed as a motivated inference or a
wishful thought since there is no substantial evidence that immortality and
the soul exist. 
Today, there exist two main approaches, scientific approaches, that can be
employed in coming up with an explanation of what emotions are and their
nature. Cognitive appraisal theory is one of the approaches and it explains
that emotions can be said to be judgments on how the situation you are in
currently meets the goals you have set. According to this theory, emotions
such as happiness are believed that they are an expression of goals being
fulfilled. On the other hand, sadness and such emotions depict unfulfilled
goals and disappointments in life and can refer to a form of anger towards a
stumbling block to your goals. Another theory that tries to explain what
emotions are is that of William James together with others. They came up
with an argument that emotions are just perceptions of various changes that
take place in your body in different situations. These body changes that
depict emotions include mental reactions and physiological stages in life. 
These two theories, psychological perception, and cognitive appraisal can
be integrated to come up with a unified definition of emotions. With an
understanding of these theories, it is crystal clear that the mind is what
controls and determines all sensations and perceptions based on the
different situations we are in. We can, therefore, describe emotions as one's
mental state that is associated with their nervous system linked to the
chemical changes that take place in the body. These chemical changes are
usually linked to your feelings, thoughts, degree of displeasure or pleasure
and behavioral responses. Emotions can also be termed as negative or
positive experiences that are linked to certain patterns of physiological
functions in the body. The bottom line is that emotions are responsible for
all the cognitive, behavioral, and physiological changes that we undergo in
our bodies and how we react to them.  
Basic Emotional Responses
There are various types of emotions that have different natures and also
varying influence in the way that we conduct ourselves when with other
people and even generally how we live. These emotions if not controlled
they may tend to control us. They can even harm the choices that we make
in life. Apart from that, these emotions are a determiner to what our
thoughts are in different situations that we face daily. Having an
understanding of these emotional responses will also give us a strong
foundation to advanced discussing how we can use them to rewire our
bodies and minds to attain a better and healthier life.
Happiness
This is one of the emotions that people have used different approaches to
attain it thus tends to be vital. Happiness is referred to as a nice emotional
state which depicts feelings of joy, contentment, well-being, gratification,
and satisfaction. This emotional state is usually expressed through facial
expressions like smiling, body languages like a relaxed stance and even a
pleasing voice tone.  
Sadness
This is another emotional state that is the opposite of happiness and is
depicted by feelings such as grief, hopelessness, dampened mood,
disinterest, and disappointment. This is a very common emotional state due
to different stressful life experiences that we undergo daily. Having
prolonged sadness might be hazardous to your health, specifically mental
health since it can advance over time to become fatal depression. Its
severity usually varies as it depends on the cause and the extent at which
you can cope up with it.  
Fear  
Fear is a very powerful emotional state that plays a vital role in one’s
survival. When faced by danger or any situation that seems threatening, you
will get into a flight or fight response situation. At this point, you will find
that your muscles become tensed and with an increased heartbeat and
respiration rate. This will trigger you to either fight the danger or run away
from it instead. This emotion is usually depicted by widening eyes and
other psychological reactions like rapid breathing and heartbeat. 
Disgust  
Disgust is an emotional state that happens in situations when you are
disappointed or bored due to failure to achieve something. It can also be as
a result of unpleasant sight, smell, or taste. This emotion can be depicted by
the tendency to move away from what is disgusting you, other reactions like
retching or vomiting and even facial expressions like curling your upper lip.
This emotion might even make you to forever hate something that once
disgusted you which can be hazardous. 
Anger  
Anger is one of the greatest and most powerful emotions which is depicted
by agitation, hostility, antagonism, and frustration. Just as fear, it is also
capable of triggering your flight or fight response. There are various ways
in which anger is usually displayed and they include facial expressions like
frowning. Body languages like turning down someone in a harsh manner
can also be a sign of anger.  
Identifying Emotions
For you to use your emotions the right way, you need first to identify the
emotions the right way. Let us look at the best way to identify the
emotions:  
Understand the Trigger  
The first step towards identifying the emotion is first to know what caused
it. This will help you to describe the events that led to the emotional event.
In this step, try to stick to facts alone.  
You can write down the event that led to the emotion so that you have it
clear in your mind.  
Why Do You Think It Happened?  
The following step is to identify the possible causes that led to the
emotional event. This is crucial because it determines the meaning that you
give to the situation that happened. The type of emotional event that led to
the issue will determine the way you react to the event in question.  
How the Situation Made You Feel?   
The following step is to determine how the emotional event made you feel
both physically and emotionally. This will help you see whether the
emotion resulted in a positive or negative reaction.   
You need to notice both the positive as well as the negative emotional and
physical reactions that you felt when it happened. Notice any physical
feelings that you experience, such as tightness in the body.  
What Was Your Reaction  
You need to ask yourself this question so that you understand your urges.
However, for the process to be effective, you need to make sure you are
completely honest. It might be painful to admit some of the urges that you
felt when the event happened. When we face some situations, we at times
get strange urges to react differently. Some of the emotions that we go
through might make us regret on the future.  
You need to compare your reaction at the moment that things happened and
how you usually react normally. This will tell you whether you managed to
control the urge, or you failed to do so.  
What Did You Do and Say?  
The following step would be to understand what you actually said or did
due to the emotions. Even though you didn’t manage to respond the right
way, you need to be honest with yourself about how you handled the
situation. You also need to understand how the decision you made impacted
on the situation. This can be a good learning experience for you.   
Once you evaluate your reaction, you can then use the situation to learn
how to handle another situation that might arise.
How Did the Reaction Affect You Later on?  
The final step in identifying the emotions is to understand the consequences
of the actions that you took. If you said some words during the event, how
did they affect you? On the other hand, if you acted in a certain way, how
did it affect you in the future?  
So, if you find yourself being overly attached to your emotions after, you
need to ask yourself what happened and take the time to observe how you
react when it happens. Go through these steps so that you can recognize
your emotions. Once you practice and get used to these steps, you will be
able to identify your emotions the right way and then choose the best way
to respond to situations. 
5 Common Emotions Experienced by Humans 
Jealousy
Jealousy is a combination of different emotional reactions against the
success of another person. The responses include; anger, fear, and anxiety
brought about not being the primary owner of the privilege. Research has it
that both women and men tend to be jealous because of various reasons. For
example, when a woman believes her rival is more beautiful than her, it is
likely to spark some jealousy. However, it is normal for practically
everyone to experience some level of resentment. When caring about
someone or something important, you may become anxious with the
thought of losing the person or that something to somebody else. 
What is Depression?
Being depressed involves your body, moods, and thoughts you will be
having from time to time. When one is affected by depression, the way they
deal with life becomes different. The way you eat, how you feel, and
interact with people becomes different. Depression is a disorder, and it is
tough to deal with it all by yourself. 
If you notice you have depression or someone is affected by it, advise them
to seek medical help. When you get the right support, everything will be
fine. Being depressed means, you will experience feelings of sadness that
will last for an extended period. You will eventually lose interest in things
that shape your life. Remember that people who are depressed do not
acknowledge who they are. When one is depressed, it does not mean you
have a weakness, or you are experiencing inadequacy. It is an illness that
requires professional medical help. 
What is Anger?
Renown investigators like Berkowitz, who spend most of their time dealing
with psychology, defines anger as a strong feeling of annoyance,
displeasure, or hostility. It is also considered as a normal, healthy feeling
that allows one to convey a message of reaction to a given situation. As
much as it is reasonable to feel angry, the same attitude can be harmful if
you express it in a way that upset you or the people around you. Everyone
has had a feeling of anger, and everybody has a way of dealing with the
sentiment. 
The bible has covered the topic of anger comprehensively. The verses that
talk about anger are numerous, but we will only mention a few. We should
avoid responding to people with a negative attitude since it stimulates
anger. Another famous verse about anger is proverbs 22:24 that strongly
condemn us not to befriend hot-tempered people. 
What is Fear
Fear is a natural feeling that everyone experiences frequently. It is
something that you cannot avoid because it is a way of responding to severe
sensations. It is easy to confuse fear with worry, anxiety, doubt, panic, and
apprehension. The feeling of being afraid is the worst feeling that anybody
would want to feel. It is uncomfortable, unpleasant, distressing, and at that
point, you consistently try to come out of that situation. Everyone
experiences fear in different ways; everyone is afraid of different things.
This makes it challenging to come up with the right definition of fear. 
Stress and Worry
Stress is a natural human response when faced with challenging situations.
Same as fear, the fight or flight action is triggered by the mind when stress
is experienced. Stress might be positive or negative. It is positive when
one’s objectives are to be met; hence, more adrenaline is produced. For
negative stress, depression is always experienced, and one might go to the
extent of killing himself or herself.  
Why Do You Need Emotions?
We may have evolved to living in comfortable homes and not having to
hunt for our livelihood, but emotions continue to remain a necessity.
Psychology expert Kendra Cherry couldn’t have said it better when she
summed up the five main reasons why we still need our emotions: 

To act  
To survive  
To avoid danger 
To decide  
To understand  
Not only does becoming a master of your emotions help you better
understand yourself and others, but it also helps others understand you. The
emotions displayed by others can affect your own based on the information
being conveyed. For example, when you see the fear in another’s
expression, you’re instantly on high alert and looking around for the danger.
When you see someone so happy, they can’t keep the smile off their face,
it’s infectious and you can’t help but feel happy when you’re around their
presence.  
Our emotions exist to let us know change is happening within our
immediate environment or us. Sometimes it alerts us that change could be
happening within both. Our emotions supply us with the information that
we need about what we’re experiencing and how we should respond to it.
Imagine if your emotions shut down and you felt nothing. How would you
know when to feel when there was a danger present? Or to comfort a loved
one when you see them upset? These basic emotions are classified as
“basic” because they don’t apply to us humans alone. Even animals
experience these emotions, like when your dog wags its tail vigorously with
happiness each time you come home. What about the times when you’ve
caught them doing something naughty and they looked so adorably guilty? 
Any emotion that you experience is going to affect your body and your
mind. This is a perfectly natural occurrence, given the environment and
stimuli we’re exposed to are constantly changing too. Your brain is the
organ in your body responsible for creating these emotions. Specifically, the
limbic brain.  
The limbic structure of the brain comprises of several parts. Several
chemical messengers that work to transmit messages to your limbic
structure.  
This is referred to as neurotransmitters, and what happens is messages from
your body are sent to the brain. These messages will then be responsible for
telling your brain how it should feel.  
When someone cuts in front of you as you’re waiting in line, the messages
that get sent to the limbic structure tell your brain that you should feel
annoyed or angry about this. 
 Chapter 2     Emotional Brain

he brain is a grand master in manipulating emotions so even when you

T think you know the source of your feelings or emotions, it could be
really tricky. We like to think we are in control of our feelings and the
triggers behind these feelings, but the truth is our brain has a much more
profound impact than people like to admit. 
Every single moment, there are lots of activities going on in your head and
the brain is at the center of all these activities and somewhat complex
processes. A lot of process is involved in how we interpret situations and
react to them. Remember that emotions are defined by three important
things: cognition, responses, and reaction. The brain determines every of
these activities which makes us wonder how our brain actually impacts our
emotions. What happens in your brain right before you experience an
emotion? 
The first thing to know about your emotions is that it starts right from the
brain. Emotions are a combination of our feelings, the way we process these
feelings, and our responses or reactions to those feelings. The primary
purpose of emotion, according to Charles Darwin, is to encourage seamless
human evolution. In order for us to survive, we have to pass on our genetic
information from generation to generation which is why emotions are
important. Recognizing the important of emotional experiences, the brain
takes it upon itself to evaluate stimuli and activate a suitable emotional
response to it. The brain reflects and considers the best way to respond to a
situation so that the primary purpose of survival is achieved and then, it
activates a suitable emotion as response so as to propel the rest of the body
to react accordingly. So, when you find yourself reacting to a situation with
a kind of response, that is actually your brain triggering the emotion it
considers right for your survival right at that moment in time.  
The brain is a vast network of complex processes which include
information processing. One of the brain’s primary network contains
neurons which send signals from one part of the brain to the other. Now,
these cells or neurons transmit signals through what we call
neurotransmitters; some kind of chemicals we either receive or release in
the brain. The neurotransmitters are what make it possible for one part of
the brain to communicate with another part. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and
serotonin are some of the most examined neurotransmitters. Dopamine is
the neurotransmitter that has to do with feelings of pleasure and rewards; it
is the chemical which makes you happy when you do something good. This
neurotransmitter is released as a reward for you to give a pleasurable and
happy feeling. On the other hand, serotonin is the neurotransmitter linked
with learning and memory. It is believed to play a critical part in brain cells
regeneration and research has shown that an imbalance in serotonin can
lead to an increase in stress, anger, anxiety, and depression. Norepinephrine
on its own helps modify your moods by controlling the levels of stress and
anxiety.   
Now, when there is an abnormal or unbalanced release and processing of
either of these chemicals, there is usually a very profound impact on your
emotions and emotional state. For instance, when you do something that
requires dopamine to be released and sent to the part of the brain
responsible for information processing but your brain doesn’t process or
receive the dopamine as it should, it could result in you feeling sad or
mildly unhappy. Therefore, the abnormal release and processing of
dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine has immense impact on the
emotions you have and the responses you give to certain situations. The
succeeding time something which should have made you happy gives
feelings of sadness, remember these neurotransmitters.  
Again, your brain exerts influence on emotions because it is central to how
emotions are formed. The brain consists of different parts that are all
responsible for generating different emotions. The part of the brain
responsible for processing emotions is the ‘emotional brain’ which is
generally referred to as the limbic system. The hypothalamus helps you
regulate your responses or reactions to emotional triggers. There are also
other parts of the brain like the hippocampus which all impact your
emotions due to its memory retrieval functions. In fact, the hippocampus
determines your emotional responses to triggers. Since different parts of the
brain process different types of emotions using different methods, a damage
to any part of the brain can have a huge influence on your emotions and
moods no matter how mild. Central to all of this is the limbic system which
takes a generalized and simple approach to stimuli.  
The brain’s left and right hemispheres also play important roles in emotion
and responses. The hemispheres are responsible for keeping you
functioning but they also play a part in how you process information. The
left hemisphere deals more with concrete thinking while the right
hemisphere concentrates on abstract thinking. Because they both process
information in different ways, the left and right hemispheres work together
to manage emotions. While the right hemisphere identifies an emotion, the
left hemisphere interprets the emotion. For instance, when the right part of
the brain identifies an emotion like anger, it alerts the left brain which then
makes a logical decision in interpreting the context of the emotion and
deciding the appropriate response to give. This is actually all a
synchronized system but if something goes wrong and one hemisphere can’t
do its job properly, it affects how you react to basic emotions. For example,
if the right brain doesn’t identify a negative emotion like it should, it
prompts the left brain to become overwhelmed with the emotion without
knowing how to respond.  
Memory whether long-term or short-term is the function of the brain and
our memories dictate and inform our emotions. You get angry when you
recall a resentful memory and get happy when you remember a pleasant
memory. This is a continual process in the brain; it identifies a past emotion
and then places you in a mood based on the emotion. So, when you get
angry without knowing why, it may be your brain recalling some painful
memory to initiate a negative emotion. How you can override this is to push
yourself to think of things that have made you happy in the past. For
example, if you are sad, simply thinking of some happy memories can
trigger the release of dopamine which rewards you with feelings of
happiness.
Chapter 3    How Thoughts and Habits Affect Your
Emotions

T ogounderstand how our thoughts can influence our emotions, we need to

back to NLP. The term “NLP” refers to the language of the mind.
Neuro is the brain part of the reference, while linguistic represents the
language portion. Simply put, NLP is about learning the language of your
brain (mind). When we don’t understand the language our mind speaks, it’s
hard to forge a connection. That’s why it often feels like you have no
control over your thoughts or your emotions. Because that vital connection
is missing. It’s like being on holiday in a foreign country. You’re in
unfamiliar territory where nobody spoke your language, you can’t
understand them, and they couldn’t understand you. What does that feel
like? Frustrating, most of the time, because you’re constantly struggling to
make yourself understood. 
NLP has a lot to do with emotional intelligence. It teaches you how to
connect with the language of your mind, understanding your mind as well
as how someone else’s mind could think. It helps you connect mindfully
with your subconscious mind to better understand what you want out of life.
Your subconscious mind is a powerful thing, and when you can tap into that
power, to harness it to improve your life for the better, there’s no telling
what kind of success you can accomplish. NLP teaches you how to become
in tune with your mind, to be able to understand it in a way you’ve never
had before. In doing so, it helps you become more emotionally intelligent,
and thus, learn to be in control of and influence your emotions. 
By using NLP and emotional intelligence, you develop the ability to
recognize, use, and manage emotions in constructive and positive ways. It
makes you better equipped at recognizing the emotional state of other
people and engaging with them effectively in a way that is mutually
beneficial, safe, and trustworthy for all. By understanding the language of
the mind and combining it with emotional intelligence, you can facilitate
improvement in relationships, build authentic partnerships and create
meaningful connections especially with the groups of people we find the
hardest to connect with such as colleagues, bosses, team members, clients,
and more.
Mastering your emotions and allowing your thoughts to influence the way
you want to feel requires the following steps:

Reframe Your Content - This technique is extremely

useful whenever we feel helpless or when negative
thoughts and emotions come weighing down on us.
Reframing involves taking a negative situation and
empowering yourself by changing the meaning that you
associate the experience with, subsequently turning it into
a positive experience.
It starts with identifying the negative scenario, like
divorce, for example. Divorces are never easy, but let’s
reframe it. What are the positive outcomes of being
divorced? You can now look at other relationships. You
can also look forward to forming a better relationship with
the following person since you have learned valuable
lessons. You have the freedom to do the things you
couldn’t do while being in the earlier relationship. You
have taken a negative scenario and reframed it to give
yourself an entirely different experience.      Shifting your
focus to more positive aspects just helps you have better
clarity, thus enabling you to make better decisions.

Creating Sub modalities- Sub modalities in NLP are

classified as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and
olfactory/gustatory. Each submodality represents the way
we encode and attach meaning to our experiences. NLP
believes that the brain codes emotional significance
differently. This means everyone’s brain is going to code
differently based on their own mental “image” or
representation. Submodalities are among the NLP
techniques, which can help you minimize your stress,
either indirectly or directly. Using submodalities will help
 you learn to disassociate yourself from stress, so it doesn’t
reflect in your behavior. Learning to listen to the way that
you feel is your first step towards altering your
submodalities. When you’re feeling a particularly strong
or tense emotion, do something else that takes your mind
away from focusing on the negative.

You need NLP to help you connect with your mind and understand your
thoughts in a way you have never could before. What you think and feel,
and what you want to say, will be two different things. NLP is meant to
bridge the gap between your conscious and subconscious mind. It is about
understanding what your brain is trying to tell you. Without this
understanding, it would be challenging to connect yourself to your
thoughts, which would then make it more difficult for you to regulate your
behavior and body language.  To learn to regulate your emotions, you must
be able to identify your current limitations and to break through them.
NLP’s focus is about learning how to tap into the subconscious mind and
become more adept at managing your emotions.
 Chapter 4     The Roots of Empathy

E verything starts with ‘E’, especially when you are raising your
emotional intelligence. Empathy is the most important aspect of rising
emotional intelligence. You might be thinking of what is this empathy
and how it will enhance your emotional intelligence.
Let us make you clear about the term empathy.
Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the emotions of other
people. The term empathy has also been used to describe the range of
experience. Meanwhile, empathy is like keeping yourself in the situation of
others and understand others' emotions about what they are thinking of.
This term was introduced by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1909.
Many people watching other people in pain and response to them in a
sympathetic way and give a clear vision to show that empathy is not a
universal response to the suffering of another person.
You may think that it is the only type of empathy but you may be wrong
the empathy may be of three types let us have a look at this.
The Types of Empathy
Affective Empathy
Affective empathy involves the ability to understand the emotions of
another person and respond to them correctly. This kind of emotional
understanding will show concern for another person's well-being.
Somatic Empathy
Somatic empathy involves a sort of having a physical reaction in response
to what someone else is suffering or experiencing. Sometimes people may
experience it physically what another person is feeling. It is like when you
see someone else feeling embarrassed then you might start a blushing or
upset stomach.
Cognitive Empathy
It involves the ability to understand the mental state of another person and
what they might be thinking in response to that condition. This is something
that a psychologist refers to the theory of mind or thinking to understand
what other people are thinking.
These are three types of empathy that a person must have to enhance their
emotional intelligence. Without understanding the emotions of others, you
are not able to understand the feeling and connection with other people. It is
also necessary to enhance this empathy as this is the second most important
concept of emotional intelligence.
Explanation About Empathy
Human beings often load with several kinds of emotions and they are
often capable of selfish, even cruel, behavior. But there have been certain
theories proposed to explain empathy. According to neuroscientific theory,
research has shown that the specific areas of the brain plays a vital role in
experiencing and responding to empathy. But mostly these are focused on
cognitive empathy. Whereas according to emotional explanation, the
philosopher Adam Smith prescribed that sympathy makes us able to
understand things in better ways which can involve a feeling of empathy for
both real as well as an imaginary character. But according to prosocial
explanation, the empathy served as an adaptive function and rules for the
survival of species. It leads to the helping nature of people, which will
directly help in benefiting social relationships. This is because we are
natural creatures that experience emotions. Though different theories with
different opinions but the context is the same as behaving and
understanding the emotions. When people experience empathy, they will
easily able to engage in social behavior and understand emotions in a better
way.
What Benefits You Will Receive from Empathy
You can receive several benefits that you experience from empathy in
which some of them are;

Empathy allows you to build up a social connection with

other people. You can understand it by thinking and
feeling the situation of people. People will respond more
easily in social situations. 
Empathizing with others will help you to control your
emotions. The regulation and controlling of emotions are
very important because it will allow you to control and
manage what you are feeling and how you will express it
in front of others.
Empathy enhances the helping nature of an individual
towards others. You are more likely to help others and
yourself when you experience empathy.
 The people who lack empathy will not be able to raise their emotional
intelligence and often feel distressed and distracted and they are not able to
feel social connectivity. But have you ever wondered why people lack
empathy?
There may be some reason why people lack empathy like;

