EI 4.1 Social Awareness : Introduction

Do you have someone in your team with whom you feel very comfortable? Martha was one such person in John’s team. She seemed to know, every time, what he is going through. If he would be back from a very tough meeting, she would sense it and not interfere. Rather she would give him space and time to cool off. So many times when John needed something, she seemed to know it already. It was so easy to communicate with her. A meeting with her always seemed like she was joining you in a relay race running at your speed ready to take the baton. The conversation used to look like she running at your speed and passing the baton back and forth between them. It was such a delight to have her in the team. Just her presence used to make him relaxed.

Salim was a waiter in a restaurant. Many times he would be handling multiple tables with customers having entirely different preferences. Some would not like to be disturbed and would expect him to silently serve them. Some others would like to have a pep talk. Others would like service to be faster while some others would like it to go slow. Somehow Salim was able to sense these preferences and serve the customers accordingly. His customers always left delighted and gave him heavy tips. For so many of them, he would remember their names and welcome them with “Good evening Mr. XXX …”

For the owner of the restaurant, Salim was an asset to have.

Martha and Salim are ‘high’ on Social Awareness. It is the ability of the individual to understand what is going on with others. This means that one gives enough sensitivity, time and effort to understand what is going on with people around them. Both Martha and Salim are able to look past the words someone is saying and gain an understanding of

the thoughts and emotions the other person is feeling beneath the surface. Understanding what kinds of thoughts and emotions the other person is feeling will help you unlock the true meaning of what the other person is saying and gain a better understanding of where the person is coming from.

The best way to be socially aware is to put yourself in the other person's shoes. This isn't always the easiest thing to do, but the following tips will help you do just that –

1. When you are with other people, focus your thoughts on the other person's perspective by spending some extra time to fully observe the situation, listening closely to how and what is being said, and asking questions that will help you gain a better understanding.

2. Try not to let your own thoughts and feelings disturb the interaction. You will be surprised by what you notice about others when your mind is more on them than it is on you.

EI 3.3 Improving Self Management

If you reflect back in your life, do you find some incidents where you created problems for yourself by speaking too much? are there some moments in your life where you could have rather stayed quiet and things would have been better if you had not blurted out things?

The last part of Self Management today covers three valuable techniques to improve self management skills. These are simple, yet effective and have a great potential to make your life happier.

1. Sleep over It: As a rule, do not try to solve things after 8 pm in the night. If something is bothering you too much and you want to discuss it with someone so that you may get over with it, take my advice and postpone it till next morning. A large number of our issues, situations and problems get sorted out more easily and quickly if we allow it some more time. You must have come across some people who will be stressed out as if heavens are going to fall. Most of these people try to fix things in the evening hours. Follow the rule of nature. Evenings are for relaxing and doing work peacefully. Sometimes situations that require our patience can feel so uncomfortable, dissatisfying, and filled with anxiety that we jump to action just to alleviate the internal turmoil. But more often than not, giving yourself that extra day to digest the situation before moving forward is all you need to stay in control. And sometimes, while you're waiting, things may surface that make your decision that much easier to make.

2. Count to Ten: This is something that you would have learnt a long time ago perhaps in your primary school. You teacher would have told you this technique when you were a child to control you anger. It is amazing that such a simple technique like this can really help you big time in managing yourself well in emotionally challenging situations. The next time you are in a meeting and are finding it difficult to stop yourself from interrupting someone who is speaking. Or if you are getting red with anger on your child for something that he/she has been doing repeatedly in spite of you having explained many times that it shouldn't be done. Or if there is an irritating person, who is going on and on with his irritating behaviour, tempting you to explode, try this. Start counting from one to ten and exhale with every count. I can bet that if you can stop yourself from exploding till the time you reach ten, you will not be able to explode. In fact, you will be able to think peacefully and may be you will see an alternate, more amicable way to settle it.

3. Focus on the freedom rather than the restriction: We are brought up in such a manner that we learn to focus on the restrictions which we are not supposed to break. So much of our attention sometimes gets diverted on maintaining discipline that we miss out enjoying the fun. When we are in a difficult situation, we tend to focus so much on the difficulty that we miss out the fact that we have a say in the situation in terms of our perspective of the situation. In fact however big the difficulty you face, your own outlook towards it is a major force that you can use to overcome that. If you can shift your focus to the things and variables that you can influence, every difficulty has a way out. So be aware of the restrictions, be aware of the difficulties, but focus on the area within where you have leverage. This is the golden rule of self management.

EI3.2 : Activity for Self Management

The problem with self management is that we want to be correct all the time. At the basic level, self management means being aware of our emotions and actively choosing to say or do. There is an element of 'active choice' here. If we do not exercise this choice, the emotions start controlling what we speak and do. This is slippery wicket. When our emotions ‘hijack’ our actions and words, we end up feeling miserable, out of control and victimized. The stronger the emotion we feel, the more difficult it becomes to think. It is a delicate balancing act which can give you very rich rewards. So much of stress in our lives gets reduced once we start exercising the choice to read our emotions and ‘decide’ what to say or do. This also is the most important step towards a balanced state of being.

The task is also made difficult on account of abundance of people and situations which keep throwing us off our balance. Irritating characters surround us from all sides. The society breeds competition and hence the majority of crowd around us is in some race or the other. Prudence lies in deciding how much to share and with whom.

As you start practicing self management, a slip here and a slip there will keep happening. There is no human being on earth who has ‘perfect’ self management capability. Important thing is to strive for coming back to your balanced state every time you are thrown off track.

When you start getting grip on the awareness of where your emotions are trying to throw you towards, you can act and re gain balance. If you can see yourself being pushed by an emotion (like anger) and see where it is directing you to behave, you can quickly hold the reins of yourself and avoid landing up in a wrong direction of behaviour. This will give you magical power to control difficult situations. And you will emerge as a natural leader among your peers. You will be respected for your restraint and looked up to for your leadership.

Activity

(One – Two Technique for Self Management)

Next time you experience a strong emotion, count one-two, one-two a couple of times and try to visualize where is your emotion pushing you towards? Is it making you speak agitatedly? Is it making you ignore what is happening in the room? Just try to sense which direction your emotion taking you towards. Then say one-two and decide what to say or do, irrespective of your tendency at that time. Try it. I promise it will be fun and of course, very rewarding.

EI 3.1 Examples of Self Management

Here are two examples of self management in common life. The following two people are the kind of people we come across in our everyday life. Take a look. Observe the contract in two personalities. Do you see yourself in one of the following two characters -

What Self Management Looks Like in Real Life

Girish Mathur, GM Customer Care
Self Management: High

What people who work with him say about him:

“Girish handles stressful and confrontational situations very well. No matter how harshly the customers and his sales counterparts hammer him, he never loses his cool! This gives him lot of acceptance and respect from colleagues. He is able to work with people who have a very different style of working. In his job, getting stuffed with complaints and blames is quite often. This can be really overwhelming at times. But I have never seen him lose his patience.”

“Many times people are quick to blame customer care for the fault of some other flaws in other departments. But I have never seen him ruffled by this. He makes his views in spite of the barrage of arguments thrown at him. I have never seen him reacting to absurd allegations and pointing fingers. He deals with them politely and professionally.”

“I have seen him handle some very frustrating situations where the organization directed against his personal views. He is able to maintain an objective view and aligns very fast with the organization goals.”

“I have never seen Girish speaking negatively about issue even about issues about which he feels very strongly. You will never find him speaking ill about anyone behind his back! He just never does it.”


What Lack of Self Management Looks Like in Real Life

Jacob Mathew, Sales Manager
Self Management: Low

What people who work with him say about him:

“In stressful situations Jacob sometimes responds too quickly and disjointedly. He is very emotional. When he is under stress, he almost always reacts to situations rather than thinking and responding. I wish he could take some time to cool off and slow down before responding. Sometimes it is impossible to recognize him when he is under stress. He becomes an absolutely different person. Otherwise he is generally a cool guy.”
“Jacob should be more aware of his behaviour and his outbursts when he is upset. He doesn't seem to recognize that it has a huge impact on his team’s morale. He definitely cares for people. However when he is upset, he can be very damaging. I remember when one of his subordinates Alan had made a mistake. Jacob just lost his temper. He shouted at him in full visibility of other co workers. The whole atmosphere of the office became much tensed after that. Poor Alan couldn't look into the eyes of others for a very long time. I wish someone could teach Jacob to count till ten when he is angry”