They fall to the victim as cognitive. The way people

assume the world around them is influenced by cognitive
biases. For instance, people attribute to the failure of other
people while blaming their external factors. These
sometimes makes you unable to understand and perceive
the emotions of others
The people also lack empathy who fall victim to trap them
in their thinking by showing that they are different from
other people and also do behave the same as they do. 
The people who lack empathy also blame others to fall off and their
circumstances. Though there are many reasons for lacking empathy. But
there will be some reason for enhancing your empathy. You might also be
thinking of how it will enhance your empathy? Can I do it on my own or I
need some help? Therefore, to deal with all the aspects here are some of the
easy steps that make you able to enhance your empathy.
The Elements of Empathy
Daniel Goleman discovered the five elements of empathy which are as
follows,
Understanding others: this is the most important concept of empathy
which is understanding. The ability to sense others' feelings and
perspectives and taking active participation to deal with that. The person
can do this by looking to the non-verbal cues, emotional speech and listen
to them carefully by paying full attention. Then show some sensitivity and
realize the situation of others.
Developing others: Developing others mean put some action on their
needs and concerns and help them to develop their internal power and
potential by motivating them. People who have masters in the skills of
empathy will reward and praise people to build strength in them, support
them in their downfall and accomplished them to develop and realize their
full potential.  You can also give some feedback on their work and other
activities to motivate them and improve them. The person with these skills
can also provide them coaching to help them.
Have service orientation: The main aim of service orientation is to put the
needs of the customer first and find out the ways to give a satisfactory
solution to bring and loyalty. The people with the skills of empathy can go
the extra mile to have a full proof connection with their customers to load
them with their needs. They can understand their situation and can also go
out of their way to help them out with their situations. Having service
orientation is the third general key of empathy to build it and enhance it.
Moreover, people with developed empathy skills can prove themselves as
trusted advisors to their customers and help in developing a long-term
relationship.
The leveraging diversity: leveraging diversity means the ability to create
and develop the opportunity through people of a different kind by
recognizing the ability and opportunity to celebrate it on the same point
table. But it also does not mean that you will equal treatment to the people
in the same way that they give it to you. Rather it simply means respecting
and relating to every individual regardless of their background. Allowing
understanding the diversity of thinking and planning in teamwork. It will
contribute to the success of the individual as well as the company.  The
people who have masters in these skills and good at leveraging diversity
can also challenge the intolerance for creating a relatable atmosphere for
growth.
Political awareness: one of the most important elements of empathy is
political awareness. You may also thoughts that political skills are
manipulative. But you might be wrong in that it simply a skill of
understanding and sensing the emotions of a group of people and
effectively respond to them. It will help you in powering the relationship
with the people .
The people with the skills of empathy are blessed with the ability to
navigate the organizational relationships effectively and help them in
sorting out the trouble. It will also help in getting success in that area where
others failed.
 These are the basic elements of empathy that will show how you will get a
master's in empathy. Understanding, developing, and executing the plan in a
better way. If you have known these elements now you may look forward to
the step of increasing empathy. A stepwise guide of enhancing sympathy
will help you to gain empathy easily let's take a look at it. 
 Chapter 5    How to Develop Empathy in Your
Everyday Life

ere’s the thing, you are either an empathetic person or you’re not. You
H cannot switch empathy off or on whenever you feel like it. You also
cannot refer to that one time when you were empathetic in 2009 and
then try to pass yourself as a person that is full of empathy. In order to be
considered empathetic, you must commit to the skill in your everyday life
in the same way that a person needs to tell the truth on more than one
occasion before they can be considered truthful.
Lucky for you, becoming more empathetic is actually pretty easy. The
biggest obstacle you will face on your journey toward empathy is yourself.
Why? Because nine out of ten times, human beings tend to be self-
absorbed. Empathy calls for you to leave some room in your life for other
people and their thoughts and feelings. Here are some practical tips that you
can apply in your life to get better at empathy:
Tip #1: Listen more than you talk
A Greek philosopher named Epictetus summarized the importance of
listening more than talking like this: We have two ears and one mouth so
that we can listen twice as much as we speak. Unfortunately, the world
today is such that everybody is talking, and nobody seems to be listening.
As long as you are talking, you will never really be able to tell what the
other person is thinking or feeling. It is important to take a pause and let
other people talk because that is the main avenue through which thoughts,
perspectives, and emotions can be communicated.
The best kind of listening is what is referred to as active listening. In
other words, you must listen in a way that shows you are invested in the
conversation. Sitting across from your conversation partner without saying
a single word or while staring at them blankly will only make them feel
uncomfortable and uncared for.
Active listening is pretty easy to achieve. The first thing you will need
to do is put away all distractions aside. This means that you should not
check your phone for Facebook updates while your friend or colleague is
pouring their heart out to you. Checking your phone or doing other things
while your friend is trying to have a heart-to-heart conversation with you is
incredibly rude and in poor taste. Instead, put away all distractions and
focus your attention on the person speaking. Steady eye contact lets them
know that they are important and that you are paying attention.
Now, you do not want to get all creepy with your eye contact to the
extent where the other person begins to feel as if you are staring. A clever
way to maintain appropriate eye contact is to lock eyes for five seconds and
then look away. During this time, you should not be staring but rather
gazing at them softly and with compassion.
However, ridiculous the story might be, never roll your eyes at a person
who is opening up to you about something. Remember, they are feeling
those emotions and thinking those thoughts because the experience was
valid to them. Even if you believe crying over a dead goldfish is being
overly dramatic, do not let these thoughts show on your face.
At the same time, you want to ensure that your active listening is
peppered with just the right type of insightful questions. Ask open-ended
and non-judgmental questions that help them draw out the root cause of
their troubles. The idea of active listening is to stimulate the other party to
arrive at a solution of their own making. All along, the other party will
believe you solved their issue when in fact you just listened and gave them
a platform to rant and bounce off the solutions they already had in their
mind.
Let’s say, for instance, your friend comes to you complaining about
their partner. They have been together for two years and your friend is
starting to feel as though she might not be the right partner for him based on
how she has been behaving.
Friend: I don’t know, it just feels as though she is taking me for granted.
You: Why do you say so?
Friend: Just the other day, I came home early and cleaned the house and
did the laundry just so that she could relax and enjoy our date night. She
cannot enjoy a date night as long as the unfinished household duties are at
the back of her mind. And you know what she said?
 You: What did she say?
Friend: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She did not even act as if she had
noticed all the hard work I put into it.
You: Have you considered talking to her about it?
Friend: No. Not really. Do I have to?
You: It would help to get her perspective. What do you think her
perspective is?
Friend: Well, she does the same household duties and I do not exactly
hold a parade for her. I guess she did not see the big deal about me helping.
You: …
Friend: Oh yes, that’s probably it. Why is it a big deal when I do it and
not a big deal when she does it? I should probably check the social
conditioning I have received on the expected gender roles in society.
You: Yes, like the fact that dads are parents too and not babysitters.
Friend: Haha, exactly!
The whole point of this conversation is to show you that you can flow
with your partner without imposing your beliefs and perspectives on them
and still allowing them to get as much as they want off their chest. They
will get to their a-ha moment where they solve their problem and go on
their merry way. The fact of the matter is that you will get the credit for the
solution and they will leave believing that you are the epitome of empathy.
Tip #2: Allow yourself to be vulnerable
Being vulnerable is scary. Allowing other people to see the most
sensitive parts of you can feel like making yourself a sitting duck. However,
it is important that other people see you for the human being that you are.
We are all flawed in our different ways, and we have our own fears and
flaws. We feel things and we worry too. When someone is brave enough to
be vulnerable with you, do yourself a favor and allow yourself to show that
side of you that you would rather not show under any other circumstances.
Self-disclosure is not intended to take away attention from the other party.
Rather, it is a means of creating mutual understanding and making the other
person feel that you understand what they are going through.
 Let’s say for instance your friend comes to you with marriage troubles.
They have run into tough times with their spouse after using up the graces
of the honeymoon period. They are confused and cannot figure out what
they need to do to fix things. One way of being vulnerable with them is
letting them know that you also experienced the same phase when you got
married. You are not trying to speak ill of your spouse or marriage, rather
you are letting your friend know that it is human to go through what they
are going through. After this disclosure, your friend will feel more
connected to you and more trusting of what you have to say regarding their
little problem .
Tip #3: Put your assumptions and judgments aside
We all have preconceived notions about things that are based on our
own experiences and understanding of issues. When a friend is lamenting
their misfortune, it can be tempting to rush to what we think we know in an
effort to give them some comfort. Unfortunately, doing so is often a
problem rather than a solution. As difficult as it may be, it is crucial that
you put all your assumptions and judgments aside and focus on seeing the
world as your friend sees it. Empathy is patient. It is not something that is
rushed so that you can move on to the succeeding person who needs it.
Many times, empathy requires that you shut up about what you know and
allow the other person to tell you what they know or think they know.
You will not always interact with people who share your world views.
You might even have friends who believe in the most ridiculous things.
Regardless, you must always be prepared to try and understand where they
are coming from, instead of trying to change who they are.
Tip #4: Use your imagination
Chances are high that you will need to be empathetic toward people
who are going through experiences that you have never gone through. In
such instances, how are you expected to be empathetic? It’s simple really.
You just have to use your imagination. You do not need to have gone
through labor to know that childbirth can be a very painful experience. You
only need to imagine how excruciating it must be to use your body to bring
forth a human being into the world .
 You can fire up your imagination through reading and also by allowing
your mind enough space to roam uninhibited. Your mind can take you on
adventures that no airplane can, so whenever possible, let it guide you. Of
course, if you have not experienced something, do not use your imagination
to lie to others. A man who uses his imagination to tell a woman in labor
that he went through the same thing five years before is an outright liar.
And you know what does not go well with empathy? Lies. Lies do not quite
fit into the same space as empathy.
Tip #5: Tune into the welfare and needs of others
Empathy is not something you throw at others when you wake up in the
morning or when you show up at work. For there to be empathy, there has
to be something that hinders the well-being of another person. You cannot
empathize with another person simply because they exist. You can,
however, empathize with another person about the heartbreak or hardship
that they are going through.
Every human being has what they prioritize as their major needs outside
of the universal basic needs. When these needs are not met, a person might
consider themselves to be undergoing suffering. For example, if you have a
need to be loved (and most people do), getting dumped by a significant
other can induce a whole lot of suffering.
When you are comforting someone in this state, you must approach it
from the point of view of their needs. Even if you think the person who
dumped your friend/colleague is not exactly a catch, you have to keep these
thoughts to yourself and then look at it from the perspective of your friend’s
welfare. Being attuned to people’s welfare is especially critical in
empathetic concern because it is only by knowing what is missing from
someone’s life that you can be able to replace it.
 Chapter 6     Emotional Intelligence Applied

Practical Application of Emotional Intelligence

L earn to Be The Leader Of Yourself First 

This is probably the most common leadership quote used almost
everywhere. These words of the former US president simply summarize
what leadership is. They tell what a leader should do and how the actions of
a leader should impact society. As a leader, your actions should be able to
motivate and inspire. Your actions should be admired and should drive
people to new heights. Through your actions, you should make people
desire to be better, do better and achieve more.  
You cannot inspire people unless you are being yourself. The first thing you
should learn is to be yourself. Most people confuse being one's self and
being arrogant. Being yourself is not to mean you cannot take advice from
other people. However, it means you must have a stand on every matter. To
conquer the journey of emotional intelligence, a leader must know whatever
makes him/her different from the others. As a leader, you must distinguish
yourself from any other leader you know in the world. It is okay to learn
from other people, but it is not okay to copy other people. You can borrow a
few skills from one leader, but you cannot lead as that person. So how
exactly do you become a leader of yourself?
1. Be self-aware
We have talked about self-awareness to a large extent, by now; you should
understand that it is the center of emotional intelligence. It is not possible
for you to start learning other people before you learn yourself. You should
be able to determine and control your own emotions before you can move it
to other people. Being self-aware will help you stay focused on the agenda.
It will also help you make decisions with a sober mind. If you are a person
who easily gets distracted, you might find it difficult being a leader. For this
reason, you must learn self-awareness. Self-awareness is a sense of
consciousness that will constantly keep you in check. 
2. Learn to Differentiate Facts From Opinion 
As a leader, you should expect people to have an opinion about your style,
choices, and decisions. In everything you do, make sure your decisions are
made based on facts and not opinion. Before you judge a case, make sure
you have all the facts. It is important to note that, most times people's
opinions may contain facts. For this reason, it is okay to scrutinize every
opinion. When people criticize your work, look at their criticism for helpful
tips. Look with an open eye to see whether there are facts or not. If you can
track any facts from people's opinions, pick them and use them to make
decisions. However, make sure you avoid being influenced by mere words
that lack facts.  
3. Own Your Principles The fact of the matter is that you should not be a
leader if you do not have your own principles. Even before you are given
the responsibility to lead people, you must have personal values and
principles that you hold on to. As you get into a position of authority, you
must remember that your values will be put to a test. Forces from all
directions will come in with the intention of influencing your decisions.
Having principles and values is the only way to ensure that you remain in
balance. If you want to be a leader of yourself, make sure you know your
principles very well and stay in check to ensure that they are not
compromised in any way. 
4. Set Your Objectives  
The first thing any leader must do as soon as they step in the office is to set
objectives. Setting your objectives will help you stay focused on the main
goal. It is important to note that, your objectives must be in line with the
organization's goals. If you are leading a corporation, you must set
objectives that drive the organization towards the realization of its goals. A
leader is a person who looks at the bigger picture. Without goals, it is easy
to be swayed by people who have their ill motives. Understanding where
you are steering the ship to is the only way to stay on course. Having
objectives is like having a map; it is the easy way to tell where you are
going and how far you have come.  
5. Asses Yourself Regularly 
Self-assessment is another great way of ensuring that you overcome the
voices around you. As you strive to drive the organization to greater
heights, there will be those who strive to take it down. Understanding your
personal principles and assessing them regularly will help you know if you
are still on course. 
From your objectives, set an assessment calendar. Look at your short term
and long term objectives and set an assessment interval. For instance, if
there are short term goals that should be achieved in 3 months, make sure
you asses yourself to see the progress. After three months, account for your
actions to determine if you are still on course in meeting your objectives. If
you cannot meet your short-term objectives, chances are you will never
meet your long-term goals. Failure to meet long-term objectives also means
failure to meet the organization's goals. Understanding that your leadership
is an accumulation of the decisions and steps you make daily will help you
stay conscious and move in the right direction. 
6. Choose Your Advisers Wisely
Most leaders never get to choose their advisers. It is important for you to
choose your own advisors and not let the advisors choose themselves. As
soon as you get into office, you should look for advisers. Whether you like
it or not, you will need some advice along the way. If you do not choose
advisers, you might start getting guidance from the wrong quotas. Choosing
your advisers with a sober mind will help you know who to approach and
when. 
 Chapter 7     Trauma and Emotional Relearning

ost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental illness that’s triggered

P by an unpleasant experience. The experience causes you to endure
flashbacks, and nightmares, as you relive the horrible event, causing
PTSD. 
Most people who experience traumatic events usually have a difficult
time adjusting and moving on with their lives, but eventually, they manage
to adapt and carry on. But if the debilitating anxieties and flashbacks carry
on for months or years, you certainly have the condition known as post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 
Symptoms of PTSD
The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder might show up as early
as a month within the traumatic event, but in some instances, the symptoms
can wait for years. Post-traumatic stress disorder hinders you from living a
normal life and causes significant problems, especially on your social life,
work-life, and relationships. The following are the four categories of PTSD
symptoms:
•Intrusive remembrances
•Avoidance
•Negative changes in thought s
•Altered physical and emotional reactions
Intrusive remembrances
If you had healed from a traumatic event, your mind wouldn’t go back to
relive the horrible experience. However, for someone with PTSD, their
brain tries to get them to relive the horrible experience in a myriad of ways.
The affected person starts experiencing vivid flashbacks, which obviously
ruin their mental stability. They may also begin to experience nightmares on
a frequent basis, and these nightmares are related to the horrific event.
Additionally, the person experiences severe distress when they run into
things that are associated with the traumatic event. For instance, if a young
woman was raped at night, she may get severely distressed every time she
passes through the exact spot she had been raped, calling to mind the
horrible details.
Avoidance
It’s human nature to want to avoid confronting things that have
traumatized you, but then a well-adjusted person shouldn’t have any
difficulty revisiting their past when there’s an incentive. A person afflicted
with PTSD totally avoids speaking about their traumatic past. In fact, they
might not take it kindly if someone approaches them, wanting to find out
about their trauma. They will also go to great lengths to avoid people,
things, or situations that are associated with the horrific event, considering
that these things could trigger nasty memories.
Negative changes in thoughts
People living with PTSD develop negative thought patterns about
themselves or the world. For instance, they may consider themselves as
worthless, develop an inferiority complex, and develop a deep-seated hatred
against the world as a whole. They see the world as being against them.
They also tend to become hopeless, and it discourages them from making
any bold steps since they don't believe they can achieve anything. Their
memory becomes stunted, especially concerning various aspects of the
traumatic event. Since they hate the world, they have extreme difficulties
starting and maintaining relationships, and alienate themselves from those
that care about them, for instance, friends and family. They lose interest in
activities that they once enjoyed and also have a hard time feeling positive
emotions.
Altered physical and emotional reactions
After you have gone through a traumatic event, you might become a little
more cautious and sensitive, but that tendency eventually goes away as you
adjust. However, when your reflexes continue to be amazingly active so that
you are easily startled or frightened, it is indicative of PTSD. People with
PTSD seem to be always expecting danger, and this makes them appear
extremely cautious, especially in public settings. They may also start to
engage in self-destructive behaviors, such as excessive drinking, excessive
sex, and other addictions, which are merely attempting to drown their pain.
They tend to have difficulties first getting asleep, and then having a quality
sleep.  
People living with PTSD have a hard time focusing on the task at hand
as they become easily distracted by external stimuli. They tend to give
exaggerated emotional and physical responses, giving them an appearance
of emotional instability. Additionally, they experience intense feelings of
shame and guilt, as they might blame themselves for the traumatic event.
For instance, it is not uncommon for a woman who was raped to feel guilty
and blame herself for making herself ripe for the ordeal.  
Causes of PTSD
Considering that research into mental health conditions is still at the
early stage, there’s no concrete evidence to point to the real cause of PTSD.
But traditional knowledge indicates that distressing and traumatic events are
largely behind PTSD. 
•Painful events: you don’t have to through them yourself. Even
witnessing a painful event is enough to cause your PTSD. For instance, if
you witnessed the loss of your loved one through a degenerative disease.   
•Family affair: if your parents have had various mental illnesses, you are
at risk of developing these illnesses yourself, and you might pass on this
condition to your progeny as well. 
•Environment: if you associate with people who have symptoms of
PTSD, you may eventually ape their traits that eventually birth PTSD in
you.           
•Brain problems: if there’s a disconnect between how your brain
processes external stimuli and the responses it gives, it may result in
chemical and hormone imbalances, resulting in PTSD.
Risk factors
Almost anyone can develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but the
following factors increase your probability of acquiring this illness. 
•Lack of a support system: bad things happen all the time, but they
shouldn’t hold us hostage. If you have a good support system, you should
get over the trauma and go back to being normal. However, if you have no
support system, you might get crushed under the intense emotions and
develop PTSD. 
•Childhood abuse: for instance, being brought up by ruthless parents or
getting sexually abused. 
•Sensitive job: taking up a job that exposes you to the dark side of human
life. For instance, military, police photographers, and surgeons. 
•Mental health: if you are already battling other mental illnesses, you are
more likely to develop PTSD. 
•Unhealthy habits: you are also likely to develop PTSD if you have taken
to unhealthy habits such as excessive drinking and binge eating.
Treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with CBT
Step one: Identifying the symptom s
 This initial step is critical because apart from helping a therapist
understand the unique aspects of the illness bedeviling their patient. It is
also a perfect time for them to bond, considering that the success of
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy depends on the collaboration between the
therapist and the patient. The following are some of the questions that the
therapist will ask in order to have a better understanding of their patient’s
troubles:
•What runs through their minds when they remember a tragic event?
•What are their physical reactions to remembering a traumatic event?
•Do they experience invasive memories of the traumatic event?
•Do they experience nightmares related to specific traumatic events?
•To what extent have they lost interest in things they once enjoyed?
•How detached are you from other people?
•What activities, feelings, and thoughts have you been avoided since the
trauma?
•Do you have any difficulty remembering any aspect of the trauma? 
During this phase, the therapist expounds on what ails the patient and
tries to make them understand how the trauma influences various aspects of
their lives, and the actionable steps they may have to take in order to restore
their life to normalcy.  
They must also set achievable goals. The goals should guide the patient
back into a healthy life where they are not affected by their traumatic past.
The goals should be as specific as possible:
•Stop blaming myself or my spouse for the accident
•Start playing ping pong again
•Start embracing the people of the world instead of shunning them
•Start going out more
•Not run away from any reminders of the accident
Step two: explain the rationale of treatment
 At this stage, the therapist is done selling the patient to CBT as the best
treatment approach, but they may want to expound on how the treatment
works. The therapist gets to explain how CBT addresses the deep-seated
factors that influence PTSD and highlight types of people who are
susceptible to this illness. 
•Flexibility: the thing about CBT is that it is not rooted in some rigid set
of rules. It is virtually a technique of self-exploration, except you have
someone to watch over you and ensure that you don’t falter. In order to
come up with the most effective treatment, both the therapist and the patient
must work together. 
•Attitude: CBT not only cures you of your mental illness but helps a lot
in terms of improving your attitude toward yourself and others. Studies
show that a person’s attitude is every bit as important as a person’s
qualifications for career advancement. 
•Goal setting: CBT allows you to have a multiple-thronged approach to
your issues. You can achieve many goals by adhering to particular
exercises. 
Step three: understanding how your trauma caused PTSD
Some of the traumatic events that can lead to PTSD include:
•Fatal road accidents
•Sexual assault
•Mugging
•Miscarriage
•Domestic abuse
•Sexual abuse
•Witnessing violent deaths
•Terrorist attack victim
•Being taken, hostage
•Floods
•Degenerative diseases
 When we experience trauma, the last thing on our mind is political
correctness or critical thinking.  
We can easily grab an incomplete thought and run with it. CBT helps us
be objective so that we may have a clear idea of how the past affects our
present conditions. 
If besides experiencing something traumatic, you had also been suffering
from depression and anxiety, you are at a much greater risk of developing
full-blown PTSD. 
The therapist helps you understand that PTSD comes about due to the
following reasons:
•Survival mechanism: one school of thought says that PTSD is merely a
biological response aimed at strengthening your survival capacity. For
instance, the flashbacks are merely an attempt by the brain to get a clear
glimpse of the details of the horrible event so that, you are more than
prepared to prevent a repeat of the same. The feeling of being on edge is
aimed at sharpening your reflexes.
•High adrenaline: when we are in stressful situations, the body secretes
adrenaline to trigger quick action. Some people might not lose the ability to
produce high levels of adrenaline, and it could lead to PTSD. 
•Brain changes: if you have undergone significant brain changes, you
may be unable to process external stimuli accurately, leading to false
emotional responses, and eventually, PTSD. 
 Step four: developing positive thoughts
Once you learn of the various ways your mind is relying on inaccurate
data to arrive at decisions, you can purpose to restructure your thoughts and
eradicate PTSD.
•Cognitive restructuring: as a victim of a traumatic event, you might
have become so shocked that you want nothing that reminds you of that
experience. But that's the wrong approach. You should welcome the idea of
being able to revisit your traumatic past and even talk about it. Once you
demystify the trauma, you can move on quite easily.
•Play the script to the end: once you have undergone something
traumatic, your body might make you feel on edge. This is a biological
response aimed at preparing you more aware of your environment. Thus,
you might find yourself scared of getting into specific areas or situations. In
such instances, you ought to play the script to the end, so that you will find
out nothing terrible will happen anyway.
•Muscle relaxation: once the anxieties and fears build up inside of your
mind, you can engage in progressive muscle relaxation in order to relieve
yourself of these negative energies.   
Step Five: Therapy Progress
As you keep practicing the exercises your therapist has assigned you;
you will experience positive results. At this stage, you must start pushing
the limits so that you may quicken your recovery.   
Chapter 8     Self-Awareness and Self-Management
Strategies