“Jacob is a good guy. But I don't like one habit of his. Sometimes late in the evening he will call me and would be desperate to discuss and issue with me in detail. The fact is that I sit very close to him in office. He may not speak to me or say Hi to me the whole day. But just while I would reach home and would be dying to spend some time with my children, he would call me and would keep talking. Almost in all instances, he could have waited to discuss the same with me the next morning. Nothing on earth would have moved otherwise if he could. I think it would be good if he learns to ‘sleep over’ some issues rather than trying to solve it late nights and disturbing people.”

Emotional Intelligence

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Emotional Intelligence

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EI 3.0 Self Management Intro...

Self Management is the second major part of personal intelligence.

Self Management is dependent upon your level of self-awareness. Your skills of self awareness build the foundation of your self management skills.

'Self management is what happens when you act, or do not act after becoming aware of your emotions and how you act.'

Let me give you an example. It is like what happens when you are angry. Do you express your anger? If you do, how do you express your anger? Are you able to remain composed while expressing anger? Do you get out of control when you are angry? Do you speak things which you later regret? Do you shout? Do you hit people when you are angry? Do you absorb the anger? Do you try to divert your attention to something else? Do you try to hide your anger?

We don't experience emotions in a vacuum; if we did, managing them would be easy. We experience them with people around us. Many of these people and their actions trigger emotions in us. These emotions vary in intensity. Most of us are good at managing mild emotions. The place where most people fail to manage themselves successfully is during an emotionally arousing situation. Whether it is a heated debate between colleagues or a deadline, situations that elicit high-intensity feelings put your true self-management skills to the test.

Self-management is your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behaviour positively. This would mean managing your emotional reactions to situations and people. Some emotions create paralyzing fear that makes your thinking so cloudy that the best course of action is nowhere to be found. In these cases, self management is revealed by your ability to tolerate the uncertainty as you explore your emotions and options. Once you understand and build comfort with what you are feeling, the best course of action will automatically show itself.

Self management is much more than resisting explosive behaviour. The biggest challenge that people face is managing their tendencies over time and applying their skills in a variety of situations. Obvious and momentary opportunities for self-control (i.e., “I’m so mad at that x&#@....!”) are the easiest to spot and manage.

Real results come from putting your momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals. The realization of such goals is often delayed, meaning that your commitment to self-management will be tested over and over again. Those who manage themselves the best are able to see things through without cracking.

Success comes to those who can put their needs on hold and continually manage their tendencies.

EI 2.6:Improving Self Awareness

What makes you go Berserk?

Key 4: Know who or what pushes your buttons

All of us have buttons – triggers, pet peeves, whatever you may call them – that, when pushed, just irritate us until we want to scream. Perhaps you have a co worker who lives his life as if he is constantly at war with others to prove that his point of view is right. He will go to any length to prove his point. His voice is louder than the most and once he starts speaking he will continue to go on and on. Whatever point he makes, he will fight till the end to prove that it is right. He will make sure that he is in a battle for proving his point even if not a single person in the room agrees with him. He just refuses to see a point from others point of view. In short he is stubborn to the core about his views and generally believes he is always right. Even if he has to agree to others, he will do it showing that for the sake of saving time or for sake of moving forward he is ok to park his views for some time. But he will continue to bother everyone with his persistence. Let us call him Mr Stubborn.

Now, if you are a more subtle person yourself, a person like that may eat at you. When you go into a meeting with great ideas and a readiness to sit down and get straight to the point, Mr Stubborn who wants to draw attention towards himself, may flip your switches for frustration and rage. Even if you are not a sort of person who blurts out impulsive comments or otherwise go on the attack, your body language may give you away or you may find yourself spending the rest of your day obsessing over your lingering frustration.