Develop Self-Awareness

D eveloping self-awareness is not something quick to access process. It

needs practice, devotion, and time. It is developed through practice and
focusing your attention on the little details of your behavior and
personality.
Learning is basic to developing self-awareness. It is what you develop
when you pay attention to your expressions, thoughts, emotions, behavior,
and body moment. Self-awareness means mastery in yourself.
Here we are going to highlight some of the key points of how you develop
self-awareness. So, let's start with the first point;
The First Level is Differentiation
Differentiation simply means give yourself some space. The space you
make for yourself brings an inner light that will come through the darker
side of you. It would be better to give some time when you are going to bed
or after waking up in the morning that you could spend with yourself. Read
yourself, meditate, connect with yourself to understand the point where you
are standing and how you are interacting with social as well as your
personal life. It will give you a deep breath about your perception of
awareness of yourself. Differentiation in simple terms means connecting
with yourself. Once you have done this you will be able to move to the
following level.
The Second Level is Practicing Mindfulness
The main key to self-awareness is mindfulness. When you are practicing
mindfulness, you are paying attention to the purpose, in particular, direction
and the present moment. You will be more focused on yourself so that you
will be there in the moment to observe deeply what is running inside you.
For that practice, you don't need to sit for hours in a sitting position and
close eyes. It is simply about paying attention to your inner state as they
come into existence. More interesting is you can do it in any way while
walking, listening or any other activity. All you need is to connect with your
mind and thoughts. Practicing mindfulness will make you understand the
situation of your mind and observing things in deep.
The Third Level is Identification
This will be your following step of self-awareness. Identifying your self-
image will give you an awareness call. You can simply keep a journal or
write to the paper about your thoughts, willing, and identifying what you
need to put focus upon. Identifying through writing will guide you in
processing your thoughts. It also helps you in identifying the connection of
you with yourself. So, let your thought to be flow out on the paper to
execute them in a better way. It can also help in determining your inner
state. Identification level gives you an idea about your inner strength,
weakness, what you need to change in you.  Once you have enough
identified yourself you will move to the following step
The Fourth Level is Being a Good Listener
When you are developing self-awareness, the other important key is
listening. Self-awareness development is incomplete without this level.
Always be a good listener, but it does not mean only hearing. But listening
here means you pay attention to other people's emotions, language,
thoughts, body movement. It will help you in evaluating things nearby you
without judging. Also, listening to your voice as good as it will guide you in
moving in the right direction and putting your thoughts in the right way.
Practicing listening to your voice means being your own best friend.
The Fifth Level is Self-Consciousness
Self-consciousness is the heightened state of self-awareness. This level is
something that you called overly self-aware. You might feel awkward when
you are in the spotlight. But this remains temporary as you move from the
spotlight it will go. But the person who reaches this level has a high level of
privacy awareness. This can be positive or negative to you. This is because
when you are self-conscious you will more aware of the feelings and
emotions, which leads you to stick on your image. There may be a negative
impact on your health of self-consciousness. 
So, these will be the basic level of achieving self-awareness, but you
might leave the last one or accept that one because of some negative impact
on health. But that doesn't mean level is bad it simply means you are aware
of yourself and have overflooded emotions which sometimes creates stress
and anxiety. When you are developing self-awareness, you need to follow
these steps so that you will move in the right direction of developing self-
awareness?
Develop self-management
Self-management is about controlling your emotions, not in the feeling that
you suppress them or ignore them, but figure out how to deal with them,
and only release them after you have processed and understood them. Self-
management is also about being accurate to you. Some of the real ways you
can improve your self-administration are through developing your integrity,
e.g.: 
- Practice what you preach 
- Be prepared to speak up, even though you risk being made fun of 
- Don't make promises you are unlikely to keep 
- Continually be polite and respectful with co-workers, it doesn't matter
how close you might be 
- Be self-disciplined, especially if you anticipate that of others 
Learn to cope with criticism 
Negative feedback is usually often undeserved and a result of the person
presenting it is not fully aware of your performance, or using the
opportunity to sabotage your self-confidence perhaps, or undermine your
job openly.  
However, if truth be told, Atlanta divorce attorneys’ negative feedback
there is usually a grain of truth. Although there might have been very good
reasons why you underperformed or experienced a score of people
complain about you, the truth is you failed. However, when you come to a
stage when you're able to accept negative opinions, or open criticism,
without taking it you demonstrate which you have both self-confidence and
psychological intelligence personally. 
So, how to become more open to negative feedback? Of all first, not all
criticism is important equally, nor should you react to it in the same way. A
colleague's remark about your brand-new hairstyle is actually a sign she's
making fun of you, nonetheless it may be a subtle suggestion that the design
doesn't suit you. 
Besides, in the event that you receive less than satisfactory feedback on
your own performance repeatedly, or behavior, instead of sulking or
throwing a tantrum, try to look in yourself through another people's eye.
Imagine if you ARE lazy actually, or short-tempered, or unreliable? 
The key thing is to consider why you are feeling bad about the feedback. Is
it because it's really undeserved and due to the person giving it devoid of a
complete picture, or are you angry with yourself for not having masked
your underperformance better? Or simply jealous others do better? 
Admitting you were wrong isn't easy but surviving in denial is even worse.
So, then experience upset about the opinions rather, try to find out
something from it. Especially if it's not the very first time the same thing
has been brought to your attention.  
But, regardless of how you feel, be aware that negative feedback, if given
without malice, can perform more for your personal development, than can
false praise. 
Besides, there is something noble about admitting you had been wrong. It
could not be a pleasant thing to do, but it teaches you are mature more than
enough to take both the credit for your successes and blame for your errors.
This may encourage others to do the same. 
 Chapter 9    Social Awareness and Relationship
Management Strategies

Social Awareness Strategies

t is important to pay enough attention to ourselves and our own feelings.

I But once we have mastered those, we can start to become more socially
aware with an ability to pick up on the feelings of others. 
Being socially aware will require you to be conscious of the world that we
live in, how it directly impacts some people, and how we all have different
pasts and emotions. Social awareness requires you to recognize that one
person might believe a certain thing because of the way that they were
raised. You also have to understand how hard it might be for them to change
that way of thinking because of the implications or their belief settings.
Even though you might believe something to be obviously true, that doesn’t
mean that others will see things in the same light. 
Social awareness requires you to understand what other people are needing
while having the abilities to come up with strategies that help them. You
should be able to see when someone is hurting, struggling, or in pain on an
emotional level, while understanding what tools they might need to help
them feel better. You can’t cure their mood right away, but you can help
them find something that they need to make them feel better. 
Mastering Social Awareness
The first step of becoming socially aware is realizing that you do need to be
more conscious of the needs of others in the first place. Everyone is
responsible for themselves, of course, but you also need to be conscious of
how you’re affecting others and what you might do that directly impacts
other people. You have to figure out the needs of others that you care about
specially to ensure that you are taking care of both you and them. 
Then, you can start to pick up on what people are thinking and find ways to
better manage the situation. Look for ways to improve your social
awareness in all interactions, not just ones that feel more important to you .
Listen to Your Surroundings
Take in the world you exist in, the neighborhood that affects your world,
and even how the room might play an influence on your emotions and how
others are feeling. When someone seems snappy or distressed, ask yourself
if it could be the place that you are at that is making them upset. They might
not realize that the lighting in the room is making them anxious, but you
can, so you could turn off a light and turn on a more soothing one to help
alleviate their anxieties. 
Recognize the diversity among certain individuals and allow yourself to be
open to these different kinds of people. Some people might seem stubborn
or stuck in their ways, and it feels like you can’t reason with them. If you
try to focus on their individual needs and determine what can be done to
help them on a specific level, then no one is too stubborn to change their
views. You just can’t influence them the same way you would a person
that’s more open to new ideas and beliefs. 
Remember that different situations will have opposite effects on some
people. Someone with a high EQ won’t treat two individuals the same way
because they understand just how different two seemingly similar people
can be. 
Be Open to Others
When we start to shut people out of our lives, we can start to create serious
issues. There are some individuals that you might never want to be around
and that you strive to avoid, and this can be fine. However, if you don’t let
new people in your life and shut others out right when you meet them, then
it will affect you in the long run. 
Don’t separate someone from your life just because they seem different to
you. You might find that you learn more from individuals that are different
than you do than from people that you share interests with. 
Focus on Learning More
Sometimes, you might think you know a person, but then, they start
revealing stories and telling more parts of their life that alter your
perspective on them. Always be open to learning more about certain
individuals. You can never fully get to know someone enough, so don’t
limit yourself with what questions you might ask them or what conversation
topics you choose to implement with that other person. 
You can learn more about the people that you spend every single day with.
Even if you might think you know someone better than they know
themselves, there’s a good chance you still have more learning to do. 
Learn How to Listen to Others 
One of the biggest issues with communication is that we don’t fully listen to
others. We hear the words that they say, but we don’t listen to what was
meant behind that. This is a huge problem, especially when influencers
might say something that gets published. Someone might say something
that makes no sense out of context, but when put back into a conversation,
it falls perfectly together. 
Relationship Management Strategies
Healthy Communication Habits to Practice 
The happiest couples didn’t magically become that way. They worked hard
to get their relationship to where it is at, and they did it by engaging in
healthy habits that helped to improve the way they communicate with each
other. These healthy habits include: 

Expressing Appreciation - Even for the little things and

especially for the things we so often take for granted.
Happy couples constantly express their appreciation and
gratitude towards their partner. When your partner or
spouse makes you a cup of coffee in the morning without
asking, thank them. When they hold the door open for
you, thank them. Gestures that show your appreciation
don’t have to be elaborate either. Little thank-you notes or
text messages throughout the day can make a big
difference. 
Never Assume - Happy couples ask for what they want.
They express their needs or desires and that’s a healthy
communication habit every couple should adopt. Instead
of assuming your partner is going to pick up on the little
hints or read your mind and know how to anticipate your
thoughts, why not save everyone the frustration of
miscommunication by asking. Assumptions are where a
lot of communication breakdown tends to happen, which
then escalates into fights that could have been avoided. If
you want your partner to do something, don’t be afraid to
just ask for it. 
Work It Together - Household chores should be a shared
responsibility when you live together so one person
doesn’t feel the burden of having to upkeep the house by
themselves. Dividing the workload promotes great
teamwork and a sense of happiness knowing that you can
count on your partner to share in the workload with you.
Rotate the chores amongst yourselves, so there’s a sense of
fairness and balance, and one person is not stuck doing the
same thing all the time. 
Positive Language - Happy couples have learned to talk
things through, especially during the stages of the
relationship where one or both people may be going
through a hard time. Learning to talk about the difficult
things can be much easier if both you and your partner
adopt the approach to only use positive language during
the conversation. It minimizes the chances of things
escalating and getting out of hand. Phrases such as “I hear
what you’re saying and I value what you have to say” or “I
know this is difficult to talk about, but I’m here to support
you and we can work through this together” are examples
of some great positive language that can be used to help
control the conversation and steer it in the right direction.  
No Judgment - Each time that you judge your partner, you
make them feel embarrassed, insecure, perhaps even
anxious and tense. When they experience this form of
rejection from you, to protect themselves, they will close
themselves off to you because they don’t feel secure
enough to open-up freely and be themselves. Judgment
erodes intimacy, and if you wouldn’t do it in any other
social encounter, don’t do it to your partner.  
 Chapter 10    The Personal Competencies of
Emotional Intelligence

T hedirectly
personal competencies, as you likely would guess, are those that are
related to you. These are the competencies that you must be
able to embrace to allow yourself to better understand interacting with
other people. When you are able to better interact with yourself and
understand yourself, you get that foundation that you will need to help
yourself. You will get that foundation that you will require to help yourself
to ensure that you can better interact with people, no matter what the
situation and no matter who you are with. You will essentially learn how
you can better interact with and control yourself to allow yourself the
ability to make sure that you can keep yourself under control. The whole
goal of the personal competencies is to be able to keep yourself within your
own grasp, ensuring that you do not give in or blow up at other people.
When you consider it this way, you are able to essentially guarantee that
you know how to manage yourself. This starts with being able to take a
closer look at the individual and your own personal behaviors.
Self-Awareness
The first principle of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. This is the
most basic of the principles. It is there, so you know what you are doing,
how you are doing it, and why you behave the way that you do. Your ability
to be self-aware is highly dependent upon your ability to be able to pay
attention to yourself in the moment. If you want to be self-aware, you must
be able to touch base with yourself.

This particular skill is crucial—without it, you cannot hope to be able to go

any further with your own emotional intelligence. If you struggle with
being emotionally intelligent, you need to keep in mind that at the end of
the day, this skillset sets the stage for everything. How can you self-regulate
without self-awareness? How can you hope to be socially aware if you
cannot be self-aware? How can you actively and skillfully help yourself
manage relationships if you cannot pay attention to yourself and how you
behave?

elf-awareness is one of those that many people, unfortunately, struggle

S with greatly, despite the importance of this principle. If you are able to
take better control of yourself with your self-awareness, however, you
can begin to defeat the problems that you have. If you are struggling with
emotional intelligence, this is the most likely culprit and you will want to
start here to fix your problem.
Self-Regulation
Then, you must consider self-regulation as well. This principle is your
ability to control yourself—physically and mentally. It does not concern
itself with stopping yourself from feeling strong negative emotions. You are
more than welcome to feel your strong negative emotions, but at the end of
the day, you must also ensure that you are able to better recognize how to
keep yourself from behaving negatively as well. Your ability to self-regulate
becomes a sort of filter that prevents you from behaving in ways that are
dangerous or too negative to be used regularly or safely. If you have
problems with self-regulation, you are oftentimes impulsive, typically due
to your emotions, and you find that you really struggle to cope with many
of the situations that you get yourself stuck into.

This particular competency is oftentimes also referred to as self-

management. They are really two words for the same competency—the
ability to control yourself. The skills within this are all about becoming a
dependable, stable person, and they are greatly influential. These skills are
those that begin to make you someone that may become a strong leader or
someone who may, at the end of the day, be able to continue to advance.
You must be able to interact with yourself if you want to be able to interact
with other people. You must be able to influence yourself before you can
influence other people. If you can do this, you can usually ensure that you
are better able to interact with people in general.
Social Awareness
Social awareness becomes incredibly important as well, and without it, you
are going to struggle to be able to keep up with other people that you are
interacting with. If you struggle to interact with other people on a regular
basis for any reason at all, it will likely be because of the ways that you
behave and the ways that you can understand the people around you. If your
personal competencies are just fine, there is a good chance that the problem
that you are having is actually with your ability to be socially aware.

Being socially aware is being able to understand the way in which people
around you are behaving. To be socially aware is to understand that at the
end of the day, people will behave in predictable ways. To be socially aware
is to be able to better cope with the ways that you behave because you can
tell where other people are coming from. To be socially aware is to be able
to recognize that at the end of the day, other people have their own feelings
and thoughts, and it is of great benefit to you to be able to continue to
emphasize those. When you are able to recognize the ways that other people
behave, you can begin to take control of them as well.

If you are ever going to interact with other people at all, you must have this
social awareness. You must be able to better become socially aware to
ensure that at the end of the day, you can better cope with the problems at
hand. When you are able to interact with other people better than ever
before, you know that you are better able to do anything.
Relationship Management
Finally, relationship management represents the level that all people that
want to lead aspire to. This is being able to become a great, brave leader
that everyone is proud of. This is to be able to better influence people. It is
everything that emotional intelligence culminates into and it defines how
you are better able to interact with everyone else. As you are able to better
process everything, you become better at understanding the nuances of
relationships. You see how to influence and how to lead. To be strong in
this competency is to be able to really roll with the ways in which you live.
To be strong in this competency is to know that, at the end of the day, you
can better control the ways that you see the world. To be strong in this
competency is to be capable of changing the world and to make sure that
you leave it in a way that is far better than it ever was before you arrived
into it.
 Chapter 11     Motivation and Self-Regulation

Techniques for Increasing Discipline and Motivation

D uedevelopment
to the recent increase in interest in discipline and personal
as a whole, many different techniques for increasing
discipline and motivation have gained popularity.  
Some of these techniques are more effective than others. Meditation has
existed for thousands of years, and it is one of the most effective things you
can do for your self-discipline and self-knowledge. On the other hand, even
the least effective techniques at least have the benefit of the placebo effect.  
We will not only be considering the effectiveness of the protocol, but also
which aspects of discipline are improved if any, and finally deciding
whether or not there are any adverse side effects.  
Daily Cold Showers
A James Bond favorite, the benefits of cold-water therapy have been touted
for centuries. Recently, cold showers have gained popularity in certain
personal development communities .
There is good reason to believe that they will enhance your journey to
improve your discipline.  
Cold showers will energize you and increase your overall awareness. They
are particularly effective for people who are lacking in energy. Most people
feel great and ready to take on the day after drying off. Additionally, daily
cold showers will exercise your discipline by forcing you to do something
you don’t want to do every single day.  
There are a couple of different ways you can have a cold shower.  
Contrast therapy is a popular option; in doing this, you go back and forth
between hot and cold water. A Scottish shower, James Bond’s preferred
style, is a type of contrast therapy. To do this, you start with warm water
and go through the normal cleaning process. Once you have finished
cleaning yourself, you gradually reduce the water temperature until it is at
the coldest point. In the beginning, you might struggle to last a few seconds,
try to work up to a couple of minutes at least.  
The most brutal and discipline-testing way to have a cold shower is by
starting at the coldest temperature and never turning it onto warm
throughout the whole cleaning process. This can be especially savage in
chillier weather when the pipes are cold. You might imagine that contrast
therapy is more unpleasant, but something about starting with warm water
makes it easier to manage.  
Cold showers exercise and strengthen your initiation discipline because it
takes some effort to force yourself to get into the cold water every day. This
is particularly true when you go directly into the cold water without the
warm water at the beginning. Cold showers also strengthen pain tolerance
and courage/vulnerability to a lesser extent. 
There are a few potential downsides to cold water therapy. If you are
extremely stressed in a frantic ungrounded sort of way, cold showers could
potentially push you over the edge in terms of overall arousal. Also, cold
showers require a lot of discipline and take a long time to get used to. If it
usually takes you a couple of weeks to develop a habit, it may take you
months or even a year to get used to cold showers. They could use up some
of your extra discipline which might be better served taking on new habits. 
Intermittent Fasting
Just like cold water therapy, people have been fasting for a very long time.
Intermittent fasting has recently gained popularity because of its ability to
increase mental energy benefits, help with weight loss, and supposedly
improve overall health.  
Intermittent fasting, unlike other forms of fasting, occurs on a daily basis.
People following this dietary practice are only allowed to eat during fixed
eating windows throughout the day. The length and time of these eating
windows depend on the person.  
Probably the most common recommendation is to eat during an eight-hour
eating window, for example, between 1 pm - 9 pm and then not consuming
any calories for the rest of the day and night. Other people will eat during a
12-hour eating window, and some people will go as far as to limit
themselves to eating a maximum of 1 meal per day without snacking.  
First off, intermittent fasting can absolutely contribute to weight loss. Not
through it’s supposed to affect hormonal levels, but rather because it makes
it a lot easier to sustain a caloric deficit for most people. However, you can
certainly overeat while intermittent fasting and fail to lose weight or in
some cases even gain weight. Whether or not you are intermittent fasting, if
you want to lose weight, it is best to eat foods that are relatively filling
compared to their caloric content, such as legumes, steel-cut oats, brown
rice, lean meats, fish, vegetables, etc. If you really want to lose weight and
nothing else is working, you have to count calories.  
So that we will return to the more pressing concern. How does intermittent
fasting affect discipline? 
Many people experience substantial discomfort and a lot of hunger when
they first start fasting. But most people adapt to the new eating schedule
within a few weeks.  
Experiences intermittent fasting vary, but increased energy and focus
throughout the fasting period is very common. Additionally, the sheer act of
overcoming your hunger will exercise your discipline and boost your
confidence.  
Another benefit is that you aren’t distracted by the need to eat throughout
the entire fasting period. If you are a writer or do something else which
requires extended periods of focus, try intermittent fasting, and you may
find that you can work longer and more efficiently than ever before.  
Now for the downsides: 
1) Intermittent fasting is probably not optimal for physical performance,
particularly for people who need to build a lot of muscle mass.  
2) Just like cold water therapy, intermittent fasting can increase overall
stress on your system. So if you are stressed out in a frantic, scattered way,
you might experience more problems intermittent fasting. Additionally,
people with extreme anxiety are recommended to eat a big breakfast with
plenty of protein and fat, intermittent fasting, on the other hand, could
possibly exacerbate anxiety symptoms.  
3) Many people binge when they are finally allowed to eat and, as a result,
lose a lot of their energy and concentration levels. Additionally, this can
cause weight gain and gastrointestinal problems. Intermittent fasting is not
an excuse to overeat, eat unhealthy foods, or drink excessive amounts of
alcohol.  
4) The following isn’t a serious problem, but it is a gentle warning for
people who love coffee. Many people who follow intermittent fasting
develop a serious caffeine addiction drinking copious amounts of black
coffee during their fast. Caffeine helps suppress appetite, and it can feel
nice to taste something bitter when you are hungry. If you love coffee and
you are going to try intermittent fasting, it is a good idea to buy a lot of
decaf coffee ahead of time. Note: Some fasting purists believe that you lose
the health benefits of intermittent fasting if you consume anything other
than pure water during your fast.  
Although it doesn’t work well for everyone, intermittent fasting is
absolutely worth trying out. Following an 8 hour fast is a good place to
start, stick with it for at least two weeks and be ready for a massive
productivity boost.  
Waking up Extremely Early 
Former navy seal commander Jocko Willink has recently helped popularize
the habit of waking up at 4:30 am every single day of the week. If you can
structure it in your life, this is a significant behavioral change.   
If you work a job with regular hours or if you have other things that distract
you during the day, waking up extremely early will give you the time you
need to get things done.  
For example, let’s say you need to leave for work at 8 am, here is how your
morning could look:  