Knowing what or who pushes your buttons and how they do it is critical to developing the ability to take control of these situations, maintain your poise, and calm yourself down. For this, you cannot think about things generally. You need to pinpoint the specific people and situations that trigger your emotions. Your buttons are bound to get pushed by a wide range of people and things. It could be certain people (Mr Stubborn), particular situations( like feeling scared or caught off guard), or conditions in the environment(noisy office colleagues). Having a clear understanding of who and what pushes your buttons makes these people and situations a bit less difficult because they come as less of a surprise.

Your self-awareness takes a quantum leap when you identify and discover the sourse of your buttons. You will have to find out why do these people and situations irritate you so much, when other, equally annoying people and situations do not bother you at all? Perhaps Mr Stubborn reminds you of your father who never listened to your point of view. You lived in the constant shadow for many years till you could find your space in the world and got people who cared for your views. Now, you sit beside his clone in every meeting. No wonder he is a trigger for your emotions.

When you know why your buttons are what they are opens doors to managing your reactions to your triggers.

Activity

Find out the sources of your buttons and jot down a list. Then spend some time thinking deeper into each. Ask yourself why so these people or situations irritate you? Is there a connection with your past. If there is one, try to objectively see the past without blaming you or the other person or situation. Accept that those things were bound to happen. They happened. Forgive and forget. You will be amazed how happy and energetic you will become by addressing this.

EI 2.5 : Self Awareness Embrace Emotional Discomfort

Improving Self Awareness

Key Action 3 :Embrace Emotional Discomfort

The biggest obstacle to increasing your self-awareness is your tendency to avoid the discomfort that comes from seeing yourself as you really are.

There are things that you do not like to think about. And you do that, for a reason. The reason is that you may not like what you may see. You may not like to see your real self. It can make you feel insufficient, lesser than others and may conflict with what you believe about yourself. You have been brought up in a society which frowns upon the ordinary. You do not want to be an ordinary person in any dimension.

Hence you do not like to face this pain. Rather you avoid it. Avoiding this pain creates problems, because it is merely a short term fix. You will never be able to manage yourself effectively if you ignore what you need to do to change.

The fact is that ‘it is OK to be ordinary. It is OK to loose. It is OK to ‘NOT WIN’.

Rather than avoiding a feeling, your goal should be to move toward the emotion, into it, and eventually through it. This should be done for even mild emotional discomfort such as boredom, confusion or anticipation. When you ignore an emotion, however small or insignificant, you miss the opportunity to do something productive with that feeling. Your ignoring or avoiding the feelings does not make it go away. In fact, they get stored in your subconscious and they surface again when you least expect them.

Whenever you are feeling strong emotion, lot of things from the past start flashing in our minds. When you are feeling very sad, you suddenly start remembering previous things that caused you sadness before. In fact many of those you wouldn't have thought about for many many years. Why does this happen? This happens because those are the emotions we avoided or ignored in the past. Hence they are stored inside us and surface again when a similar event happens, making us feel more miserable. This is the reason why people respond differently to similar events and to different degree of anger, sadness etc.

To be effective in life, we all need to discover our own set of things – those that we do not bother to learn about and dismiss as unimportant. One person thinks apologies are for sissies so he never learns to recognize when one is needed.

Another person hates feeling low, so he constantly distracts himself with other activities, however meaningless. He never really feels content. Yet another person finds it very embarrassing to be insulted for anything. So he goes to any length to avoid being insulted. In fact his whole behaviour patter may start getting directed by this avoidance.

All three of these people need to take a bold step of embracing the discomfort and lean into the feelings that will motivate them to change. They need to move into the emotion and travel through it. That way the emotion will be felt and an appropriate action may be triggered.

Most of the people, however, continue to avoid and ignore the emotions that they do not like and hence keep walking on an unproductive, unsatisfying path, repeating the same patterns over and over again.

After the first few times that you embrace emotional discomfort, you will quickly find that the discomfort isn’t so bad, it doesn't ruin you and it reaps rewards.

The good news about self awareness is that just thinking about it will help you change, even though much of your initial focus would be on the things that you do ‘wrong.’ Do not be afraid of your emotional ‘mistakes’. They alone tell you what you should be doing differently and provide you with a steady stream of information that you need to understand yourself as life unfolds itself.