4:30 am: Wake up, meditate, turn off your alarm, put on
your workout clothes which you prepared for yourself last
night, brush your teeth, and walk into your home office.  
5.00 am: Get in 75 minutes of uninterrupted work on
whatever project you are currently focusing on. This is a
great time to study difficult concepts, write, create any
kind of art, compose music, or edit video.  
6:15 am: Hit the home gym for a 1-hour workout session.
You are already wearing your workout clothes.  
 7:15 am: Take a 5-minute shower, put on your work
clothes which you already laid out for yourself the night
before, do anything else that needs to be done and be out
of the house by 8 am.  
In the above example, you had already made serious progress on an
important project and got in a decent amount of exercise before you even
left for work. You might notice that there is no downtime in the above
schedule; you simply efficiently go from task to task. This is much easier to
do when you wake up extremely early; you will likely feel more productive
and have fewer distractions. Also, you will probably find that you can
concentrate more easily on challenging mental tasks.  
You can modify the above schedule any way you want to fit your lifestyle.
You can get up earlier or far ahead; there is nothing magical about 4:30 am.
Jocko Willink is very busy during the day with multiple businesses and
other time-consuming projects, so he likes to workout first thing in the
morning, other people find that they have time to work out late in the day
and prefer to focus on their creative projects as soon as they get up.  
Whatever the case for you, put your most important tasks in between
waking up and leaving for work, particularly things which you might
otherwise not have time to do.   
Jocko Willink and many others who wake up extremely early like to fast in
the morning as well. This is worth trying because it will give you even more
free time. You will notice in the example above there is no scheduled time
for breakfast. 
Waking up extremely early will stress your discipline because it doesn’t feel
good to get up out of bed so early. But, once you are out of bed and moving,
you will start to feel a lot better.  
There are some pretty straightforward downsides to getting up extremely
early. 
1) It can result in you being sleep deprived. Some people need more sleep
than others. Jocko Willink openly admits that he has slept less than the
average person for his entire life and that this has been exacerbated since
going to war. He often wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking about
his experiences in combat. The solution is simple: go to bed earlier.
However, the following will explain why going to bed earlier can be a
problem as well. 
2) Let’s say you need 8 hours of sleep per night. This means that if you get
up at 4:30 am, you need to be in bed with the lights off by 8:30 pm at the
latest. This will severely limit your social life and other activities which you
do at night. Most people need some time to get ready for bed as well.
Suppose you are out with friends and it will take you about 30 minutes to
get home, you also know that you need 45 minutes to get ready for bed
when you actually get home. This means that you need to leave by 7:15 pm
at the latest in order to get your full 8 hours of sleep. If you only need 6
hours of sleep per night, you would need to leave by 9:15 pm, which is still
early, but it isn’t unreasonable.  
Waking up extremely early works for people who either don’t have evening
activities, don’t need much sleep, or choose to sacrifice sleep on certain
nights when they have exciting engagements in the evening. 
The Big Five Personality Inventory is widely recognized among
psychologists as the best measure of personality in existence. While it is
impossible to fully measure someone’s personality using a written test, the
Big Five Inventory is the closest thing we have to actually do this. As you
may already know, the Big Five Personality Inventory includes five traits.
One of the five traits, conscientious, encompasses orderliness in addition to
other qualities. The following qualities characterize it: 
●     Productivity
●     Efficiency
●     Reliability
●     Attention to detail
●     Responsibility
●     Organization
●     Cleanliness
Conscientious splits into orderliness and industriousness. Industriousness
has to do with your drive to get things done and be efficient. Orderliness is
your tendency to follow a routine, be neat, and stay on task. These sub-traits
are distinct but correlated with each other.  
The ideal amount of orderliness in your life will depend in part on your
natural orderliness level.  
If you are someone who prefers flexibility, spontaneity, and doesn’t mind
chaos or unpredictability, go ahead and keep your schedule somewhat open.
However, when it comes to discipline, generally speaking, the more
orderliness you can tolerate, the better. If you have lower than average
orderliness, try adding some routines into your life. You will likely see a
productivity boost. Keep pushing your orderliness until you reach your
limit. You will know that you are at your deadline when you struggle to
stick to your schedule and you feel some existential hopelessness.  
When you reach your limit back off and add some flexibility into your
routine until you start to feel comfortable again. After a couple of months,
try making your routine more orderly again and see how you feel. Over
time you should be able to tolerate more and more orderliness. 
Strict daily routines are certainly not necessary for productivity; however,
they can be very beneficial for a couple of different reasons.  
1) Daily routines mean that you don’t have to waste energy making
decisions throughout the day. If you always go to the gym at 7 pm, you
don’t have to use up any time or mental resources deciding if and when you
go to the gym.  
2) Daily routines help you develop momentum throughout the day.
Something seemingly trivial like making the bed in the morning, can help
you get on the right track to continue making disciplined decisions. A strict
daily routine with a number of different habits which you have maintained
over a long period can give you a nearly unstoppable discipline.  
 Chapter 12     Introspection, Mindfulness and
Meditation

What Is Mindfulness Meditation

Y ou’re familiar with meditation, but what you’re going to learn here is
how to overcome your excessive thoughts is mindfulness meditation.
This form of meditation encourages us to remain aware and present by
focusing on nothing except awareness of your existing surroundings.
Meditation is actually an ancient technique that trains the brain to
strengthen its powers of concentration. Sort of like a gym workout, except
for your brain this time. Some archeologists believe that meditation could
be as old as 5,000 years, although scientists only really began studying the
brains of those who meditated regularly approximately 60 or so years ago.
Still, the fact that this practice has managed to survive for this long means
there’s something extraordinarily powerful and effective about it. 
What researchers have discovered throughout their studies is that
meditation changes the structure of your brain, thereby making it a lot more
powerful. Long-term meditators have been known to develop almost
superhuman-like abilities. For example, their ability to stay calm even in the
most stressful situations that would have non-meditators at their wit’s end.
They could also produce more creative and original ideas, not to mention
the better memory they had compared to those who didn’t meditate
regularly. One experiment revealed how meditating monks were able to dry
icy wet sheets in cold temperatures by raising and controlling their body
temperature through the power of meditation.  
To understand the way meditation affects us, we need to look at the recent
discoveries about how the human brain operates. In the last 10 years alone,
what scientists have come to discover is that each time we learn, feel or
think something, a new connection appears in the brain. What we repeat the
most, like habits, make these connections increase in strength.
Simultaneously, the connections that we don’t use grow weaker over time
until they finally disappear from the mind altogether. This is why habits are
automatic and require very little thought to carry them out. For instance, the
way you practice brushing your teeth each day makes the task seem a lot
more effortless than trying something new like going for a jog in the
morning before work. However, if you were to stop brushing your teeth for
a few days, surprisingly, it will begin to feel like it requires slightly more
effort to execute than it did before. 
Some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that we don’t choose our
behavior. Instead, our behavior is programmed by the neural connections in
the brain. The brain is like an iceberg, where the tip of the iceberg (the
smallest part) represents the conscious mind. Here are all the things we can
choose consciously, like eating or solving a complicated math problem. The
larger part of the iceberg, the one that is submerged and hidden below the
surface, is where the unconscious mind resides. The unconscious mind is
the one responsible for most of our behaviors since this also happens to be
where our thoughts and feelings reside. The unconscious mind, therefore,
causes behavior like reacting to arguments in the same way or reacting
emotionally more than once, even when we know it’s the wrong approach
to take. This happens because we’re not aware that we’re being controlled
by the unconscious part of the brain. 
The neural connections in the unconscious part of the mind are strong. This
leads to a lot of people to believe that they “cannot change” the way they
react or act in certain situations. This automatic response is what we call
personality, but in actual fact, they are the unconscious mind, emotions, and
habits that we keep repeating because it’s all we know how to do. 
Research has found out that  mindfulness meditation can improve focus,
memory as well as reduce fixation on negative emotions and lessen
impulsive, emotional reactions. This can be changed. Everything we know
and learn can always be developed through practice. You can train your
brain to do what you want it to. To initiate the changes you want to see, you
need to first change your brain by creating new connections and then
practicing these connections until they become strong enough to be
automatic. The things that you find hard to do now will become easier with
practice.
Think about how you struggled to exercise in the beginning. Or even when
you were a child learning how to read. Those first few attempts felt like an
immense struggle back then, but since you kept practicing and persisting,
the behavior became automatic. Now, you can quickly breeze through a
sentence with ease, and it doesn’t take much persuasion for you to put on
your workout clothes and start working up a sweat. This is where the
meditation practice comes in. It helps us change the structure of the brain
by creating new connections in several areas of the brain. 
Overthinking leads to continuous stress, and continuous stress leads to
mental health issues. Depression and anxiety are very clear examples of
what can happen to you if you continue to let your thoughts be the one in
control. Meditation decreases the size of the amygdala; the brains fear
center, and where all our negative thoughts and emotions come from.
Meditation also decreases the levels of cortisol, which leads to an enhanced
ability to deal with stressful situations a lot better. During meditation, you’ll
learn the very crucial skill of learning how to watch your thoughts and
emotions without reacting to them, which is required for mindfulness. With
frequent meditation, there’s a possibility of significantly changing your
behavior and personality. 
How to Meditate
Meditation is one of the simplest forms of mental training you can do. All
that is needed is for you to concentrate on your breathing as you allow your
thoughts and feelings to come and go. With continuous practice, your skills
of concentration, awareness, and attention significantly increase. It does
sound easy (and it will be with practice), but in the beginning, you might
find that concentrating on your breath is not as easy as it sounds after all.  
Where Should I Meditate?
Technically, meditation can be done anywhere you like since it is an
exercise for the mind. You could meditate while sitting in a chair or on the
floor, even while you’re lying down in bed. However, it is recommended
that you avoid meditating in bed where possible since you might fall asleep
and find it difficult to concentrate. 
Sitting down on the floor with your back and spine straight is considered
the optimal and beneficial way to meditate. This position keeps you wide
awake and allows you to sit for a prolonged period while you carry out your
concentration session. 
What Do I Do When I Meditate?
What should you do with your body while you meditate? Well, the first
thing to do is to be aware of the way your feet are positioned. Many regular
and seasoned meditators will advise that your feet should be on top of each
other. This is not always necessary, though, and you don’t have to do it if it
doesn’t feel comfortable. Beginners might prefer to have their feet
crisscrossed on top of each other, sort of like a pretzel while your arms are
resting on your thighs. Your hands should be resting on top of each other
and form the shape of a cup. If you want to touch your thumbs together
while you do this, it’s perfectly okay. What matters is that your arms feel
relaxed as you keep your back straight and your head level. 
Your head should not be tilted upwards or downwards. Relax and look
forward naturally. As for your eyes, you have the option of meditating with
them open or closed, depending on your preference. Most seasoned
meditators prefer to do it with their eyes closed for greater concentration,
but again do what feels comfortable and what works for you. If you do
choose to meditate with your eyes open, avoid focusing on an object in
front of you. Instead, try to look into the distance.
How Long Do I Need to Meditate? 
As a beginner, you’ll want to set an alarm before you begin your meditation
session. When you first start meditating, time tends to feel a lot slower
because your body and mind are trying to get used to this new habit. By
setting an alarm, you eliminate the constant need to wonder how much time
you have left or how long you’ve been doing it already. Beginners can aim
to set about 5-minutes on the clock to start with as you acclimatize yourself
to this practice. Once meditation becomes a daily practice and you get used
to sitting in this position, you can gradually increase your time blocks,
meditating for as long as you want. The recommended time for meditation
is approximately 10 to 20 minutes a day. 
What Do I Do While I Meditate?
This is the tricky part. There are several forms of meditation that can be
carried out. Certain forms of meditation encourage you to focus on your
breathing (mindfulness) and loving-kindness, while others may involve
chanting a mantra (affirmation). Mindfulness breathing meditation is one of
the most commonly taught forms of meditation and given that you’re trying
to overcome your overthinking habit, this is the meditation you want to start
with. 
Mindfulness meditation is easy to learn, and it is considered just as
insightful and powerful as any other form. With this form of meditation,
you want to start by making sure that you’re breathing through your nose.
Once you’ve established a rhythm, focus all your attention on your breath
and observe the way the air flows in and out of your body. Pay attention to
the air flowing in and out of your nostrils; observe the way your breath
makes the transition from inhale to exhale. Even pay attention to the little
pauses that happen between the moment you inhale and exhale. Don’t
judge. Don’t criticize. Just stay calm and observe; that’s all you need to do. 
You’ll quickly notice that thoughts begin to appear in your mind and will
try to distract you from this simple task you’re supposed to be concentrating
on. If you notice your mind wandering, don’t worry. Simply pull your
thoughts back toward your breathing and focus on your breath. This is how
you start training your mindfulness muscle. Many beginners often find it
extremely hard to focus on nothing but the breath, so you’re not alone if
you feel this is a struggle. If this happens, don’t be too hard on yourself or
too critical, this is perfectly normal. All you need to do is bring your
attention right back to your breathing whenever the mind wanders. 
How Often Should I Do It?
Ideally, you want to aim to make mindfulness meditation a daily habit. The
more you do it, the easier it will become to focus on nothing but your breath
as your mindfulness muscle grows stronger. Meditating every day gives you
the best chance of seeing the benefits quickly. You could do it once a day,
twice a day, or even three times a day if you have the time. You can do it as
many times a day as you like, but what matters most is that you do it every
day. 
How Soon Can I Expect to See the Benefits?
Well, you need to be doing it every day to see the benefits a lot sooner. The
length of time you spend meditating daily will also play a factor in how
quickly you start experiencing the benefits. Ultimately, it is difficult to fix
an exact time frame since the experience is going to differ from one person
to the other. Some people happen to be less mindful in general because of
the lifestyle they lead and the way they grew up, so they might need more
time before they begin seeing any real change. The best thing you can do is
to just keep practicing and don’t compare your journey to someone else’s. It
doesn’t matter how fast or slow the benefits start to happen. What matters is
that if you keep at it, they will happen. 
Why You Need to Practice Mindfulness
Overthinking is a distraction, and that is just one of the many reasons why
you need mindfulness to live in the present. As painful as some of the
difficult parts of life is, that’s what living is, and we need to embrace it
wholeheartedly, both good and bad. Mindfulness teaches us that it is still
possible to find happiness even in the darkest times. It’s not always possible
to be mindful 100% of the time, but the following reasons will remind you
why you need to make an effort to live mindfully every day:

It’s the Only Real Time to Live Properly - We spend more

time than we should when we continue living in our heads
worrying about the past or the future. We worry about
what we cannot change and what we have no control over.
Mindfulness is the only tool that is effective enough to get
you to break the habit bit by bit. The past only exists in
our memory, and the future is yet to come. This means that
the only real living that takes place is your present. The
here and now. 

Your Thoughts Are Less Likely to Sweep You Away - It’s

impossible to get carried away when you know exactly
what’s going on with your thoughts, emotions, and
feelings. Instead of getting swept away by your excessive
thoughts this time, mindfulness will turn you into an
observer. Think of your thoughts like a flowing river. You
cannot forcefully stop the water from flowing. When you
enter the river, you will get swept away, so instead, the
better thing to do would be to practice sitting by the river,
watching it flow by. By becoming an observer, your
thoughts and emotions loosen the hold they have over you.
You no longer feel powerless, and like you’re drowning.
You become calm, composed, and this time you’re the one
in control. Like the flowing river, the thoughts won’t stay
forever unless you choose to let them. You’re not trying to
fight your thoughts, judge it or forcefully change it. You’re
just there to observe. 

It Builds Stronger Relationships -   Among the more

common worrying thoughts that tend to plague the mind
of an overthinker is the anxiety they feel about what others
think of them. It’s hard to form great connections when
you’re not really listening to what is being said to you.
Sure, you’re there in front of the speaker, but when you’re
preoccupied with your thoughts, you’re not actively
listening, and you miss out on important information that
could have been used to strengthen your relationship.
Mindfulness can change the type of conversations you
have with people by encouraging you to pay attention and
be open to their needs. To put aside everything else for
those few minutes and pay attention to what is being said
to you. Once you start actively listening, conversations
seem richer and more meaningful. The other person begins
to engage more when they notice you’re actively paying
attention to them too. It makes them feel like what they
have to say matters, and that, in turn, encourages them to
be more open and share more of their life with you. 

It Makes You Aware You Have Everything You Need to

Be Happy - We keep searching for happiness and then
getting frustrated when it’s seemingly hard to attain.
Through mindfulness, however, you realize you already
have everything you need to be happy. You couldn’t see it
because you were too distracted by your thoughts. When
you start living in the present, the realization begins to
dawn on you that there is no real need to hold on to the
things that make you unhappy. You don’t need to hold on
to grievances about your past or worry about your future.
Your eyes begin to open to the fact that perhaps a lot of the
problems you have today were created in your mind, and
if you break those problems down bit by bit, there might
not be anything much to worry about after all. Feeling
grateful for the life you have is your biggest defense
against negativity. You don’t need to rely on external or
material things to make you happy when you feel good
from within. 

It Reminds You to Take Care of Yourself - You can’t take

care of anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself
first. Self-care can be a tough lesson for overthinkers since
they tend to cross their boundaries. Their excessive
thinking could lead them to push too hard until they
eventually get burned out. Mindfulness makes you more
aware of your strengths and your boundaries. You’re less
likely to push yourself too far when you’re aware of the
way that your mind and your body feel. You begin
respecting your body more, and you slowly lose the urge
to keep up with society’s fast-paced expectations if it is
going to make you unhappy doing it. It’s perfectly okay to
do what makes you happy without having to feel guilty
about it. 
 Chapter 13    The Social Competencies of
Emotional Intelligence

Empathy

W hen we want someone to see things from another’s perspective, the

first thing we tell them is “put yourself in their shoe.” Well, that is
what empathy is all about. It is the ability to communicate and lead by
understanding another person’s views, thoughts, and feelings. 
When we improve our empathy, the truth is that we become better versions
of ourselves. We strengthen our relationships and make them more
meaningful. We strive for success in the workplace. We realize it improved
health and overall quality of life. 
If you look at the top performers in your company, what you will notice is
that 90% of them have high emotional intelligence. This is because the
more people understand their thoughts, emotions, and feelings, the better
they get at understanding someone else’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
When we become better at listening to others, we become better human
beings. 
But what happens when you lack empathy?
Well, according to research studies, scientists have linked a lack of empathy
to a wide range of societal vices – such as theft, murder, and drug dealing,
among others. Think about the prisoners, are they empathic people? Most
likely not. Most of these people lack empathy and didn’t care to think about
what their victims might have been feeling. If they had empathy, there is a
high chance that this might have prevented them from engaging in acts that
put them in prison in the first place. 
One thing you must note is that empathy is the ability to trust other people.
The truth is that when your friends feel that you care, you earn their trust. If
they trust you, that simply means that they will be willing to take risks with
you and become more open with you. The reason why your friends
communicate with openness with you is that they have built their trust in
you. 
In other words, as trust continues to grow, it promotes the sharing of
information, thoughts, and feelings. It is this form of sharing that expands
the foundation upon which you and the others relate with each other. Think
about it for a moment, when your friends talk about their interests and
ideas, what do you do as you listen to them? 
Simple – you stop what you are doing to give them your undivided
attention. With empathy, you can raise your awareness of other people’s
feelings during the conversation. When someone asks you for help, it is
important that you understand what they are not saying in their words but
are saying with their body language.  
You must bear in mind that a significant portion of communication is often
related in non-verbal cues. The truth is that we may not even realize it, but
when we communicate with our facial expressions, noise, gestures, among
others, empathy allows us to understand what these non-verbal cues mean.
When you master what non-verbal cues mean, you become better at
understanding how the other person truly feels. 
A solid foundation in emotional intelligence begins with a show of
empathy!
You can grow your empathy with practice and the use of the right process.
It is possible to take empathy to the following level, something that, in turn,
boosts our overall emotional intelligence. When you have the right tools,
the process of learning about empathy does not necessarily have to be
costly or complicated. 
Social skills
This is a broad term that refers to the skills we need to handle and influence
other people’s emotions in an effective manner – in the context of emotional
intelligence. While this may sound like manipulation, the truth is that this is
as simple as understanding that giving others your smile makes them smile
too. Because of your smile, you can make someone feel much better and
positive than they were before. 
Think of social skills as the last piece of the emotional intelligence puzzle.
Once you can understand and manage yourself, only then will you be able
to understand other people’s emotions and feelings and influence them. 
Some of the most important social skills include;
Communication skills
This is a vital piece of emotional intelligence; you must pay attention to
what others have to say and also convey your thoughts and feelings to them
in an effective manner. 
You may be wondering what makes a good communicator. Well, if you can
listen well to the people around you, understand what they said, and seek
open and full information sharing, then you are a good communicator. If
you are prepared to hear others’ problems and not just ready to hear good
news alone, then you are a good communicator. 
Good communication means dealing with tough situations, setting them
straight, and not allowing problems to fester. You must ensure that you
register and act in emotional cues in communicating so that the message is
right. 
Persuasion skills
Persuasion simply refers to the art of enthusing people, winning their hearts
to your ideas, and leading them on your proposed course of action. If you
look around at people you know are persuasive, you will realize that they
not only have to influence but also have the ability to read others’ emotional
currents in a given circumstance and fine-tune their words so that they
appeal to the people around them .
Conflict-management skills
We all know that conflicts can arise at any given time. They seem to appear
out of thin air. However, the art of resolving conflicts as soon as they arise
is crucial both at home and in the workplace. It all begins by raising our
awareness of the importance of diplomacy and tact, and how these can be
used to address difficulties in various situations.
Being a good conflict manager means that you have to be willing to bring
disagreements out in the open when resolving them. You must ensure that
you use information sharing as a way to encourage debates and open
discussions, minimize hidden currents, help each party recognize the other’s
feelings and logical position so that you can obtain a win-win solution.  
Leadership skills
A great leader is one that is able to control their emotions. A leader should
be someone who can control their tempers because they are always dealing
with different employees who have different personalities. Being an
understanding leader will bring out the best out of your team because they
can trust you and as a leader, you can explore their full potential. A good
leader is also a very good listener and therefore, they will be more
approachable. All these are qualities that an emotionally intelligent person
will possess. Emotional intelligence is a very important skill that all leaders
require to lead a team. They will constantly be pressured but they have to
make calm, collected decisions if they want to achieve the very best from
their juniors. A leader with high EI is very successful in everything they do
because instead of putting off your juniors, you are always trying to look for
solutions that will favor everyone and therefore creating a serene working
environment.
 Chapter 14     Emotional Intelligence at Work

T heof Harvard Business Review (HBR), one of the most renowned sources
business-best-practice, has discharged a few articles on emotional
intelligence. Their 1997 article by psychologist and writer Daniel
Goleman positioned as their most mentioned article ever. This notoriety
drove the HBR to reevaluate the information on emotional intelligence
again in 2003. Their conclusion: 
"In difficult occasions, the delicate stuff regularly leaves. Be that as it may,
emotional intelligence, it turns out, isn't so delicate. If emotional
mindlessness imperils your capacity to perform, battle off aggressors, or be
humane in a crisis, no measure of attention regarding the primary concern
will protect your profession. Emotional intelligence isn't an extravagance
you can abstain from on extreme occasions. It's a fundamental tool that,
conveyed with artfulness, is the way to proficient success."
Your association is made of individuals, procedures, and property. For quite
a while, "common knowledge" has been that profits originate from putting
resources into the last two. However, in the most recent decades, new
research has tested that suspicion and is progressively demonstrating that an
organization's kin are the separating factor.
Truth be told, for most organizations, property and product yield minimal
competitive advantage. You build up another procedure, and in seven days
your rival imitates it. You increment productivity and lower item cost, and
one month from now a superior rendition is being created all the more
inexpensively in another nation. You put resources into specific hardware -
thus does the person down the road.
So where can the present organizations find competitive advantage? With a
portable workforce, globalization, and on-demand data, property, and
product are insufficient. Extraordinary organizations are putting resources
into their relationships with clients, leaders, and employees, and throughout
the following decades, the individual's side will progressively turn into the
main significant advantage. Also, if emotional intelligence helps assemble
employee and customer loyalty, helps people perform and innovate, assists
leaders with building value, at that point these skills are fundamental for
world-class execution.
Emotional intelligence influences employee execution on numerous
avenues. The employee's EQ, the association between the worker, and the
emotional tone - or atmosphere - all fundamentally influence how
employees feel about work and the viability of the work they do.
An attention to emotional intelligence changes how employees identify with
clients. That improves client dedication, and it builds deals. At L’Oréal,
deals operators chose based on certain emotional abilities essentially
surpassed sales reps chose to utilize the organization's standard
determination technique. On a yearly premise, salesmen chose based on
emotional fitness sold $91,370 more than other sales reps did, for a net
income increment of $2,558,360 .
Joseph Hee-Woo Jae, at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines,
assessed 100 college-educated, cutting edge workers at a significant Asian
bank. He found that while IQ scores had no prescient worth (connection of
.07 with execution, or under .5 percent), EQ scores anticipated 27 percent
of job performance.
In a landmark study demonstrating how emotional intelligence predicts
certifiable execution, David Rosette surveyed leaders in the Australian Tax
Office utilizing a scope of appraisal instruments, execution measurements,
and evaluations by employees. Emotional intelligence predicted 25 percent
of elite, contrasted with intellectual capacity that predicted less than 2
percent, and a trial of personality that predicted nothing.
In one of the UK's biggest eatery gatherings, there was clear proof that
emotionally intelligent leaders were increasingly successful. Supervisors
high in emotional intelligence had eateries that beat others with expanded
guest fulfillment, lower turnover, and 34% more prominent benefit growth.
Drawing on your emotional resources, understanding what is most
important to you, remaining completely alert consistently are altogether
encouraged by emotional intelligence. Maybe that is the reason emotionally
intelligent pioneers are just increasingly viable at running organizations .
WHY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE MEANS
EVERYTHING FOR SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS
Have you at any point watched somebody who graduated top of their class,
who was very intelligent, become a disappointment, again and again in
business? What's more, what about those others with moderate intelligence
building empires and changing the very substance of the world all the
while? 
What about Henry Ford? He never went on to secondary school or college.
Truth be told, Ford dropped out of school at 15 years old, yet proceeded to
gather a fortune and perpetually change the world in a tremendous manner.
You might be considering how these functions and what the advantages of
emotional intelligence are for you and your business... right? Here is the
deal...
A great deal of success has nothing to do with standard intelligence, but
rather with what's called Emotional Intelligence (EI). Emotional
intelligence, as indicated by Merriam Webster, "depicts the ability, capacity,
skill or, on account of the attribute, to recognize, survey, and deal with the
emotions of one's self, of others, and groups."
Or then again put in layman's terms, emotional intelligence is the ability to
perceive, comprehend and work with your own emotions and the emotions
of others. Different advantages of emotional intelligence incorporate more
elevated levels of instinct, sympathy, compassion and the capacity to break
down these emotions effectively. Since business is about relationships,
these elements can represent the deciding moment an entrepreneur
achievement .
For instance, negotiating regularly takes the ability to listen, to comprehend
where an individual is coming from, to place yourself from their point of
view as it were, and afterward to think of an imaginative solution that
results in a win/win for the two groups.
Emotional intelligence additionally encourages you to comprehend,
envision and explore the desires of everyone around you. This is useful
when dealing with clients, prospects, sellers, business associates, and even
workers and contractors. If you can help the individuals around you feel
increased in value by envisioning their desires and managing them before
they've even realized, then you're way ahead of the game. 
For instance, if you're able to recognize that your specific target audience
has a yearning to belong and expects or trusts that your business may assist
them with feeling that way, then you can make methodologies to cater to
this, such as beginning a membership site.
The Benefits of Emotional Intelligence concerning conducting business are
too numerous to name. I have referenced numerous above already, but here
are a few more for your thought. Ask yourself where you fit it? What do
you do well and where can you improve?