Have a nice day..

EI 2.4:Improving Self Awareness

Key Action 2:Improving Self Awareness

In the previous post we saw the first Key step for Improving Self Awareness was to have some 'Quite Time' for yourself.

Here is the second step -

Feel your emotions Physically

When you experience an emotion, electric signals course through your brain and trigger physical sensations in your body. The physical sensations can be as varied as your stomach muscles tightening, your heart rate increasing, your breathing quickening, or your mouth getting dry. Because your mind and body are tightly connected, one of the most effective ways to understand your emotions as they are happening is to learn to spot the physical changes that accompany your emotions.

Activity

To better understand the physical effects of your emotions, try closing your eyes the next time you have a few moments alone. Feel how fast or slow your heart is beating. Notice the pace of your breathing. Determine how tense or relaxed the muscles are in your arms, legs, neck and back. Now think of a couple of events from your life – one positive and one negative – that generate strong emotions. Think through one of these events in enough detail that you can feel your emotions stir. Take note of the physical changes that accompany the feelings. Do they make your breathing or heart rate change? Do your muscles grow tense? Do you feel hotter or colder? Repeat this process with the other event, and take note of the physical differences in the emotions from the positive and negative experiences.

Closing your eyes and thinking of emotionally arousing events is simply training for the real thing – spotting the physical signs of your emotions on the fly. In the beginning, try not to think too hard – simply open your mind to noticing the sensations.

As you improve at this, you’ll find that you’re often physically aware of an emotion long before you’re mentally aware of it.

This will establish an 'instant' connection with your inner self. As you do this everyday, this connection will provide stability and you will start radiating peace and calmness.

This is a trick which starts giving very fast results. In a matter of two days you can start feeling the calmness in yourself.

so long...

Emotional Intelligence 2.3 Self Awareness Contd..

Look back in your life. You would certainly have some memories when you had very strong emotions. Try to figure out 3 or 4 most prominent ones. Include the ones that you have disciplined yourself to never think about. The ones you do not want to think about.

In your past have you been subjected to any of the following –

1. In childhood did you get too embarrassed by some action of yours which was innocent mistake but you had to face lot of overreaction from parents or teachers?
2. Were you ridiculed by friends, colleagues or family members for something you didn't do right?
3. Did you think that your parents loved your sibling more than they loved you?
4. Did you feel that your parents did not love you enough(as much as you wanted them to)?
5. Did someone ditch you?
6. Did you ditch someone?
7. Were you made to feel that you were not ‘OK’ in some dimension and if you didn't behave in a certain way, you may loose out in life?
8. Did your partner overreact to certain behaviour of yours?
9. Did you stop expressing yourself to avoid yourself getting into a conflict?
10. Do you think that you are guilty of not being a good son/daughter and that you haven’t fulfilled your obligations to your parents?
11. Do you think that you do not spend enough time with your children?
12. Do you feel that you are not as good a parent as your parents were?
13. Do you think that you aren’t smart enough to have capitalized on the opportunities that came in your life?
14. Do you think that to be successful in life you have to be on guard always when you are in your office?
15. Do you think that you do not show your real self to people otherwise they may get offended?

Experiences like these really screw up our lives. The society in which we grow up along with the education systems always try to teach us that we are not ‘OK’ and to be ‘OK’, we need to behave in a ‘certain way’. All of us are subjected to this trauma for at least first two decades of our lives, leading us to become distant from our own inner beauty and we start wearing so many masks that we finally get disconnected with our emotions and rather than living through or using our emotions in a positive way, we start ignoring and avoiding our emotions. We feel that certain emotions are ‘bad emotions’ that we should not have. This compounds the problem. One, we do not do justice to our emotions, two we start feeling that something is wrong with us since we are having such emotions.

What can be done about this?

I find that there are four steps that you can take to get out of this unhealthy situation.