Deal better with conflicts

Solve issues faster
Offer better customer service
Hire the most ideal people for the job
Control your reactions to difficulties, and remain positive
when mistakes happen
Trust your business instincts and impulses
Build business relationships and connect with potential
partners
Listen to others, understand them, and make them feel
appreciated
Market to your client because you're able to sympathize
with them
Write better, more emotionally determined, content
Control your responses to difficulties, and remain positive
when errors occur 
Market to your client since you're better ready to
sympathize with them 
Write better, more emotionally determined, content 

Connect with potential accomplices

and assemble business connections

How To Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

A lot of people imagine that your intelligence level, regardless of whether
it's standard IQ or emotional intelligence, is something you're brought into
the world with and that can't be improved nor developed. That is false! All
you need to develop your emotional intelligence is a desire to do so. Start
focusing on how individuals act, how you behave and respond and try to
place yourself from others' perspectives. Figuring out how to relate maybe
the most ideal approach to start to help your very own emotional
intelligence, and it has an immense effect on the way you work together. 
Take some time to analyze your business connections as per the numerous
advantages of emotional intelligence I have listed above. Graph your
advancement. You could even spend one week on each factor you wish to
enhance. You can do it, and since the advantages of emotional intelligence
are so imperative to your achievement in business I would begin right
away!
 Chapter 15    How to Deal with a Low Emotional
Intelligent Partner

hat do you with a partner who is driving you nuts with their lack of
W emotional intelligence? Do you toss them out the door or do you give
them a chance to get better? Logistically, it is easier to just do away
with people of low emotional intelligence. However, we all know that the
heart wants what the heart wants. Besides, if you were to remove all the low
EQ people from your life, you’d probably be left with only one or two
people. Yes, high EQ is not very prevalent. Which brings us to the tips on
how to deal with someone who you love but who sometimes makes you
want to claw your eyes out.
Tip #1: Address the elephant in the room early on.
When two lovebirds meet for the very first time, they want the other to
think that they are perfect little angels who can do no wrong. They go on
dates, make each other laugh, and say only those things which are flattering.
When one of them does something wrong, like snap at a poor waiter who’s
only trying to do his job, the other smitten lovebird looks away and chalks it
up to a stressful day. Even when this recurs at a different restaurant, the
lovebird is willing to forgive and forget. At least, that happens until it
finally happens in the safe confines of their loving house. Then, the
lovebird realizes that there is no way one person can have seven bad days in
a row unless they are the cause of the bad days.
You are the lovebird in the story, and the moral of the story is that you
need to call out bad behavior whenever you see it, especially when you see
it more than once. True, your partner is allowed to have one sulky day when
he does not want to talk to anybody, but five days is stretching it. How are
you going to have a relationship with someone who cannot articulate their
feelings? If something bothers you about your partner (especially something
that indicates low EQ), bring it up. Do not allow it to fester and leave you
reeling in resentment. Couples who communicate openly in a relationship
stand a better chance of staying together longer anyway.
Tip #2: Watch your tone
 So, you’ve taken a few emotional intelligence quizzes and have figured
out that you are obviously better at emotional intelligence than your partner.
Do you lord it over them? Do you make them feel like a teeny tiny person
because they struggle with their emotions? Absolutely not. Because if you
do that, then it means the tests were inaccurate. Therapists have said again
and again that the way a couple speaks to each other really influences how
long they stay together.
Some people score poorly in EQ not because they want to but because
they do not know better. Your role as an emotionally intelligent partner or
spouse is to bring your partner to the other side. The side where people
speak respectfully and with empathy. The side where people are good
listeners who do not interrupt others while they are talking. Being
condescending about your superior emotional intelligence is only going to
make your partner resentful of you. Remember, your partner is probably not
even aware of the fact that they are lacking in emotional intelligence. Do
not make things harder for them by patronizing them.
Tip #3: Be realistic about your expectations
You’ve been suspecting that your partner has low EQ all along and this
has cemented this suspicion by providing you with solid evidence of what
EQ is and what it is not.
Absolutely not. That is not how it works.
Yes, there are some aspects of emotional intelligence that you can
practice and get good at in just days. For example, you can aim to be a good
listener by always allowing the other person to finish talking before you
respond. This is a tactic that can be implemented in a matter of days.
However, learning how to be in tune with emotions, how to be a better
communicator, and how to care for others might take a bit more time. Your
partner might not even be up for it. They might fight you when you suggest
that they should try doing this or that. Remember that low EQ people tend
to hate change. Converting your partner will not be a walk in the park.
However, if your partner truly loves you and is committed to your
relationship, then you can help them get started on the baby steps that they
need to take for the relationship to become even more fulfilling than it
really is.
Tip #4: Remember it’s okay to figh t
 Every relationship has its own fights. There can never be a relationship
without fights unless the parties are afraid to share their true opinions.
Fights strengthen relationships. The give a platform for partners to share the
feelings that they have kept hidden deep within. Whether you are fighting
about EQ-related matters or any other thing, do not feel any guilt or shame
over it. Even the most emotionally intelligent people fight with their loved
ones. They just know better than to yell or name-call or hit. As long as you
are fighting without tearing each other down, you are on the right track.
Tip #5: Let the other person choose to change
It’s true that you can influence another person into changing by
modeling the kind of behavior that is appropriate. However, you can never
force a person that does not want to change to change. Change is such a
personal decision that must be made by an individual when they are ready
for it. If your spouse behaves in a particular manner that you find to be
emotionally immature, they have to get to a place where they see it from
your perspective, and then decide to change. This might take a whole lot of
time and may even seem impossible at first. Sitting around waiting for them
to be ready might take up all your patience. Only you will be in a position
to decide whether they are worth the wait or not.
Tip #6: Sometimes you’ll have to walk away
Let’s say you have been dealing with a partner for a long time who
obviously has very low EQ. This partner is not in tune with your feelings;
they openly disrespect you, have no qualms about yelling, are always
dramatic about something, and cannot seem to see what the problem is.
When you try to talk to your partner about these issues, you are met with
cold treatment. What do you do?
At some point, you have to pull the plug on a relationship that is not
working. Relationships are not recyclable plastics that you can keep and use
for another purpose when you are done using them for what they were
originally intended. A relationship is supposed to be a positive addition in
your life. If your partner is exhibiting signs of low or nonexistent emotional
intelligence, including being emotionally abusive, it is well within your
right to walk away. In fact, you should not only walk but run as fast as your
high EQ heels can carry you. Somewhere out there is someone who is self-
aware and motivated that is bound to appreciate a respectful relationship
with an emotionally mature adult such as yourself.
 Chapter 16    Emotional Drain Signs and How to
Deal with Energy Vampires

hey leave you feeling depleted after each discussion. They need your
T constant consideration, and the discussion is constantly about them.
They might fascinate, appealing, and the life-of-the-party character.
They likewise may swindle. They may lie. What's more, it's likely another
person's shortcoming when something turns out badly.  
These are a few (yet surely not all) of the characteristics you may keep
running crosswise over in somebody who is an "energy vampire."  
An energy vampire is somebody who truly destroys your energy dry.  
There are various sorts, and they fall on a range, she includes. There's the
narcissistic twit companion who's continually managing some emergency.
There's the manipulative colleague who couldn't care less who she steps on
to excel. Furthermore, there's the out and out psychopathic crook. What
energy vampires all share practically speaking is they "feed on" (or control)
individuals who will give them air space and open ears.  
Obviously, those regularly focused on are the delicate, humane, consistently
observe the-positive qualities in-individual’s kinds of individuals.   
As indicated by an approach, energy vampires additionally incorporate the
extraordinary part of the arrangement of this character issue, to be specific
insane people and sociopaths. They are regularly gifted, however
manipulative, as well. They feed on your great, adoring, and merciful
energy, and they have no doubts about doing as such. They make you feel
regretful, as though you're rarely giving enough.  
While insane people are one sort of energy vampire, they're absolutely not
the most widely recognized ones you may go over. Think about any names
that struck a chord as you read the initial segment of this article. That is a
decent method to begin recognizing the energy vampires throughout your
life 
Not every person with narcissistic characteristics or who appreciates being
the life of the gathering is essentially an energy vampire, she includes.
Some perceive what they're doing on the off chance that you get down on
them about it and stop. Energy vampires (the individuals who could be
determined to have a character issue), notwithstanding, are dependent on
that sort of conduct and the consideration they get from it.  
For the most part, they're egotistical individuals, and they're fairly
manipulative, Northrup. "In some way or another, they all recognize what
they're doing, and they do it since it works."  
The non-energy vampires of the world assume the best about them that they
truly need your affection, sympathy and great chi, Northrup includes, "in
light of the fact that we think they figure as we do". And that is the reason
energy vampires are so risky.   
Some energy vampires may have acquired those character qualities from a
parent, and they're uninformed of how their conduct influences others.  
This is the meaning of energy vampire varies. They're so hazardous because
energy vampires may not realize what they're doing (other than the
genuinely manipulative maniacs and sociopaths). Some energy vampires
may have acquired those character characteristics from a parent, and they're
ignorant of how their conduct influences others.  
Investing time with energy on vampires can make you wiped
out  
What makes energy vampires so dangerous is that they can be wellsprings
of interminable pressure. Particularly if the energy vampire is somebody
you can't stay away from —, for example, a companion, a parent, or a chief
— always having your energy depleted by that individual is a stressor. "You
continually tread lightly around that individual, trusting that the following
shoe will drop."  
What's more, that kind of incessant pressure is outstanding to have quite
injurious consequences for different frameworks in the body, including the
resistant, cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and focal sensory systems.  
Proof demonstrates that individuals under ceaseless pressure are at a greater
danger of incessant issues going from immune system infections to
coronary illness, corpulence and wretchedness.   
Keep in mind that with regards to paying special mind to your own energy
and well-being around energy vampires, you're not being egotistical, you're
rehearsing great self-care. Doing so shields you from getting overpowered,
on edge, and debilitated. Here's the ticket:  
• Cut them out of your life (on the off chance that you can). If they're not
somebody you can't maintain a strategic distance from (for example, a chief
or a relative), cut off contact with the individual. On the off chance that it's
an ex-life partner who regardless you have to speak with — maybe if you
have kids — convey as meager as could reasonably be expected and use
innovation to further your potential benefit, she includes. Content or utilize
an informing application, as opposed to making arrangements via
telephone. 
• Set limits. Realize what sorts of exercises function admirably and which
ones don't, and plan in like manner. Perhaps venturing out on a brief siesta
or espresso is endurable, however welcoming that person to your home is
simply excessively. Set start and end times. 
• Lower desires. In case you're managing a narcissist, realize that these
individuals are not equipped for being sympathetic toward you. So, don't
anticipate that from them. Abstain from bearing your spirit to that
individual to shield yourself from inclination baffled when they don't meet
you with the understanding you're searching for.  
• Be unreasonably drained for them. You can call this methodology "broken
wing." When an energy vampire attempts to twist your ear, disclose to them
you feel sickly or truly worn out. "They will go to another source right
away. "They would prefer not to associate with somebody who doesn't have
the energy to give back."  
• 'Grey shake' them. Act like a dim shake around them. Try not to engage
them. Try not to give them energy. Try not to give them the reaction
(regardless of whether it be your open ear, your compassion, or your help)
that they're searching for and they'll lose intrigue.  
• Know the distinction between "venting" and "dumping." Everybody needs
to voice disappointment from time to time. Energy vampires continually
dump their dissatisfactions, disturbances, irritations, awful days and
negative sentiments on others. It's extremely imperative to realize the
contrast between venting (is responsible for their job in the issue and
searching for an answer or goals) and dumping (think incomprehensible
tirade). So, you can set limits and not only stay there and take it.  
• Do NOT go overboard. Stay cool, quiet, and gathered when managing an
energy vampire. Losing it can make an energy vampire do likewise and
aggravate you feel about yourself.  
• Make sure you have an approach to a rude awakening. Figure out which of
your companions or family can be your rude awakening on the
circumstance — confided in people who can level set with you when the
energy vampire in your life is misbehaving. "Indeed, they're acting insane.
Truly, it would appear that they're pulling off homicide." Those believed
rude awakening companions can help insist that what you feel in your gut is
correct, and not a different way.   
• Say "no" pleasantly. It's OK to not welcome individuals to cooperate with
you. Also, it's OK to disapprove of individuals. Furthermore, recollect, "no"
is a sentence all by itself, she includes. You can say it in a pleasant manner
that is not inconsiderate or heartless. "You can be a cherishing, caring
individual and still stand up for yourself. You shouldn't be a doormat.
Dark Path of Becoming Yourself a Vampire
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE THE VAMPIRE
Maybe you have realized that you have been an energy vampire for as long
as you can remember. Now you are probably feeling guilty about all the
energy you sapped out of people when you did not mean to. Or maybe you
are still in denial about it and feel like it’s more of leaning on people and
ranting than stealing their energy.
As you work through your self-awareness you will start to notice things that
you were formerly ignorant about. You will see patterns of behavior that are
self-serving and destructive to others. You will acknowledge instances
when you have acted unfairly toward others. You will identify opportunities
that you had to be better and unfortunately lost. It will be quite the eye-
opener for you. Whatever it is that you unearth, you must acknowledge this
without being too hard on yourself. We are prone to error from time to time
by virtue of being perfectly imperfect and flawed human beings. When you
are unaware of something then you are bound to mess up and act selfishly
and hurt others along the way. Forgive yourself and hold yourself
accountable for your future actions, seeing that ignorance will no longer be
the reason for your behavior .
At the same time, realize that other human beings do not exist to be taken
advantage of or to serve you. Other people are going through things that
they need help with. Stop to help them more often than you stop to use
them. Imagine how incredible the world around us would be if we stopped
to help more often than we stop to complain or lament. Everyone would be
filling up everyone else’s energy reservoirs. Make a habit of pouring
yourself into the people you love more than you take out from them. Be
kind to your spouse. Instead of complaining about things that happened at
work during lunch break, consider having a nice dinner date to make up for
it. Only you can determine the kind of energy that you will have in your
life. Go for the good energy.
Chapter 17    Training and Honing Your Emotional
Abilities

ou will be introduced to some practical things you can do to improve

Y the way you handle your emotions and those of others. These are not
theories but simple things that have been practiced and attested to be
effective by various people.
Below are some exercises that can help you master your emotions:
Always Have a Plan B
The reason you feel dejected and frustrated such that you take it out on
others is probably because you know you don’t have any other option apart
from the current one. Hence, if the plan fails, you feel like your world is
crashing down around you. You cannot afford to put all your eggs in one
basket in life because life is way too risky for that kind of action. When you
have a plan, you will always be afraid of the outcome of your decisions but
having an alternative plan gives you peace of mind.
A plan B is not even good enough; you should have a plan B, C, D, E, F…,
and Z. So, as you invest in that business, also look out for another business
you can also invest your money in. In case you don’t get the kind of yield
you expect from that business, you will have another option you can look
forward to. Some people see having other options as being afraid but that is
not true. Having other alternatives is being sh rewd. There will never be any
time you will be at the mercy of anyone when you can access other
options. 
Stress Management Skills
Stress can make you anxious or nervous. It is okay to be anxious or nervous
once in a while because of the sensitivity of a task you need to carry out.
However, it becomes an issue when you are unable to perform as you ought
because you are nervous. You can reduce anxiety by reducing your
temperature. You can drink some cold water to help with this. You can also
reduce the rate at which you consume caffeine to help with this.
Caffeine is a stimulant and can increase your anxiety level when not
properly handled. Hence, you can stay off caffeine or reduce the quantity of
your intake during periods when you need to handle situations that are
tense. Simple things such as these will improve the way you handle yourself
and others. The most important things in life are not necessarily
complicated things but simple things you feel are too simple to be taken
seriously.
Try Aerobic Exercises
Aerobic exercises can help you reduce fear and depression. You will be
surprised to find out that you will be able to dissipate negative emotions as
you move your body. Your calmness will return, and you will be able to
think clearly again. These exercises affect your heart rate and also make
your circulatory system continue to function the way it ought to function.
Examples of such exercises include taking a brisk walk or skipping with a
jump rope.
Reduce the Use of Sentences That Begin With “You”
This comes in and when you feel that you are not getting what you deserve
from a person or from a corporate body. Sentences that start with “you”
during those moments often lead to pointing an accusing finger which
makes people uncomfortable. You will be reducing your chances of getting
what you want when you talk that way, especially to people who are
superior and have the capacity to deny you or delay your entitlements.
By simply addressing the situation without pointing accusing fingers shows
to them that you understand the situation in spite of the fact that you have
not gotten what you want. Avoiding sentences that start with “you” will
help you to avoid becoming defensive which pisses off people. When you
are defensive, you will only see the faults of others and neglect yours.
Instead of saying “you have not been listening to me”, you can say “I would
appreciate if you can hear me out please”.
Those listening to you will also not be defensive when you don’t point
accusing fingers at them. They will want to hear you out and will most
likely be ready to negotiate with you and even make compromises when
they see that you are not making them responsible for the unpleasant
situation you have found yourself in. This will not take anything from you,
it will only allow you to reduce the rate of having to deal with negative
emotions accusations often generate .
Take a Deep Breath During Tense Situations
There is no way you can escape having one or two difficult people in your
endeavors in life. If you are lucky not to have such people as your spouse,
they could be your boss or work under you. You will definitely come across
such people at one point or the other. Hence, it is better to determine long
beforehand what you will do when you come across such people rather than
hope you will never have an encounter with them.
During tense moments when you feel like speaking in annoyance, learn to
take deep breaths and slowly count to ten. You will have a better grip on
your emotions when you do this. You will think about other means of
resolving the situation during this moment and find an alternative dispute
resolution rather than speak out of anger. Words spoken out of anger are
usually “poisonous” and intended to hurt the other person.
Most times, even when you are in the right, you will end up regretting the
things you say because you are angry. When you are angry, you are likely
going to reveal secrets the person kept with you before your annoyance.
You will go all out to hurt the person and this will not help you or the
people around you.
Don’t Hold Back Compliments
You will often be told not to let out negative emotions but it is equally
important to let out positive emotions. I mean, always look out for
opportunities to tell people good things about them. Tell people they have
done well when they are doing well and mean it. When you tell people that
they are doing well when they are not doing well, you are not helping them.
It is mere flattery and they will eventually mark you out as an insincere
person in the long run.
Hence, you don’t have to go overboard. Simply look out for the right things
they do and sincerely compliment them about those things. Let people
around you know they are looking good. It helps boost their confidence and
perceive you as a positive person. When you have a culture of telling
people they are doing well when they do will make them open to hear you
when you point out the areas that they need to improve. They will not see
you as someone who is criticizing them to make them feel bad.
Listen and Truly Listen
It is one thing to listen hypocritically to people so that they will not accuse
you of not listening to them, it is another thing to listen to people because
you want to hear them objectively. There are different reasons that people
listen. Some people listen so as to be able to find loopholes to attack the
person they are listening to. You should not do this because it is not helpful.
You will totally miss out on anything the person has to say that can help you
get better.
You should listen to people because you are interested in whatever they
have to say. Practicing active listening shows you are humble and don’t see
other people as nonentities. When people around you notice that you listen
to them to combat them, they will be reluctant to tell you things even when
they feel it will help you. They will also be reluctant to open up to you
about themselves.
 Chapter 18    Building Emotional Bridges to
Connect with Others

How to Connect with Others?

I ntentional change always begins with awareness. The empath’s world can
be boggling, and life becomes much less so when the conditions are
understood. Children sometimes become upset when unable to describe
what is happening on the inside. Once they have words to convey their
agitation, however, they quickly calm down, because what was once vague
is now real.  
Empaths live in a world they often can’t describe. They doubt its validity, as
well as their perceptions. Sensitives benefit greatly from observation and
understanding why they have been feeling what they have been feeling.
Once that is established, the chaos is no longer chaos, but something with
structure and patterns. Now there is something with rules, and this can be
understood and mastered.  
Learning about how subtle energy works gives you the theoretical
knowledge to interact on multiple levels, without losing balance. Energetic
tools and techniques give you practical skills to maneuver the environment
effectively and manipulate the subtle world the same way anyone would
influence the material plane.   
Acceptance is central. Without it, little progress can be made. This means
accepting yourself and the whole situation. Reversing the self-neglect and
choosing to see yourself as worthy can take some time. Fear of being
egotistical often gets in the way of self-love, but it’s the ego that makes one
question one’s own worthiness. The difference between self-loathing and a
healthy regard for oneself is night and day. It is the difference between
feeling tortured and being at peace. Choose peace.  
What being a sensitive means for an empath in years to come can often
provoke anxiety and fear. This can be a miserable experience, where the
mind dreams up a variety of potential worrisome situations that are rarely
based in reality. Relax. It’s a journey. Start at the beginning and let the rest
unfold.  
Attend to what needs to be addressed now and learn to be ok with
uncertainty. Life is unpredictable already, so why does having empathic
traits make this any different? People often run from themselves, but where
is there to run to? It’s like a hamster on a wheel.   
A note of warning: People who ignore their gifts do not tend to fare well.
Doing so is trying to escape a connection to something greater than
yourself, and every individual always knows — on some level — that this
is what they are choosing. It amounts to no more than burying one’s head in
the sand. Empaths who repress or ignore their experiences remain
imbalanced and are never truly happy.  
Campbell claimed that myths from around the world relating a sort of
hero’s quest always have the same fundamental steps. It begins with the
hero living a normal life, and leaving home when he feels urged to do. This
nudge from the universe is “The Call to Adventure”.  
The hero then abandons the known world upon the answer of The Call, to
undertake a mission in the uncharted territory of unknown and unexplored
realms. On the journey, the hero faces tests, meets helpers, and — if
successful — undergoes a personal transformation in which there is a
newfound awareness and appreciation of the richness within.  
The journey usually ends with the hero — now remarkably wiser from the
ordeal — returning home, often to share their discoveries with humanity.
This metaphor applies to any human who makes the bold decision to blaze
their own path through the wilderness, in the attempt to find themselves and
what life is really about.  
Most people never receive The Call (at least in this lifetime), and for those
who do, there is a choice to make whether or not to embark on it in the first
place. The thing is, there’s no journey (and no prize) if the hero refuses to
answer The Call to Adventure. This potential hero has chosen the safe path
and will live the rest of their life with the sense that they missed out on their
destiny.  
Being an empath can be likened to receiving The Call. The choice of
exploring a dimension to life that goes beyond the physical world is
completely in your hands.  
If you choose to embrace your abilities, being proactive is incredibly
important. So much of the suffering empaths endure is due to reacting to
circumstances. The situation “hits them”, throws them off balance, and the
empath strains to make the discomfort go away. It’s a vicious cycle.  
You may be so discouraged and exhausted that you struggle to find the
strength to try to solve the problem. You may have become miserably
content with managing symptoms, opposed to getting to the root of the
problem. This is only putting on a band-aid and becoming proactive will put
the empathy back in control. You will benefit greatly from looking at your
life and identifying the dynamics of difficult as well as positive situations.  
Taking special precautions and working with multiple techniques may be
necessary to successfully navigate the fields of energy. When you know of a
difficult situation or person is in the near future, it is important to take
whatever steps you need to neutralize the situation, or even turn it into a
positive exchange.  
Creating balance is the most complete way to thrive. This is embracing
yourself as a whole being and operating on a physical, emotional, and
spiritual level. People are multidimensional, and optimal functioning is
experiencing wellness in all areas of life. Health is good, work is satisfying,
relationships are positive, finances are stable, and a connection to divinity is
strong. One feels content and purposeful. Balance is relative to the
individual and situation, and what balances one will not always work for
another.  
Take some time to evaluate current circumstances and decide what is
balanced and what requires attention. If you are interested in using
something more scientific, plenty of avenues are waiting. Experimenting
with an assortment of techniques is not a bad thing but trying to reinvent the
wheel is usually a mistake.  
There are already a multitude of systems that teach how to balance the
system. Whether it is Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, philosophies
behind martial arts, naturopathy, contemplative prayer, shamanism, crystal
healing, reflexology, reiki, or mindfulness doesn’t really matter. All of these
modalities come with theory, guidelines, tools, and a progression of steps to
balance the body.  
The experimentation involves figuring out which paths bring results. Be
careful about trying to utilize too many different schools of thought,
however. Many techniques complement one another, but each path utilizes
different theories that drives the philosophy as a whole.  
For example, tai chi teaches a completely different posture than yoga. Both
methods work, and both techniques can be used, but it is impossible to
follow one completely without contradicting the teachings of another.
Another Zen parable describes trying to master two different disciplines as
a hunter who chases two rabbits and catches neither.  
Many empaths naturally gravitate towards the helping professions or
volunteering, and this can be a perfect way to use your heightened empathy
and compassion in a constructive way. Once a sensitive finds a balancing
point, the empathy loses its capacity for self-destruction. Instead, it is like
sharing one’s light with the world.    
Sensitive souls may be particularly suited to specific situations like working
with the homeless, drug addicts, refugees, the terminally ill, or those
displaced by natural disasters. Providing physical aid, comfort, and
emotional support are wonderful ways to heal others and yourself. Animals
may be more suited to certain empath’s preferences, and environmental
preservation could be perfect for another.  
Empaths may provide spiritual guidance or direct their psychic sensitivities
into such activities as astrology or intuitive readings. Engaging in important
work is not always so obvious. The gift of sensitivity can be directed
towards fellow human beings in any situation or calling. Working at a bank
or gas station and treating every customer as a light-filled being is equally
valuable. Consciously raising family and teaching kin the value of empathy
can be most suitable. The key is finding a situation that matches your
talents and interests. Feeling content is a sign that this has been achieved.  
Loving-kindness meditations, also known as “Metta”, come from the
Buddhist tradition, and are designed to develop compassion. Cultivating a
sense of love and reverence for all in the universe — with no desire to have
this returned — is the goal. Loving-kindness is first directed at the self,
because loving others is near impossible without self-love. The practices
will help you further develop your gifts, as they continue to open your heart
and prevent burnout.   
Here is an example of how to do Loving-kindness meditation:  
Find a comfortable seat and take a few minutes to relax and become still.   
Focus on the heart center.  
Say, either mentally or out loud, “I am filled with loving-kindness”. Picture
yourself with a heart overflowing with love and generosity.  
Continue to repeat your affirmation and hold this imagery. Use any other
words or visualizations that help support the sense of compassion. This
should last fifteen to twenty minutes.  
Practice regularly for a few weeks until you begin to feel its effects. Once a
sense of loving-kindness for the self is established, move on to directing
this energy towards others. The first five or ten minutes of the meditation
remain directed at the self, but the rest will then be spent focusing on
someone who summons forth feelings of love.  
After practicing this for a few weeks, switch the focus from a loved one to
someone neutral, possibly a stranger. This is a little more difficult. The most
challenging step is sending loving-kindness towards someone who sparks
feelings of hatred and animosity. With time, attitudes towards those who
have brought harm into one’s life will soften, and eventually be replaced
with compassion and forgiveness.  
Remember: What happens to one happens to all. So, the greatest gift
anyone can offer the world is their own wellness. The universe
simultaneously carries individual and collective vibrations. A person’s
frequency is on a spectrum of positive and negative energy, and an
individual’s experience fluctuates as life circumstances change.  
The strength of most people’s light is medium, with some people casting
weaker rays and other people casting stronger. This means that those with
stronger vibrations are affecting the whole more significantly than those
with feebler ones. The vibration can be anywhere on the spectrum of
positivity and negativity, so someone with a strong vibration may be
spreading good or bad energy.  
There are a handful of souls in the world, most unknown, who shine forth
such pure radiance that it counteracts most of the world’s negativity and
prevents mankind from plunging into darkness. Likewise, there exists
incredibly malicious people who are harmful, and spread their hatred
through mankind as a whole. With this concept in mind, flourishing as an
empath is much weightier than one’s own comfort.  
Whether or not you choose to publicly use your precious gifts is a personal
decision, but — with proper balancing — honing your empathic traits and
tendencies can only bring about good. Being compassionate in daily life is
like infecting the world with joy. What may seem meager is not meager, not
at all. Like a single lit candle, the smallest acts of kindness can vanquish the
dark.  
 Chapter 19     Signs of Low Emotional Intelligence

You Stress a Lot

S tress is the bane of just about everyone’s existence. No one enjoys that
feeling of their blood pressure spiking and their hearts racing. However,
it is very common when you struggle with your EQ. Because
emotionally intelligent people have the ability to self-regulate, they are
usually able to better cope with what is going on in the world around them.
They are usually a bit more confident with themselves and being willing to
stress or struggle. However, when you lack emotional intelligence, you may
struggle to manage the situation in the first place.

Studies have shown that when you fail to use your emotional intelligence
skills, you are more likely to use a method to manage your mood that is less
than stellar. It could be that you experience depression or anxiety, and you
try to self-medicate it with drugs or alcohol. You could even fall prey to
self-harming behaviors. You simply cannot cope healthily with what is
happening around you and that leads you to feel like you are stuck or
unable to better yourself or those around you.
You Struggle to Assert Yourself
When you lack EQ, you struggle to know when it is appropriate to speak up
about something bothering you and when it is better to let something go.
You do not have that ability to understand when you are choosing to do
something that is likely to be seen as a problem. You do not recognize that
line between assertion and starting a fight, and because of this, you struggle
to properly assert yourself.

Tnstead of using assertion, which would allow you to be clear about what is
bothering you, you may instead find that you are going to be stuck feeling
like you cannot voice your complaints at all. Or, alternatively, you will
spend far too much energy or time trying to assert yourself only to wind up
being aggressive or even passive aggressive at times.
You Do Not Know What Triggers You
We all have some sort of trigger to our moods. This is something that, when
it happens to you, is immediately going to set you off. It may make you
scared or angry, or something in between. However, when it happens, you
lose control—you start to act out or lash out and you lose your grip on your
own emotions. They are very powerful aspects of people’s personalities,
and everyone has one of some sorts. It could be something related to a
trauma—people with post-traumatic stress disorder oftentimes find that
they are triggered, for example, by loud sounds reminiscent of their time in
warzones .

You, too, have some sort of trigger. If you are shaking your head no right
now as you read this, however, that is a sign that you do not know what
your trigger is. You do not know what it is that will set you off—and
something will—it is just a matter of figuring out what it is. When you do
not know what your triggers are, you know that you are going to struggle
more. You know that you are ultimately going to find that you cannot deal
with them when they do pop up at some point in time. People with
emotional triggers usually lash out at people to some degree.
You Struggle to Articulate Your Emotions
Articulating your emotions is a very important job. You need to know what
bothers you and what makes you happier or sadder if you hope to be able to
navigate the world effectively. You need to know precisely what it is about
the world that bothers you, and you need to be able to clearly say it.

Even if you are not emotionally intelligent, you will still experience those
emotions. You will still feel them—but you will not be able to tell other
people what is going on. Think of the stereotypical child tantrum—a toddler
flailing and screaming and pounding on the wall. That is his way of dealing
with not being able to articulate emotions. You need to be able to
thoroughly and accurately tell others what you feel so they can begin to
understand and help.
You Make Assumptions
Oftentimes, people who struggle with their EQ also tend to create opinions
very quickly without support or research, and then they decide that they are
never going to accept anything other than that particular viewpoint. They
will not stop defending that belief system that they develop, and they will
repeatedly assert and insist that their own particular belief is the right one.
They refuse to change their mind, no matter how much evidence may be
presented that is contradictory. This is a huge problem for them—they
struggle to ensure that they are better able to correct for mistakes along the
way. Remember, change is necessary. Change happens and sometimes
people are wrong. However, when it comes down to people who are not
emotionally intelligent, they have a hard time recognizing when it is time to
change their beliefs to something that is going to be a bit more fitting to the
situation.
You Feel Misunderstood
Without emotional intelligence, you assume that other people do not
understand you in the same way that you do not understand them. You do
not understand how you are coming across to those around you, and when
they take what you were saying the wrong way, you feel upset, frustrated,
and misunderstood. However, this feeling of being misunderstood is a
symptom of an even greater problem—you are unable to articulate yourself
properly. You are unable to figure out how to speak to other people to
ensure that they understand you and get what you are trying to say.
This is something that everyone struggles with sometimes. Perfect
communication, every single time, does not exist anywhere. People struggle
to communicate sometimes and that is just fine. However, if you are unable
to make yourself understandable on a regular basis, it is time to consider
whether or not you need to make the changes to your own approach and
your own communication methods that you have. When you can make
those changes, you are able to better deal with the problem at hand. You can
begin to tweak your communication with others. You can focus on how to
better articulate yourself as well. In doing so, you can improve the entirety
of your ability to communicate with others.
You Hold Grudges
When you struggle with your EQ, you are much more likely to hold onto
those negative emotions than others are. Really, though, that attempt to
cling to your grudges is little more than a response to your stress—you are
likely to repeatedly trigger your body to respond to more stress. When you
hold onto your grudge, you are clinging to your stress, and that is a major
problem. You need to be able to let go of that stress to move on.

When you develop the propensity to use emotional intelligence, however,

you learn to eliminate that stress altogether. You learn what you can do to
help yourself change what you are doing. You can learn to let go of all of
the negativity that will otherwise plague your life and keep you down. You
can let it go to not only be healthier in mind, but in the body as well.
You Blame Others for Your Emotions
People lacking in emotional intelligence struggle greatly to understand how
they feel. They struggle to talk about how they feel and why they feel it.
They struggle to figure out what it is that is going on around them to make
them feel bad. They also assume that, when they do feel some way, or when
they behave according to their emotions in the first place, that it is someone
else’s fault. They assume that the blame for their emotions does not sit on
their own shoulders, but rather on those around them instead. If they get
angry, they will blame it on the person that they are angry at rather than
accepting that ultimately, other people are not responsible for their
emotions. At the end of the day, only you are responsible for your own
feelings. Only you have the power to control them—other people do not
make you feel angry. You and your mindset make you feel angry, and there
is a major difference between the two that you need to consider. When you
become emotionally intelligent, you learn to recognize the difference and
you stop blaming others for your own feelings.
You Hold Onto Mistakes
Similarly to holding onto grudges, many people that are not emotionally
intelligent find that they get caught up with the mistakes. They make
mistakes, as all people do, but rather than learning from them, many people
that struggle with their EQs simply try to forget their mistakes instead. They
try to ensure that they are able to better avoid the problem, and they refuse
to let it go .
You Don’t Get Angry
Sometimes, people who are not emotionally intelligent but want to have this
misconception of the process. They assume that they cannot be angry at all
—they assume that they are going to need to hide their emotions altogether.
These people will essentially fake their emotions—they will know that they
are feeling a negative feeling, so they try to hide it behind feelings of
happiness or joy. They do this because they do not want to fall into the trap
of not being able to show that they are emotionally intelligent—but
pretending to be happy when you are not is actually a sign of the exact
opposite.
 Chapter 20    Obstacles to the Improvement of EQ

T here are things you need to be wary of because of the adverse effect they
can have on the development of your EQ.
Once you are able to successfully navigate through these obstacles, you will
be ahead of the curve when it comes to being emotionally intelligent.
Below are the challenges you need to surmount to rate high in emotional
intelligence:
Not Realizing You Need to Change
Change is constant in life. However, it depends on the kind of change you
are talking about. Change is constant because you will either get better or
worse. Stagnancy does not really exist when it comes to human
development; deterioration is what is constant when you are not getting
better. In other words, positive changes are not constant, they demand to be
deliberate and committed. It is, however, not possible to improve the quality
of your life when you don’t even realize or agree that you need to improve.
It is only after you have come to realize that you need to take purposeful
steps to change your life that you can make the necessary changes. Hence,
until you agree that you need to improve your EQ, you can never take any
step to develop it. As much as it is good to have people around you that
love you unconditionally, you need to be sincere with yourself to improve
the areas of your life and to improve your EQ.
Not Being Ready to Change
It is one thing to realize and agree that you need to change; it is, however, a
different thing entirely to be ready to pay the sacrifices attached to the
positive change you crave. There are no free gifts in life. Every gift you
receive was paid for by another person. No one can improve your life for
you more than your own willingness to do that. Developing your EQ
demands deliberate efforts that require your commitment.
Hence, don’t just sit there and hope that a miracle will occur somewhere
that will make you suddenly begin to improve. You must be ready to work
your socks off. Thus, once you have agreed with yourself that you need to
improve your level of emotional intelligence, you need to also start doing
everything necessary to improve in the way you handle your emotions and
those of the people that come your way.
Accepting Defeat
Some people have a deterministic view about life where they feel whatever
comes their way is their lot. This view makes such people accept anything
that comes their way and they rarely make any attempt to take deliberate
steps or concise efforts to improve the quality of their lives. Such people
will see their inability to manage their emotions effectively as just their
‘personality’. This is their grand excuse for acting impulsively and having
difficulties with maintaining excellent relationship with others.
I am not denying that your personality has a role to play in the way you
behave, but there is a lot you can do to improve the way you act. Hence,
you cannot afford to throw in the towel yet because there is still room for
improvement. You can either chose to do nothing about your EQ or
challenge yourself to make the necessary commitment to improving your
emotional intelligence.
The Wrong Company
I am not talking about a firm; I am talking about the kind of people you
have around you. You cannot grow beyond the kind of influence you have
around you. When you surround yourself with negative people who don’t
care about the way they go about life, you will find it difficult to grow in
the way you manage your emotions. Be around people who genuinely care
about you as such people will accept you in spite of your deficiencies and
help you grow.
They will not let you be contented with your flaws; they will work in
tandem with you to help you grow and fulfill your potential. When you
have such people in your life, don’t let pride or offense set in and make you
lose them. Value such people and see to it that the relationship continues to
blossom. The quality of your life depends on such people.
Trying To Be Perfect
As much as it is important to ensure that you keep growing and getting
better as a person, you will never be perfect. The faster you accept the fact
that you are human and will flop once in a while, the better for you.
Developing your EQ is not all about becoming a perfect person but
improving yourself so as to improve the quality of your life. Hence,
whenever you make a mistake, move on.
You will never be able to develop your EQ if you are trying to live a life
that does not have any mistakes. What you need to do is to ensure that your
mistakes decrease in frequency and that is the essence of being committed
to developing your EQ. There is no one who does not make mistakes.
Hence, you should not consider it an anomaly that you did something you
should not have done. 
Not Giving Room for Growth
This is particularly important if you function in one leadership role or the
other. When I said “leadership role”, I am not outrightly referring to being
the C.E.O. of a company. As a father or mother, you are also a leader
because you need to lead your children correctly. As a leader, you must be
willing to give room for growth. In other words, as much as you want
people to be productive and effective, you have to also allow them to make
mistakes and learn from them.
Knowing when to be stern and when to pat people on the back is key to
emotional intelligence. When you allow people to grow and become better,
you will have a larger heart which is unconsciously developing your EQ.
Therefore, you will not only harm the people you are leading when you
don’t allow them to grow, but you will also hamper your own growth as an
individual .
Letting Every Opinion Matter
It is important to listen to the opinion of others but every opinion must not
count to you. There will always be ridiculous people who have chosen to
make you feel miserable. There is no one, no matter how good they are, that
is disliked by absolutely no one. Hence, you will only be denying yourself
the necessary room to develop your EQ when you take everyone who
criticizes you seriously.
You must be able to know the difference between people who criticize you
because they want you to become better as a person and people who are all
out to bring you down. People who criticize you to bring you down will
hammer on every fault and try to disrupt your rhythm. You must be
determined to be focused and ignore such people. Trying to please such
people is pointless because there is nothing you can do that will ever be
good enough for them.
Being a Destructive Critic
You don’t want people to talk you down just to distract you, you should also
not do the same to others. When you are concerned about bringing others
down, you will not be able to grow also. You will be too busy designing
new techniques to attack others to come up with ideas to improve your own
life. Not doing to others what you also don’t want them to do to you is a
simple but important life principle.
Get busy with improving your own life and developing your own EQ rather
than saddling yourself with the task of bringing others down. Never forget
that people only criticize those who have decided to go out there and do
something important in life. No one criticizes people who don’t do anything
meaningful with their lives because such people don’t count. It is
hypocritical to want others to be kind to you while you are always ready to
attack them when they make mistakes.
Getting Stuck in the Past
When you get stuck in the past, you will never be able to take advantage of
the opportunities of today and the ones that will come your way in the
future. I understand that you might have done things that make you feel like
a complete idiot, but we all do that. When you talk to people you cherish
and hold in high regard, you will realize that they have also made the wrong
choices in the past. Hence, your case is not different.
It is when you have refused to forgive yourself and move on that you are
truly making a mess of your life. You should treat your past as a lesson that
will spur you to make better decisions in the future. There are endless
opportunities to thrive and make the best out of your life but you will never
be able to make use of these opportunities when you keep crying over
“spilled milk”.
 Chapter 21    Busting the Myths about Emotional
Intelligence