Step 01 : Take out ‘quiet time’ for yourself everyday of your life. Anywhere between 15 mins to 30 mins would be absolutely fine. This can be anytime during the day. In that quite time, think about the situations in your life which created strong emotions. Understand that the context in which those things happened also had a huge role to play in the way things turned out. May be you blamed yourself too much unnecessarily and changed yourself wrongly. If you started behaving in a ‘certain way’ to avoid making some mistake again in your life, may be you made a mistake. If you stopped doing the things that you enjoyed doing because of any of such events, just start doing them again. Just start enjoying your natural self. Re discover yourself. Express yourself. Reconnect with your childhood friends.

Today onwards, start ‘feeling’ your emotions as you go through them. You probably get 50,000 thoughts a day and each of these trigger as many emotions. Let those emotions come and go. It is a matter of few seconds every time.


To understand this, you need to understand the way thoughts travel in our brains. Everything we experience passes first through the emotional part of our brains, called the limbic system. A trigger event, such as a new deadline to meet, is “felt” by the limbic system before we have any rational reaction to the circumstance. So, we fully experience the anxiety, exuberance, or irritation of a moment before the rational part of the brain gets a crack at choosing the direction to head in response to the situation.

They ‘Key’ is to hold yourself for a couple of seconds when your emotions are overpowering you. After a few seconds, the rational part of our brain starts working. And naturally the clarity which rational thinking brings settles the emotion. This happens ‘naturally’. You just need to stop interfering with this natural process.

Have a nice weekend.

Emotional Intelligence 2.2 Self Awareness contd..

How Self Awareness Affect Our Lives

You cannot change or control your emotions. You can learn to accept or release them; this would need self awareness.

Emotions control our thinking, behavior and actions. They also affect our bodies. When you have an emotion you know that you can feel it in your bodies. If you ignore it, it stays stuck in your bodies until free yourself from it.

Most of us have been raised to repress our emotions and this is the way we live our lives. We were raised to believe that certain emotions are bad and they have to remain hidden. Then when we became adults we do not even know how we are feeling, we lack self awareness.

I lived most of my life repressing emotions and the day that I decided to sit down and feel them. I could not do it. I didn't know the difference. How do I feel? Angry? No, sad? No, I do not know.

Your emotions control your thinking, behaviour and actions. What are the results of your actions? Have you ever regretted and action you have taken? Why? because you usually take action according to the predominant emotion you are having.

We are afraid of our feelings, because we do not want to loose control, or we do not want to feel the pain. How do we repress our emotions? Have you noticed that when we experience a situation that is painful or difficult we look for something else to do? Like get busy, think about something else, eat something, etc? When we do this, what we are doing is avoiding the emotion and replacing it with something else.

The emotion remains in our bodies until we finally find a healthy way to release them.

Six ways to avoid feeling emotions:

1. Ignoring the feeling,
2. Over eating
3. Over exercising
4. Using tranquilizers
5. Excessive drink of alcohol
6. Excessive reading or TV
7. Excessive Smoking

Anything that takes us away from the pain will do it. So, you need self awareness to finally gain emotional freedom? Because, if you don't release them, they will control your lives.

Nobody will make us to feel better except ourselves. Have you ever noticed that people with a lot of negative emotions like anger, envy, revenge, etc don't have any energy? People who are able to release these emotions are lighter and expanded and have a lot of energy within.

Have you ever noticed that when you are happy you have a lot of energy within you? You can think more clearly, you can be present, etc. I think this is the main reason why we need emotional freedom. We cannot go around being angry and trying to smile and appear to be happy because we won't be able to do that, and if we try it will take a lot of energy and we will end up exhausted.

Most of the problems you face and keep you always in the same place is because you are not able to deal with you emotions. Have you ever listened to somebody talking about a past hurt, and when you asked when did that happen?, they said: Oh! Around 20 years ago. How can you live a fulfilling life is your are still stuck in a 20 years ago hurt, full of resentment and revenge?

Emotional Intelligence 2.1 Self Awareness Contd..

Here are two examples of common life. The following two people are the kind of people we come across in our everyday life. Take a look. Do you see yourself in one of the following two characters -

What Self Awareness Looks Like

Ravish B, Country Services Manager
Self Awareness: High

What people who work with him say about him:

“Ravish has very high clarity on long term goals and he doesn't make sacrifices for short term gains. Ravish is an ‘up-front’ kind of a guy who doesn't play ‘mind games’ with people. I have witnessed this so many times at company meetings and in meetings with customers.”