s is the case with a lot of things, there exist several misconceptions

A regarding emotional intelligence. You’ve probably been able to identify
the misconceptions you have had about emotional intelligence yourself,
and the accompanying truth of the matter. Some of the myths are laughable
while others are downright ridiculous. Seeing that EQ deals with emotion, it
is probably not too unexpected that there would be numerous feelings
expressed on the same. Dive in to find out what is true about emotional
intelligence and what isn’t.
Myth: Emotional intelligence is a woman’s area
Truth: Emotional intelligence is a skill that applies to both men and women.
For the longest time, the stereotype of women being more emotional than
men has been perpetuated by various channels. It, therefore, follows that
when most people hear of emotional intelligence they only think of women.
This could not be further from the truth. First of all, the claim that women
are the more emotional of the human species is not a claim that is supported
by biology. When scientists set out to study this phenomenon, they found
out that the populations observed were more likely to behave according to
the expectations placed on them by their cultures rather than as dictated by
nature. In other words, women might behave more emotionally since that is
what society or culture dictates from them, while men might repress their
emotions for the same reason.
Seeing that we are capable of emotion, regardless of gender, it follows that
there is a need to understand and manage those emotions. Even if there was
a parallel universe where males were virtually incapable of having
emotions, they would still be required to deal with women who, clearly,
have emotions. As such, emotional intelligence is a scale that these parallel
universe males would require when interacting with the parallel universe
women.
Myth: Emotional intelligence is the sole determinant for success in life.
Truth: There are many factors that determine whether you will be
successful in life and EQ happens to be one of them.
Emotional intelligence opens a lot of doors for you in life. When you are
able to read and relate well with people, you do not have as many obstacles
when compared to someone who has low EQ. However, EQ is not the all-
inclusive package for success. Success requires a combination of smarts,
hard work, opportunity or chance, and sometimes even sheer luck. Being
low in the EQ does not automatically qualify you for failure. In fact, there
are some professions where people become highly successful just by
relying on their IQ .
An engineer, for instance, might be required to have a very high IQ so that
they can easily grasp concepts. The same engineer might be very low on the
EQ front and still go on to become highly successful because their work
calls for smarts over emotional intelligence. Sure, the engineer might
struggle with personal relationships and will probably never hold a
management position, but they will still be successful in their own right.
Myth: Emotional intelligence is about being nice.
Truth: Emotional intelligence is more than just being nice.
Over the years, nice has grown to be synonymous with being a pushover or
a doormat. Whenever people hear that someone is nice, they start to
imagine all manner of ways they can walk all over that person. Here’s the
thing: If you think of nice as the capacity to tolerate people’s personalities
and their idiosyncrasies, then yes, emotional intelligence is about being
nice. However, if your definition of nice is being the person that says yes to
every request and does not have a voice of their own, then you are way off
from what emotional intelligence actually is. Emotional intelligence does
not make you a yes-man. In fact, emotional intelligence equips you with all
the skills that you need to be able to say no as many times as you need and
to do so unapologetically.
Myth: You’re either born with emotional intelligence or not.
Truth: You can learn to become more emotionally intelligent.
Emotional intelligence is not the same as height whereby you are either
born tall or short and are thereafter doomed to never reaching the higher
shelves or always being the brunt of height jokes. Sure, some people have a
higher ability to grasp emotional intelligence. This might depend on how
they are born, how they are raised, the experiences they have been through,
and numerous other factors that they interact with as they become adults.
However, most people are capable of being emotionally intelligent. Even
psychopaths who are incapable of feeling emotions like the rest of us know
how to mimic emotional intelligence. If you are a fully functional human
being with a wide range of emotions, then you are fully capable of being
emotionally intelligent.
Myth: Everyone that knows how to charm people is emotionally intelligent.
Truth: Sometimes there is more than emotional intelligence behind the
charm.
Some of the most charming people you know are also the most dangerous
human beings that you’ll ever cross paths with. Just because a person
knows when and how to smile in your face does not mean that they are high
in EQ. They might just be manipulative. Psychopaths, for instance, know
how to blend in and play Mr. Sociable Guy role to perfection. While an
emotionally intelligent person will make you feel relaxed and comfortable
without invading your personal space, a psychopath that is trying to win
your trust may be more forceful, persistent and full-on in a manner that
might be uncomfortable. A trick you can use to determine whether you are
dealing with high EQ or psychopathy is by trusting your gut feeling,
watching whether someone’s actions match their words and noticing how
you feel after every interaction. If you are leaving conversations feeling
drained and unsure, you might be dealing with an energy vampire in the
form of a psychopath rather than an emotionally intelligent person.
Myth: Introverts are not usually emotionally intelligent.
Truth: Introverts can be as emotionally intelligent as anyone else.
Introverts are known (or at least stereotyped) to be these shy and socially
awkward people who have little to zero chance of ever being good at
normal social interactions. An introvert is simply someone who prefers to
look into themselves rather than turning to their external world for
stimulation. An introvert is content in their own company and will often
prefer to be silent rather than to talk. An introvert’s worst nightmare is the
extrovert, especially the kind of extrovert who does not have any emotional
intelligence. Now, just because a person prefers to be silent does not mean
that they are low in emotional intelligence. In fact, the fact that introverts
are inward-looking means that they probably already have the self-
awareness bit of EQ figured out. However, because introverts tend to be so
absorbed in their worlds (in the most unselfish way possible) it means that
they have to work a little harder at drawing themselves out into their
external environment.
Seeing that introversion is a personality type, and personalities are not
known scientifically to be dynamic, an introvert will often face the uphill
task of opening up their world to other people. For instance, you cannot be
empathetic to the suffering of others unless you are aware of this suffering.
To become aware of this suffering, you must at least speak with this person
so that they can tell you that yes indeed they are having a bad day. This can
be almost too much to ask from an introvert.
The good news is that emotional intelligence can be learned since it is a
skill like any other. An introvert is able to pick up the cues that they need to
incorporate to be emotionally intelligent just like all other personality types.
In fact, there are introverts out there who are highly emotionally intelligent.
They know how to carry themselves when they are in a group of people.
They understand that certain circumstances call for them to leave the
security of their shells. Once they are back home, they quietly retreat to the
safety of their shell until further circumstances require them to come out.
Myth: Emotional intelligence is only important for people in leadership
roles or in particular professions.
Truth: Emotional intelligence makes your life easier regardless of who you
are.
When you are in a leadership position, your lack of emotional intelligence
will be more apparent and detrimental compared to a lack of emotional
intelligence in the people that you lead or any other person. It has been said
that with great power comes great responsibility and this could not be truer
when it comes to emotional intelligence. When you serve as a leader or
boss, your every move is on the spotlight. People will pay attention to how
you speak to your juniors, how you show care and consideration for others,
how you manage stressful situations, and even how you manage yourself.
Your teams will also look to you to model the kind of behavior that they
should emulate and to be their mentor in matters of business and
relationships. Imagine being in such a position while lacking emotional
intelligence. More likely than not, you are going to be highly overwhelmed.
That being said, everyone needs emotional intelligence in their lives. You
do not need to be anybody’s boss to appreciate the benefits that come with
being self-aware and self-regulating. And what about motivation? Everyone
could use some bit of intrinsic drive and passion in their lives. Motivation is
what gives you the fuel to get you everything that you need in your life. If
not for anything else, aim to be emotionally intelligent so that you can have
better personal relationships in your life. We could all use some of those. 
 Chapter 22     Emotional Intelligence Models

A saswea open the door to the notion of emotional intelligence, we find that,
leader, we are forced not only to deal with a diverse group of
people daily but also continuously confront the same questions.  How
do we make the right decision?  How do we motivate our team?  How do
we do things better?  
The core of everything, however, is the same: a willingness to changes and
adapt to suit the needs of the workforce and the company. We will soon
learn that if we can properly balance and redirect the way we lead.  
Once you begin to understand the importance of emotion and emotional
intelligence, you will automatically realize that you are in need of a solid
theoretical base from which you can work forward – this theoretical base is
henceforth provided in the form of the three most important models of
emotional intelligence produced by modern research.  
These three models once properly understood and instilled can and will act
as the gravitational center of all your leadership decisions and will act as an
anchor and a tool to help you simplify and tackle any upcoming and current
problem. It is, in other words, your light at the end of the tunnel, not just a
beacon of hope, but also a guide to lead you forward.   
Now, are you ready to brush up on your theory? 
Emotional Intelligence Ability
The ability model is an EQ model developed by Yale’s Peter Salovey and
the University of New Hampshire’s John Mayer. It is based on four
individually standing yet interconnected emotion-related abilities. When
combined, they can basically measure the level of emotional intelligence
that an individual has.
•       Emotional Perception
The first and most basic ability is perception. In order to accurately master
and apply emotions and emotional intelligence, one must first be able to not
only understand the verbal emotional cues provided but also accurately
identify the non-verbal cues that workers and peers use in their regular
interactions. Non-verbal cues include body language, facial expression,
tone, vocabulary, and even contextual behavior or omission of an act. To
become a good leader, you need to pick up these cues and identify them
masterfully.  
•       Use of Emotion
The second most important ability according to the ability model is the
capacity to control and use one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of
other people, to your advantage. It is an undisputed fact that feelings play a
major role in the decision-making process. We have already highlighted
how emotions can even influence logical decisions and lead to emotion-
based ideas and logical fallacies. However, what we haven’t really touched
upon is the truth that, despite all this, every decision not taken by a robot or
AI is still influenced by some degree of emotion. As such, it is critical for a
leader to know how to mold and manipulate their feelings to achieve their
desired ends. This is particularly vital when a leader is dealing with an issue
that needs to be resolved at once.  
•       Understanding Emotions  
Another important part of EQ is the ability to properly comprehend the
depth and implications of emotion. Now, unlike what most people seem to
think, identifying an emotion is not always enough. Furthermore, it is hard
to navigate through it without understanding its roots and effects first. For
instance, if you were dealing with an individual who happened to be angry,
your first question as a leader should be “Why?” By unmasking the
reasoning that the individual is using, whether or not you agree with it, you
are also giving yourself insight into the possible future actions that he or she
may take. When it comes to anger, after all, a possible future action can be
seeking revenge, attacking, or retreating fearfully. 
As a leader, you need to have that insight into all of your employees and
other people you interact with. Remember, knowledge is power, and EQ is
emotional knowledge at its peak.  
•       Managing Emotions  
This brings us to the final emotional competency measured by the ability
model: the management of emotions. Managing emotions deals with three
main factors - is the person in question being able to adequately take into
account the emotions that they are perceiving? If they are, then are they
comprehensively using those emotions to control the root cause and
reactive elements in question.  
Mixed Model Intelligence
The good news is, unlike IQ, which is mostly built-in and fixated after our
teen years, our EQ is learned and can be learned at any age. In fact, there
are five specific components of emotional intelligence that help buoy your
ability to function with better emotional stability, which is covered in the
David Goleman model of EQ, a.k.a. the Mixed Model.  
Self-Awareness  

The development of self-awareness as a business leader is critical. As a

business leader, after all, you need to be aware of your own moods and
emotions so that you can also follow and anticipate how they will impact
others.  It is also important because self-awareness allows you to
understand what motivates you as an individual. 
The more in tune you are with your personal strengths, weaknesses,
interests, and disinterests, the better you will be able to control and
influence your own actions.  
Self-awareness allows a person to have a strong sense of self-worth as well.
This is super important as it lets you identify your own strengths and
teaches you how to accept criticism, which is a critical part of human
development. Such a need intensifies when you become a business leader
because the more you develop self-awareness, the more your organization
can grow under your leadership.  
Self-Control  

Self-control is another extremely important competency. Unlike self-

awareness that focuses on the understanding of the self, self-control
concentrates on the ability to conform and redirect actions or reactions.
This way, the things that we do are not impulsive.  Self-control works to
actively increase the process of rational thinking under pressure and is
meant to encourage and boost productive actions.  
 Motivation  

It is extremely important to keep in mind that one’s ability and will to work
do not merely depend on the logical factors that generally govern work-
life balance, such as monetary gain or professional advancement. There
are many times in which a person’s desire to work comes from something
more basic like their passion or determination to do well and succeed in
life. And these factors, when combined together, are what we often call
as motivation. The thing is, it is more than just drive. It is the force that
allows someone to easily overcome the obstacles that they will
undoubtedly face as they continue to pursue their goals. That is exactly
why any good leader needs to have a strong grasp of what motivates their
employees and how to increase those motivational levels best.  
 Why?
While being aware of how you impact your employees is great, so is being
able to control your own emotions. Nevertheless, what’s genuinely
important is having the ability to handle your employee’s emotions,
which is basically what motivation does. 

Empathy  

Empathy is also very important, particularly for business leaders. It allows a

good leader to feel what other people - more importantly, what their co-
workers or employees - feel. Even in cases wherein a leader is unable to
completely understand others’ emotions, the mere establishment of the
intent to reach out, understand, and work through these problems is a
core skill for any mentor. Especially for people in diverse work cultures,
that is such an integral part of today’s business world. 

Social Skill
Finally, we find ourselves dealing with social skills. Despite being able to
empathize, understand, and even control our own emotions, it is impossible
to be a good business leader if one cannot demonstrate strong and
consistent ability to deal with conflict situations and manage mutually
beneficial relationships. This skill to be whoever their consumers and
employees needs them to be is always common in every great leader.   
A person manages to do that by obtaining and maintaining a high degree of
emotional intelligence, of course! 
Emotional Intelligence Trait Model 
This specific model does not merely test one’s perception of their own
emotions, but it does so in a manner that allows self-assessment to help
build the EQ framework. It has often been criticized for its vulnerability to
result in manipulation. For instance, if a person decides to answer
dishonestly, their EQ would theoretically be scored incorrectly; however,
the model itself has been known to reject such implications. A basic Trait
Model EQ test imposed on an adult would consist of the measure of 15
major points. 
 Adaptability  

Adaptability is an individual’s emotional intelligence trait that is considered

to indicate his or her flexibility. It refers to how rigid they are in their own
thought pattern, as well as how capable they are of adapting to newfound
situations or conditions. 
Adaptability is a key component of emotional intelligence, considering the
only way to bolster teamwork is by putting together a cohesive team and
showing a willingness to change their ways, which is something that any
good leader should be on the lookout for.  
Assertiveness  

Following up is assertiveness. It is a sociability trait that determines the

individual’s ability to stand up for the rights that they have inherited or
gained, as well as communicate their feelings or opinions in a frank and
forthright way. The higher the assertiveness of an individual is, the more
emotionally intelligent they are considered to be. After all, the trait is
indicative of clarity and consistency of mind.  
Emotional Expression
Emotional expression is a similarly important trait. Unlike assertiveness,
however, emotional expression is an emotionality trait that determines how
capable a person is at communicating their thoughts and feelings to other
people. The higher a person scores on their emotional expression, the more
in tune they are with their emotionality and personal views. This serves as
an indicator of high emotional intelligence.  
Emotional Management
Another sociability trait is emotional management. This is thought to
measure how well an individual can use their other sociability skills, such
as assertiveness, to control and influence other people, especially their
thoughts and feelings. 
The more adept a person is at managing or controlling others’ emotions, the
higher their emotional intelligence score is, considering the entire objective
of emotional intelligence is to be able to exert some sort of control over
other people through emotional manipulation.   
Emotional Perception
Unlike emotional management, though, emotional perception centers more
around the emotionality factor and is used to check how comprehensive
one’s understanding is of their own feelings, as well as the others’. It is
another extremely important factor since most actions are undertaken due to
the individuals’ understanding of the emotional state of the other person or
even themselves.  
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation, on the other hand, falls under the category of self-
control and is a trait that assesses how capable the individual is when it
comes to not only influencing but completely controlling and regulating
how people feel regularly. The better a person is at handling their own
emotions, the better and more balanced their decisions will be, and the more
likely it is for these decisions to be good. As such, emotional regulation is
another key factor measured.  

Impulsiveness   
Another self-control variety that trait models measure is the scale of
impulsiveness that is displayed by individuals. The lower the impulsiveness
levels a person shows, the higher their emotional intelligence is deemed to
be. The reason is that being impulsive is the exact opposite of acting with
emotional intelligence. In truth, it has a tendency to destabilize any decision
because it is usually a not-well-thought-out reaction.  
Relationships  

Another emotionality-based trait is relationships. A critical part of

measuring emotional intelligence is weighing a subject’s ability to not only
perceive or act on but also fully function in an emotionally balanced
manner to maintain personal relationships that are meaningful and
fulfilling. Think of Sheldon Cooper’s ability to keep friendships and
relationships as opposed to a normal person - that is what you’re trying to
avoid. Sheldon from the first season of Big Bang Theory is not very high on
the EQ scale, and maintaining personal relationships is challenging for him.
His other friends like Penny may not have a high IQ level, but they are
quite capable in terms of EQ maintenance.  
 Self-Esteem   
How a person views himself or herself is also an important part of
emotional intelligence. You should keep in mind, however, that the trait test
is not a simple case of high means good or low equates bad in terms of its
scoring. On the contrary, each score is contextually based. As it involves
self-assessment, it is based more on the perceptions that someone has of
himself or herself instead of the actual measure of competencies or skills
that the individuals hold. Nevertheless, positive well-being is determined by
higher levels of self-esteem, among other factors.  
Self-Motivation  

Self-motivation is one of the auxiliary facets of the test that is used to assess
how driven an individual perceives themselves to be and how likely they
are to either succeed or persist in their attempts to achieve a goal despite the
situation at hand. In other words, it seeks to measure how much drive an
individual has when it comes to how they approach issues daily.  
Self-Awareness  

Interestingly, self-awareness, which is a sociability factor, differs from self-

esteem and self-motivation, in the sense that it does not measure any
positive view that one may have or think they have about themselves.
Instead, it seems single-mindedly focused on identifying how accomplished
a person is in terms of how they perceive their own social skills and
subsequent networking abilities. It matters to keep in mind that awareness
does not depend on how good one is about their skills but how well they
can realize whatever abilities they have.  
Stress Management
Emotional or stress management is another sociability factor and the last of
the three used to measure trait EQ. 
An individual’s perception of their ability to withstand and work under
stress, as well as their perceived ability to regulate or control the stress
levels imposed on them are both identified through stress management.  
Trait Empathy
Another emotionality trait measured is empathy. Here, the individual’s
perception of how far they can commiserate and objectively see the world
from the eyes of another person is identified and accounted for.   
Trait Happiness
The happiness trait, on the other hand, deals with how a person perceives
their ability to be happy, how happy they think they are, and how satisfied
they are with their own lives. Hence, the well-being of an individual is
judged in part by the happiness trait.  
Trait Optimism  
The last trait is measured by trait optimism, which, as a rule, checks how
likely an individual is to confidently look at the positives - or on the “bright
side,” as people put it.  
With EQ tests measuring different parts and many other factors, it is clear
that emotional intelligence plays a critical role in terms of predicting job
performance. As such, it has a very specific impact on contextual
happenstances. It practically means that there is a positive correlation
between the two. Emotional intelligence can be used to approach
organizational behavior as a tool, which will not only help explain problems
in the workforce but actively and effectively navigate through its waters as
well. 
 Chapter 23    How to Master and Control Anger

ou can hold a grudge for years because of your anger. You know people
Y whom you have not spoken to for a very long time because you still feel
anger towards them. You find yourself having dangerous suicidal
thoughts, perhaps even have tendencies of violence. You are unable to
express your anger appropriately, choosing instead to keep it buried inside.
Your anger is preventing you from living a meaningful, happy life. You
constantly find yourself feeling disgruntled, irritated, and frustrated more
than you are happy, and even the smallest of instances could set you off
because of it. You’re verbally, emotionally (sometimes even physically)
abusive towards others around you. You find that it spills over not just into
your personal life, but professional life as well. Any of these scenarios
sound familiar to you? If yes, then it’s entirely possible you’ve got an anger
problem that you need to now learn how to control. 
If you think anger is only a problem when it’s violent temper tantrums and
shouting matches, think again. Repressed anger can be just as much of a
problem. This unexpressed anger works the same way as a volcano does. It
bubbles and boils under the surface until one day when something sets you
off, all that repressed anger just comes shooting out with catastrophic
consequences. Anger, which is not expressed or shown, is just as bad as
anger, which is blatantly displayed. Either way you spin it, anger is a very
real problem that can’t be ignored any longer. Not if you want to become a
true master of your emotions, at least. 
Controlling your anger is not about suppression. Suppression is not the
goal.  The goal here is to learn how to control that anger, to understand why
you are reacting the way that you are. To learn how to respond better
without jumping to anger as your first immediate reaction. To be able to
effectively handle situations that would have normally aggravated you
without losing control. That is the goal of learning how to control your
anger. Denying your anger issues is one of the WORST things you could
do. More importantly, it will not help you learn to control it. Facing your
less than desirable qualities may not be something that you want to do but
living in denial and ignoring it never solved anything either. The more you
deny your emotions and anger issues, the worst it will be for you when it
comes to managing it. A more likely scenario is you find yourself feeling
angrier and losing your temper even more because you feel helpless and
unable to control the situation.
Mastering your angry emotions, like everything else, comes down to the
right coping techniques and skills to get the situation (your emotions) under
control. To effectively do that, you need to:

Look at The Root Reason - Anger always stems from

something. There is always a cause and a trigger. Your
childhood, a former traumatic experience, your role
models growing up, your stress levels. All these things add
up and could build towards anger problems. To begin
learning how to control your anger, you must first explore
and connect with the core reason anger is your first line of
response is how you to control it. Did you know that your
anger is very often a response that is meant to cover-up
other feelings that you may have? That is why exploring
the root reason is the only way to treat the problem at its
core. What are those feelings? Jealousy? Embarrassment?
Hurt? Shame? Insecurity? These are some of the reason
you need to think about. When was the last time you asked
yourself: “Why am I REALLY angry?”

Distract, Don’t React - Anger is such a disruptive emotion.

It causes a lot of hurt, pain, trauma, and worse, physical
hurt at times. All common sense just seems to go out the
window in the heat of the moment. Distract instead of
reacting is not always easy, but it does get better with
practice. Instead of choosing to act on your emotions,
deflect your attention elsewhere until you’ve forgotten
about what it was that was threatening your temper. You
need to distance yourself from your emotions for as long
as it takes until you are properly distracted enough to
forget what it was you were about to feel angry about.
Think Happy Thoughts, Do Happy Things - Peter Pan may
have got it right when he said: “Think happy thoughts.”
People who struggle with anger issues have a lot of misery
and unhappiness inside them. How can you learn to
control your anger if you’re still harboring all that
negativity inside you? There’s nothing better at getting rid
of all those unhappy, miserable feelings than to very
simply think about and do something that makes you
happy. Indulge in a passion or a hobby, throw yourself into
an activity that you love. A happier state of mind makes it
easy to think with a clearer head, you don’t get as worked
up so easily anymore, and it becomes much easier to learn
how to control your anger issues. 

Emotional Journaling - It may not be for everyone, but

when it comes to controlling your anger issues, it can be
very therapeutic. One of the challenges when it comes to
anger is that you’re so overwhelmed with all sorts of
emotion (anger, frustration, irritation) that it all comes out
all at once. A lot of people tend to strike out or lash out in
anger because they don’t have proper channels or outlets
to release that anger unto. This is where a journal comes in
handy. It gives you a safe and private place where you can
express every feeling and emotion you have without the
fear of being ridiculed or judged. Even better, it is possible
the safest outlet for you to release your feelings of anger
with repercussions, without hurting anyone or yourself in
the process. 
Chapter 24    Getting Rid of Negativity in Your Life

egativity and positivity are a constant part of life, but negativity has no-
N so-healthy effects on us and potentially everyone around us. It sets
limits on our dreams, goals, and aspirations. Negativity can adversely
affect how fulfilling and purposeful our life is. It also has huge effects on
our health, whether physical or mental. Studies have shown over and over
that people who vibe with negative energy are more prone to stress, anxiety,
sickness, and depression than people who are surrounded by positive energy
only.
When you make up your mind to rid your life of negativity and start
encouraging positivity and you actually act on this decision, you start to
engage in productive things and meet productive people only. Positive
experiences sweep away negative energy in your life. One thing to know is
that you can’t completely get rid of negativity because it is a crucial part of
life experiences and human survival; however, you can limit the level of
negativity you encourage in your life by doing more of positive behaviors,
thoughts, or actions. Below are tips to help you get rid of negativity and
enhance positivity.
 Be Grateful for Everything
Entitlement is a dangerous thing because it can make you have skewed
expectations of people. It is quite easy to start believing you deserve
everything you have when life is all rosy for you. This could make you
develop a sense of entitlement which causes you to have unrealistic
expectation of others and how they should cater to your needs, wants, and
everything else. Selfish entitlement is one of the surest ways to set yourself
up for a negativity-filled life. People who never appreciate the life they
have andlive in a constant state of lack and discontentment so there is no
way to live a life of positivity this way. Becoming grateful and showing
appreciation for everything you have in life, from the littlest to the biggest,
makes you change your mindset from a place of lack to a place of
contentment. Once people notice this new you, it becomes easier to develop
harmony in the relationships they share with you. The more grateful you
are, the more you receive. This single action can instantaneously make life
more positive, fulfilling, and encouraging.

Laugh more, even when there is no Cause

Life can feel draining sometimes due to the many activities going on;
tight schedules, busy relationships, work, and everything else. In the midst
of all this busyness, it is quite easy to start feeling more like an android
rather than a human (no offense to androids). Living with a work-driven,
serious mindset will do nothing but bring negative results and performance.
It makes you take life so serious that you forget to laugh sometimes.
Encouraging positivity means living life with a less serious mindset and
giving yourself some break. You only live life once so why burden yourself
with all of those responsibilities? Laughter is a great way of reminding
yourself that you are human. A laugh brightens your mood and that of
people around you; remember laughter is infectious. Laugh more at jokes
and stop being so sensitive to light sarcasm. Too much seriousness will only
encourage stress. Do not just laugh at people though; laugh more at yourself
too. The more you laugh at yourself and the mistakes you make, the more
interesting and exciting life becomes. Happiness is key to positivity so
encourage happiness in your life. Remind yourself of happy experiences in
the past and laugh your heart out till you are satisfied. Encourage your brain
to release more and more dopamine.

Change your Perception and Thinking

about Life
You have two choices in life; be your friend or be your enemy. To
initiate any change in life, you have to start from within yourself. If you
really want to be rid of negativity and become more positive, change your
perception of life, situations, and the circumstances you find yourself in. A
negative perception of life can be really corrosive so start making active
efforts to change your perspectives about life. When you fail a test, do not
see it as failure or incapability; instead, see it as an opportunity to work
harder and do better.
 Help others
Selfishness goes hand-in-hand with negativity just like entitlement. Stop
living for yourself only and start living for others too. This isn’t to say you
should take on the responsibilities of others and leave yours; it is more
about creating a balance between how you help yourself and help others.
People who live for themselves tend to have no purpose or calling in life. If
you live for yourself and no other person, it would be very hard to live a life
of purpose and fulfillment. Negativity defies purpose while positivity
accompanies fulfillment and purpose. The best way to start creating purpose
in life is to help people around you. Helping people can be something as
simple as flashing them a bright smile or asking them how their day went.
Doing things for others, no matter how little, gives you a sense of value and
direction which helps you develop positivity.

Spend more time around positive people

The people we spend time around have a lot of impact on the kind of
energy that surrounds us. Sometimes, the negativity in your life may be
because of the toxic people you spend time with; they may be friends,
colleagues, relatives, or partner. You are likely to become more like the
people you spend time around. If your clique is filled with negativity-
inclined people and energy vampires, then you are likely to learn their
behaviors and become like them. It is almost impossible to live a life of
positivity if all the people you spend time with don’t even portray positive
behaviors. As you rid yourself of negativity and become more positive, you
may find that you friends notice the new you and appreciate it or try to
convince you that the change is unnecessary.
Change is scary and challenging from afar but once you initiate it, the
process becomes a seamless experience. Taking the steps, no matter how
small, will help you change your overall perspective and attitude towards
life. Once you rid yourself of negativity, life becomes brighter and
purposeful.
 Chapter 25    Mindfulness, Visualization, Guided
Imagery and Relaxation Techniques for Instant
Relief from Stress, Anxiety and Anger

M indfulness meditation, visualization, and guided imagery are all

relaxation techniques you can use to keep your calm whenever you
feel some turmoil within. So, one by one, let’s check out how you can
practice each of these techniques for relaxation.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a quality inherent in all of us, but we don’t know how to
channel it. Thankfully, experts have developed meditation techniques
targeted at helping you achieve mindfulness which is the ability to become
so in tune with you, your emotions, and your environment.

Firstly, find a quiet and calm spot in your

home or anywhere else you deem quite enough to fully
appreciate nature. This place should be tidy, without any
form of clutter. Ensure there are lights on whether natural
or electronic. You may also sit outside but make sure there
is nothing to distract you.

Then, assume a sitting position in the right

posture. It is important to sit in the right posture so as to
ensure concentration and minimal distraction. Find a
suitable spot to sit, be it a chair, a bench, or a meditation
cushion. The sitting spot should be  stable, solid, and
stationary. Ensure you are aware of your legs and how
they are positioned. If you are on a cushion, place your
legs comfortably in a crossed position. If you are on a
chair, ensure your feet are touching the bare ground.  Sit in
a straight position without stiffening your body. Let your
arms be positioned in a parallel position to your upper
body; your hands should be on the top of your legs.
Finally, ensure you lower your eyelids so that your gaze
falls slightly downwards. Remain in this sitting position
for some seconds and relax your body.

Focus on your breath and the sensations

you feel in your body. As you breathe in and breathe out,
feel your breath and focus on the sound. Notice everything
from the air leaving your body through the nose or mouth
to the air entering the body; the rise and fall of your
tummy and chest. Make a mental note of every breath you
take, in and out. As you do this, take note that your
attention will eventually shift from your breath to other
things. Have no worry; mindfulness has nothing to do with
the elimination of thoughts. Simply return your attention
to your breathing each time you notice your thoughts
wander.

In case you need to adjust your posture or

physical position, pause your breath before you do this.
Whether it is something as simple as moving your hand or
scratching your hair, pause. Ensure you do this with intent,
leave a space between what you are currently doing and
what you need to do.

Again, your mind will wander over and

over to other things; this is normal. However, do not try to
engage these thoughts because they will make you lose
your concentration totally. Instead, bring your mind back
every time it wanders to something else.

Do this for about 10 minutes and when you

are ready, lift your gaze from the ground and open your
eyes if they are closed. For a minute, listen to your
environment and notice any sound. Listen to your
thoughts and emotions. Now, take a decision and
 determine how you’d like to spend the rest of your day at
that moment.

There, you are done. Mindfulness is just as easy as that although you
will find it’s not as simple in practice. Concentration is key and it is usually
so easy to lose your focus.

Visualization
Over the years, visualization has been used to achieve calm, relaxation,
and relief from stress, anxiety, and depression. It is a simple case of using
images in your head to project yourself to a place you’d like to be; a place
of calm till your body itself becomes calm. Some people even consider
visualization to be a form of superpower they can use to achieve anything
they want. People often regard visualization and guided imagery to be the
same, but they aren’t. Guided imagery is great for stress relief while
visualization is more effective for achieving a set goal. You should too!
Here is how to practice visualization.

Find a comfortable and quiet sitting corner

without distractions. Take your seat, close your eyes and
prepare yourself to imagine what you’d like. It’s just like
looking at yourself using a different eye. Note that
visualization is best practiced when you just wake up or
when you are about to retire to bed. This is when you are
most relaxed and when your mind is most free.

Now, visualize an image of yourself sitting

in a movie theater with the lights dimmed. The movie
starts and there is an image of you being the best version
of yourself on the screen. Include as many details as
possible; your clothes, emotion, facial expression,
physical movements, the environment, and every other
important detail. Try to make yourself experience
whatever feelings you think you want to experience in this
visualized version of yourself. For example, if you are
 practicing visualization to reduce your anger; project an
image of a much calmer version of yourself.

Then, stand up, take a walk to the screen,

open an imagined door, and enter into the movie of
yourself. Now you can live and experience everything
from inside yourself. This strengthens the effect of the
visualization process. Spend as much time as you need to
take in all the details; hear the sound and feel the
emotions.

Once you are done, walk out of the screen

which still has that image of you, and return to your
theater seat. Sit for a while, then grab the screen and
crumple in your hands until only a smaller version
remains. Take this in your mouth and swallow it. As you
swallow, imagine that is the project better, calm, and well-
behaved version of yourself being ingested into every cell
and vein in your body. Finally, imagine the ingested
screen lighting up your body and feel yourself become a
pro at controlling your feelings of anger and handling
emotions better.

Finish up and go about your daily business

with an improved mindset.

Make visualization practice a part of your everyday routine and watch

as life becomes better.
Guided Imagery
This is a highly effective technique for stress and anxiety management
which you can practice every day to relieve yourself of stress and other
uncomfortable emotions. It has to do with picturing a person, object, event,
or memory that makes you feel calm, relaxed, and happy. To do guided
imagery, you have to concentrate on all five senses.
 Find a quiet place without noise or
distraction. Close your eyes and deeply breathe in and out
to relax your mind.

Once your mind and body are relaxed,

visualize yourself in a calm and tranquil environment of
your choice. This place may be imagined or real, from a
happy memory. It could be your ideal holiday location.
The environment should hold  strong, emotional meaning
to you.

Ensure you use all five senses in the

visualization of this place. If it is by the sea, hear the rush
of the waves and feel the sand. Immerse yourself
completely into the environment.

Now, take your time and relax. Spend as

much time as you want in this place, breathing in and out
slowly and deeply.

Once you are done and ready to leave,

project your mind back to your current location. You will
feel an instant calmness, a holdover your emotions, and a
refreshing energy which makes you feel like you can
achieve just about anything.
 Chapter 26     Troubleshooting Emotional
Intelligence

B ysurprised
preparing yourself for some of these common issues, you won’t be
by them. And you will know what to do if these roadblocks
pop up.
Who are you without Your Problems?
An issue that may come up when you start using Emotional Intelligence
is that you may wonder who you are without your problems. If I’m not the
person with marital troubles or that can’t get that promotion at work, then
who am I? You may feel a bit lost when some of your problems start
disappearing and you may feel uncomfortable with your successes. It may
seem strange, but it is actually quite common. It’s where the whole imposter
syndrome comes from where people don’t feel that they deserve the success
and accolades that they’ve achieved.
But if this happens, it is handled the same way any other emotion is. Put
the discomfort in your Feelings Pot and observe it until it dissipates. When
you are free of the feeling, then you may begin to see your success from a
different perspective .
Internal Conflict: When Emotions Continue to Overwhelm You
It is quite likely at the beginning that your feelings will continue to get
the better of you and overwhelm your attempts to manage them. That’s fine.
Just tell yourself that it is as it is. Then try again. Sometimes your Feelings
Pot will get quite full because you have so many emotions coming at you.
This is also fine.
At first, you may only notice them once they’re over. That’s the
beginning of your awareness practice. Then you will suddenly awaken
when you’re in the middle of the emotion. And you may not be able to stop
yourself from playing out the scenario that you’ve already set in motion.
But eventually you’ll be able to notice the feeling before it comes to full
strength. And at that point, that’s when you are truly starting to manage
your emotions.
Sometimes you will not be able to control your mind when you’re in the
grip of a strong emotion. Even if you try, you will not be able to stop that
feedback loop, where your mind keeps feeding the feeling with thoughts
about what it thinks caused it.
That’s okay. When that happens, do anything you can think of to change
your state. Once you’ve gotten a little distance from the feeling, you may be
able to bring up the memory and the emotion will pop up again so that you
can put it in your Feelings Pot and observe it. At that point, it will be
weaker, and you should be able to handle it .
When your emotions are overwhelming, anything that can bring you
back to the present moment is useful—listening to or playing music, going
for a walk or exercising, getting out in nature, watching a movie or TV, or if
you know how to meditate you could try that as well. Once you’re present
in the moment, that will help you manage your emotions.
Losing Control of Your Emotions/Behaviour
At the beginning, you will still lose control of your behavior when
you’re in the grip of strong emotions. There are old patterns that are not that
easy to get rid of and when they come up in certain situations, you may
have an instant emotional reaction that you can’t control.
The most important thing is not to attack others when you are in the
power of these feelings. This almost always ends badly with you saying or
doing things that you regret.
Instead, when you feel that you can’t control yourself, you need to get
away from other people. If you’re at work, go to your office or cubicle and
request that others not disturb you. If people really won’t leave you alone,
then go into the bathroom until you’re calm enough to make a rational
decision.
If you’re at home, you should have a space you can go to until you’re
under control again. Explain to your family and friends that you’re trying to
be more careful with your words and actions. That when you’re very upset,
you’re going to isolate yourself so that you don’t say or do things that you
will regret in the future. Most people will understand .
 Once you’ve isolated yourself, it’s important to allow those feelings to
be, pay attention to them without thinking and let them subside. There are
several techniques you can use, such as counting breaths and paying
attention to your senses.
You will feel very miserable while the emotion is in control but as you
watch it, the feeling will lose its power and you will start to feel better. That
is how you will know whether it’s you or the feeling that’s in charge. The
worse you feel, the more likely the emotion is being the boss. When it
becomes a useful tool again, you will feel more peaceful and that is how
you know that you are in control again.
Lastly, be gentle with yourself when an emotion does take over. The fact
that you realize that it’s taken over means that it is not in complete control.
Remind yourself that you’ll get better at this as you go on. And follow the
steps for how to release emotions.
Too Much Empathy
Some people are too hard and lacking sympathy. Those people will
benefit from Emotional Intelligence in that they will learn to become more
compassionate and empathetic.
But others have the opposite problem. Some people are too empathetic.
They become engrossed in the emotions of others and lose themselves when
they try to help.
The kinds of problems these people suffer from are the following. They
may find themselves being taken advantage of. They may give more than
they have and become depleted of energy. They may so lose themselves in
someone else that they blindly follow a person who means them or others
harm.
It is important for a person who has natural empathy to protect
themselves and create healthy boundaries in their life.
They need to be able to recognize when they are giving too much
because that is just as unhealthy as giving too little to others around you.
When you find yourself giving to another person, it’s helpful to step
back, observe your feelings, and determine whether they are your own or
whether you are just picking up on another person’s emotions so strongly
that you imagine those feelings are your own. If you recognize that you’re
giving too much, you need to stop immediately. Have a calm conversation
with the person. They may not be happy about it, but stand firm. You need
to protect yourself—even if it makes the other person unhappy.
If they really care about you, they will not want to continue to take more
than you can give. And if they do want to keep taking from you, then they
don’t actually care about you but only about what they can get out of the
relationship.
If you are one of these people and have a hard time telling whether
you’re giving too much in a relationship, then it’s also helpful to have
someone that you truly trust to give you their opinion.
Giving more than is right will inevitably make you unhappy and that can
also be an indication that the relationship isn’t balanced and that you should
rethink your part in it .
Not Hanging on to Positive Emotions
Another challenge that doesn’t seem like a problem at all is when you
experience positive emotions you try to hang on to them. People who do
this like to relive happy moments to the point of it becoming excessive.
They also want to hang on to people who make them feel happy until
sometimes they destroy the relationship that they want to preserve—all
because they are holding on so tightly that they end up squeezing all the
love out of the situation until there’s nothing left.
To avoid this happening to you, now that you are more aware of your
emotions, it’s important to keep in mind The Feeling Three: Emotions are
just passing through.
Even the good ones.
In the same way that you release negative feelings, knowing that they
will soon pass away if you hold them, you have to let go of the good ones
when it’s time for them to go. Part of being able to do this is having faith
that you will have more good emotions. Yes, they pass. But they will come
again.
If you can believe that you will have good feelings again, that is the first
step in letting them go when it’s their time to move on.
Expecting Others to be Emotionally Intelligent
It is important to keep in mind as you become more aware of yours and
others’ feelings that most people do not have much awareness of their
emotions. They will not be able to respond. They will likely just react as
they have always done.
What you need to remember is that they are at the level that they’re at
and they can’t help it. You may possibly influence them to become more
interested in improving their Emotional Intelligence but only offer
suggestions if they ask. When communicating with EI, make sure it is with
it and not about it. It is unnecessary to convert others to your way of life.
This challenge can go two ways.

1. You expect others to be emotionally intelligent and are

disappointed in them when they’re not.
2. You want others to be as emotionally intelligent as you are
and try to convince them that they should try it.
Either way, you will likely be annoying to others and will damage your
relationships instead of building them up. In both situations, you could
come across as holier-than-thou wanting the others to be something they’re
not and—even if you don’t really think that—setting yourself up as an
example that they should follow.
The first case is pretty straightforward. You don’t want to be a jerk and
think you’re better than someone else is only because you learned to be
more aware. So, be careful that you’re not setting yourself up as better than
the other person who has less EI .
In the second case, you definitely mean well but there’s also something
self-serving in wanting to be someone else’s savior. There’s nothing wrong
with sharing something great that’s happening in your life. But keep it to
that—sharing. Don’t expect them to want to have higher EI. And don’t try
to convince them to join you.
If you really want to be good at Emotional Intelligence, then simply
practice it in everyday life. Be emotionally intelligent. Connect with others.
Use your empathy to help. Build strong relationships.
 Be a person who cares about other people.
If someone notices that you’re happier, calmer, and more peaceful and
then asks you why, you can tell them and since they were looking for the
information, then they will likely be more ready to hear it. If you go around
handing out advice to people who aren’t ready, you’re just going to end up
in a conversation that will likely involve strong feelings and that will not
help you or them.
The important thing is that you are getting better at using your Emotional
Intelligence. Others can follow your path or not, it doesn’t matter. What
matters is that you respond instead of react and that you know that the
quality of your life is improving.
Dealing with Criticism
This is one of the most difficult things that any person can face. When
someone criticizes us, we often feel like we've been emotionally kicked in
the stomach. It's surprising. It hurts. And we often don't know what we
should do about it. But before we do anything, we might want to try
practicing the following technique, which can give us more emotional
freedom when it comes to criticism and may give us the distance, we need
to respond instead of having a knee jerk emotional reaction.
Be the Force Field
Everyone has seen how a force field works on a sci fi show. Someone
tosses a rock at it and the force field absorbs it. The rock doesn't bounce off
and hit the person who threw it. Likewise, you can have a protective force
field around you, so that when someone criticizes you, your force field can
absorb it. This protects you from emotional hurt. It can also improve your
relationships because you will not be getting into unnecessary conflict with
others.
Example
Why can't you call me when you get home? You're so self-centered and
thoughtless.
Usual response: I am not. Sometimes I remember to call. But last night
when I got home, the light wasn't on, so I couldn't see to put my key in the
lock, and I got so upset about that. When I got in, I had to talk to my
roommate about leaving the light on and then we kind of got in a fight. And
when we stopped fighting, I was so stressed out that I had to have a bath.
Then I was sleepy and I went straight to bed, forgetting to call you.
 EI being the force field response:
You're right. Sometimes I don't think of other people. I'm sorry I forgot.
There were circumstances but that's no excuse. I'll set a reminder so that I
won't forget to call you.
With the first response, it's highly likely that you will continue to argue
because you're both defending yourselves and your viewpoint. When you
allow the force field to absorb the stone and agree with and apologize for
your behaviour, usually the person is taken aback and stops attacking you.
When they push and you push back, then the fight keeps going. But when
they push and you just take it, you've absorbed their negative energy with
your force field, so that it doesn't hurt you or them.
The only thing to be careful of is that you don't take what they're saying
to heart and get hurt by their words. With this technique, you shouldn't take
what they're saying personally but you do admit your part in things and
apologize.
 Chapter 27     The Nature of Emotions

E motions can be tricky. By understanding the mechanism behind

emotions, you’ll be able to manage them more effectively as they arise.
The first thing to understand is that emotions come and go. One moment
you feel happy, the following you feel sad. While you do have some control
over your emotions, you must also recognize their unpredictable nature. If
you expect to be happy all the time, you set yourself up for failure. You then
risk blaming yourself when you ‘fail’ to be happy, or even worse, beat
yourself up for it.
To start taking control of your emotions, you must accept they are transient.
You must learn to let them pass without feeling the need to identify strongly
with them. You must allow yourself to feel sad without adding
commentaries such as, “I shouldn’t be sad,” or “What’s wrong with me?”
Instead, you must allow reality to be.
Typically, when someone is described as emotional, this is intended to be
taken in a negative light. Emotional people are often regarded as impulsive,
difficult to talk to, difficult to work with, unscientific, irrational, loud, or
resistant to being spoken to. But this characterization is based on
assumptions about emotional people. Indeed, labeling someone as
emotional is a simple and almost devious way to neutralize and invalidate
someone by immediately labeling them as something which they may or
may not be.
No matter how mentally tough you are, you’ll still experience sadness,
grief, or depression in your life hopefully not at the same time, and not
continually. At times, you’ll feel disappointed, betrayed, insecure, resentful,
or ashamed. You’ll doubt yourself and doubt your ability to be the person
you want to be. But that’s okay because emotions come, but, more
importantly, they go.

Constructive emotions and destructive emotions

Negative thoughts strengthen in intensity every time you react to them. If
you feel angry with your kid and react to the anger by yelling at him or her,
or if you throw a huge fit in reaction to something demeaning your sibling
said to you, you will only feel more upset, remorseful, and frustrated in the
future. 
Reacting to something means you pay heed to the very first irrational
thought you experience. To illustrate, if you feel a strong urge to quit your
job when your boss does not give you the raise he promised, you may
actually quit your job without thinking about the implications of this
decision.  
Similarly, if you feel upset, you are likely to react to that sadness by holding
on to it and overthinking that very emotion. You fixate on it for hours, days,
and weeks only to understand its implications when it turns into a chronic
emotional problem. 
To let go of the negativity, stop reacting to the emotion and make a
conscious effort to respond to it. Responding to an emotion, a negative
thought, or any situation means that you do not engage in the very first
reactive thought that pops up in your head, and instead, you take your time
to think things through, analyze the situation, and address it from different
aspects to make an informed decision. If you carefully respond to your
emotions and thoughts that trigger negative behaviors, beliefs, and actions,
you will get rid of the negativity in your life and replace it with hope,
positivity, and happiness. Here is how you can do that: 
• Every time you experience an emotion that stirs up a series of
negative thoughts in your head, stop doing the task and recognize the
emotion. 
• Very carefully and calmly, observe your emotion and let it calm down
on its own without reacting to it. 
• You need to fight the urges you experience at that time to react to the
emotion. Therefore, if you are depressed and keep thinking how terrible you
are, and you feel the urge to lock yourself in your room, control it by just
staying where you are. 
• Give your emotion some time, and it will calm down.  
• Try to understand the message it is trying to convey to you. If you are
angry with yourself for not qualifying to the succeeding round of an
entrepreneurial summit and have lost the chance of winning the grand prize
of $1 million, observe your anger and assess it. Ask yourself questions such
as: Why do I feel angry? What does the loss mean to me? Asking yourself
such questions helps you calm down the strong emotion and let go of the
negative thoughts you experience during that time. Naturally, when you
stop focusing on the intense emotion and the negative thoughts it triggers,
and you divert your attention towards questions to find a way out of the
problem, you gently soothe your negative thought process. 
• Assess the entire situation in depth and find out ways to better resolve
the problem at hand. When you focus on the solution and not the problem,
you easily overcome negative thoughts and create room for possibilities. 
It will be difficult to not react to a strong emotion, but if you stay conscious
of how you feel and behave, and make consistent efforts, you will slowly
nurture the habit to respond to your emotions, which will only help you
become more positive
 Conclusion

I ndeed, emotional intelligence is one of the most important things one

must have in life to ensure success in every situation. 
One thing that is important to bear in mind is that emotional intelligence is
not a trend! It is here to stay. According to reports and statistics compiled
by major companies across the world, it is evident that people with
emotional intelligence undoubtedly affect their bottom line. For instance, if
an employee has a high level of emotional intelligence, they will not only
be productive and generate revenue for the company, but also realize their
personal and career goals. 
You probably know other people who have mastered the art of managing
their emotions. Instead of getting angry when provoked by a stressful
situation, they choose to look at the problem from a different perspective to
find a solution calmly. These people are excellent decision-makers and have
mastered the art of listening to their gut feeling. Irrespective of their
strengths, they have the willingness to look at themselves with an honest
eye. They take criticism positively and use it to improve their performance. 
Well, I am here to tell you that you can be just like these people. As you
begin to accept emotional intelligence into every area of your life, you will
begin to see an improvement in your technical abilities, interrelationships,
and overall success. It is through emotional intelligence that you can fuel
your performance. It impacts your confidence, optimism, self-control,
empathy, and social skills so that you can understand and manage your
emotions and accelerate success in every area of your life. 
It does not matter what your profession is, whether you work for a small or
large organization, whether you are a senior or junior in your company.
What matters is that realizing how effective you are at controlling your
emotional energies is the beginning of a successful adventure. Yes,
emotional intelligence may not be something taught and tested in our
educational curriculum, but the truth is that it is really important. 
Take a look at your life – the chances are that you will notice how hectic
and busy your lifestyle is. It is this kind of life that makes it easy for you to
lose touch with yourself and your emotional feelings. You must try to
reconnect with your feelings by setting a timer for various points
throughout the day. As soon as the timer goes off, you stop what you are
doing, stand on your two feet, and take in a deep breath. Then bring your
thoughts to what you are feeling in that moment, where the emotions are
coming from, and where you feel the sensation in your body and what it
feels like. Realize that the more you practice this, the more you make it
your second nature. 
The key to emotional intelligence is to celebrate and reflect on all the
positives in your life. No one has a perfect life – we all go through ups and
downs. It does not matter whether you have more positives or negatives in
your life—the trick to celebrate every win – whether small or big. When
you embrace the positives in your life, you allow yourself to develop more
resilience and increase your chances of enjoying fulfilling relationships so
that you can successfully move past adversity.