“In every situation that I have been involved with, good or bad, Ravish has always remained calm, cool and collected – even at times when I know he must have felt frustrated or angry. Ravish is really honest about what he is feeling without getting bent out of shape about it. During challenging situations with employees, Ravish is very aware of his tone and makes an effort to keep the conversation appropriate.”

“In short, Ravish manages his emotions; they don't manage him. I’ve seen him accept difficult business news with a brief frown and then he quickly moves beyond that and partners with his team to find solutions to improve the situation.”

What Lack of Self Awareness Looks Like

MK Singh, Operations Director
Self Awareness: Low

What people who work with him say about him:

“MK is very much in his ‘own world.’ He obviously does care about his co workers, but he doesn't seem to know where to draw a line. His personality can be overwhelming, but he doesn't notice when the other person is feeling annoyed, frustrated, or overwhelmed by him. It would be good for him to understand how his behaviour affects other’s work and emotional stress. Also he sometimes comes across as defensive or aggressive, so for him to be more aware of his tone and language would be helpful.”

“When working with customers, he is very good at talking about the products and services we offer. On group projects, sometimes he gets so focused on the outcome, the process is missed. If he were to take a moment and let all the emotions settle, then take a look at the options to reach the desired outcome, things would go more smoothly.”
“MK is passionate about what he does. Sometime that passion gets in the way. He might not notice that I am busy with something else before he jumps in and starts talking to me. When he is excited, he talks over you, and it is hard to get a word in edgewise. He doesn't mean to; he just is excited about what he does.”

Emotional Intelligence 2 (Self Awareness)

Self Awareness is about recognizing and understanding your emotions as they happen. This sounds simple but the fact is that majority of us either fail to recognize our emotions or ignore them. High self awareness means having a handle on our emotions as and when they happen and being aware of their effect on ourselves.

How do we recognize our emotions?

Emotions typically produce physical sensations that you can use to identify what you are feeling. The physical signs that accompany our feelings can be blatant, such as heavy breathing or sweating, or more subtle, such as increased heartbeat or sweaty palms. Learning how you respond physically to your emotions is important to becoming more emotionally intelligent.

Think about the last time you experienced strong feelings.

• Did you sweat?
• Did your heart beat fast?
• Did you feel tense?
• Did your thoughts race?
• Did your throat get tight?
• Did you get tunnel vision?
• Did your mind go blank?
• Did you shake?
• Did you feel numb?

Now think back in time and go through events when you had one or more of the above. What did you do immediately after you had such strong feelings?

The answer to this question comes in the next part of EI…

Emotional Intelligence

EQ has been around since the inception of the term by Daniel Goleman in 1980s. However as I was trying to understand the concept for nearly two years now, I wasn't able to make much headway till very recent weeks. Then it happened! I could see through the complex web of information on the subject and look at it simply. On gaining clarity on the concept, I wondered how the world is full of books and stuff that makes understanding of simple concepts as difficult as it can be. Further Last week I was able to internalize EQ for the first time in life.

Let me attempt a simplistic view of EI and see if you can gain something by implementing the concept in your life.

Step 1 : What is Emotional Intelligence?

EI is the ability of an individual to understand his emotions, manage his reactions to these emotions, understand others emotions and manage good relationships

Step 2 : How does it apply in my life?

We typically ignore what our emotions are telling us. All emotions are accompanied by physiological changes. By being open to reading these signals from our body, we can easily understand what our emotions are doing to us. After recognizing the emotion we can standby for couple of seconds and respond (using our brains). When we are with others, we can be aware of what the other is feeling and accordingly behave with him/her. This will give us lasting relationships.

Step 3 : Can we improve our EI?

EI is a variable. We are born with some of it. Over the years we set up our beliefs and habits which form our EI. The EQ changes with our experiences. In fact our EQ today is the result of the way we have decided to lead our lives over the years. While we can improve our EQ, we can easily let it decrease as well. Having a good EQ is like maintain a good physique and needs regular tuning.