What makes you feel happy? What blocks happiness for you at the moment? Little Billy in Bil Keane’s FAMILY CIRCUS, described his happiness when he said, “I like dogs cause if you’re doing something stupid they don’t yell at you. They do it with you.” Happiness for Billy is adventure with Sam, his shaggy-haired stray mutt. The big block to Billy’s happiness is a parent yelling at him. How about you?
Did you know that just as IQ is fluid not fixed, we can also improve our EQ (emotional intelligence) and strengthen our heartfelt capabilities. Suppose we start with a question about you, “How does your experience of emotional intelligence differ from others’ experiences?” Is a healthy and joy filled EQ for you a bit like hitching your wagon to a dream for living daily with joy and curiosity? Or is emotional health more like the useless pyrite of fool’s gold, rigidly locked away in stone, beyond your reach? How we feel matters to how we thrive, or not.
Side note before we begin: Do not get distracted by links as you read the following EQ article. Ignore them! Hit only those specific links that make you feel curious to know more about linked topics related to your EQ.
A healthy emotional IQ keeps us in open-minded thinking. It’s available to all who take time to practice it. Most anyone can do it. When we choose emotionally strong approaches, we choose an art and science of creative reactions. We learn to recognize emotional cues, diffuse disappointments, and access a healthier, more agile brain. We reinforce an ability to deal with common frustrations and filter out irrelevant reactions.
Call it a boost for our brain. To practice emotionally healthy reactions is to allow ourselves to make mistakes. When slip-ups occur, we can avoid judging ourselves and instead focus our awareness to create opportunities to grow and change. Sounds simple and obvious, right? Well, it’s really all about doing it more, so we can do it easier.
As we practice living a healthy emotional life, we’ll discover ways to reshape restrictive beliefs and we’ll become aware of flexible alternatives for growth. Emotionally healthy actions observed and experienced will give us tools to boost skills of the soul and tackle problems with renewed confidence. Awareness grows! With daily practice of healthy emotions such as thankfulness, we’ll gradually begin to set goals that lay stronger foundations upon which to build lifelong dreams.
WHAT’S A LOW EMOTIONAL IQ?
Low EQ has us believe that our emotional failures as well as capabilities are hardwired and fixed traits. We believe our friends are fulfilled as athletes or leaders, while we are born without simple soccer skills we may crave, but cannot seem to attain.
We feel we’re born with certain emotional inabilities and are stuck in a rut with these limitations. No wonder we give up rather than try new approaches or take risks. We likely look at friends who do well and conclude we can’t enjoy a similar emotional skill because it’s too late.
A low EQ holds us back whenever we believe things about ourselves such as “I’m not loved”; “I’ll never be good at friendships”; “Finding happiness is too hard”; “I can’t create compassion”; “I’m always feeling alone”; “I can’t make friends”; “I’ll never be able to _________.” Fill in the blank. These inner fears keep us sticking to emotions that we know will fail us when we need affirmation most.
No adventure or risk seems reasonable when our potential seems stuck. We feel powerless. A fixed mindset inhibits our potential for growth and robs us of joy. Have you experienced this or observed others with fixed beliefs about their emotional skills? It doesn’t have to be this way.
Rather than fall into the trap of a fixed mindset where failure seems to grab the final word, we can become aware that grit, resilience and hard work inevitably end us in thriving and flourishing outcomes. We can shift our emotional beliefs to remind ourselves, “Hard work and practice over time helps us in sports and in sensibilities.”
OUR BRAINS COME EQUIPPED TO BUILD EQ
The six brain parts below help to build and measure our emotional wellbeing
- Basal Ganglia is our brain’s warehouse. Let’s say we tend to act on a short fuse. Those angry actions, over time, store as toxic habits. Anger, for instance can hold our healthy emotions prisoner. If we avoid change, and default to old habits we stockpile these habits in our basal ganglia and find ourselves in constant ruts. See more details on the wonders and woes of our basal ganglia.
- Serotonin is the brain’s wellbeing hormone. When used to facilitate healthy emotions it replaces toxins and opens healthy emotions along with AHA opportunities. That’s why we trust more, expect less from others, smile faster, hold on more, grow grit, encourage others to hang in, and enjoy life. See more details on serotonin as a power tool for higher EQ.
- Plasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself. Each time we choose to act on either a healthy or toxic emotion, that chosen action lays down a new neural pathway for more of the same. For example, let’s say we encounter a problem. If we smile and propose a solution, we change our brain for more of the same reactions to problems. Similarly, if we complain and sulk. Both a smirk and a smile lays down pathways into more of the same emotional reactions that change our brains. See more details on plasticity as a driver to creativity.
- Working Memory is the brain’s thimble sized temporary memory. Working memory holds bits of data while we use it to solve problems, and then replaces that data when new facts fly in. Let’s say we read that mellow music upgrades a bad mood. That new idea goes into our working memory. Then, let’s say we play ambient music to help us relax. Use of that fact from our working memory moves it into a longer memory bank, the basal ganglia. See more details on working memory as a support to learning.
- Cortisol is a toxic stress hormone that can rob years off our lives and can default us into broken habits by shutting down our prefrontal cortex. This results in poor decisions made, or poor choices since decisions and choices rely on a healthy prefrontal cortex. Cortisol prevents EQ growth, keeps us in victim mode, is decreased by EQ skills used – such as open-mindedness, exercise, attention to a good friend, mindfulness and so on. See more details about your brain on cortisol chemicals.
- Amygdala is the small almond shaped sack that stores each emotional reaction and then triggers these again in similar situations. We store smiles when we smile in response to meeting others, and that’s why smiles emerge easily when introduced to people. We store angry responses such as angry words to a bully, and that’s why anger emerges when bullies show up. See more details on the amygdala’s ability for cranky or kind.
When my grandchildren were younger I helped them to begin shaping a healthy EQ. They learned how the six tools above worked in fun ways. How so? We used imaginary characters with real brain parts for each of the above. All six namungo characters (within all brains) can be seen interacting in the following videos. In addition, the namungo supports are available for higher EQ in every encounter, even in sports!
HOW DO WE GROW HIGHER EMOTIONAL IQ ON A DAILY BASIS?
Unlike victims in toxic times, we lean into emotional or intrapersonal IQ (one of our multiple intelligences) to tackle toxins with an ability to remain calm when those around us turn to stress. To raise our EQ is to grow our intrapersonal mindset. See below how this can start today.
We grow aware of our emotional strengths and sidestep disruptions that create conflict in ourselves and our relationships. We may have to make a change to access happier spaces after a heartbreak. Be deliberate and intentional! Remember Aristotle’s words, “Happiness depends on ourselves.” Rather than see only triggers of hurtful settings, we might look at and celebrate a few new things around us. Then perhaps we can literally touch things around us and listen intentionally to new sounds. Smell something delightful and taste something that leaves us happy. In this way, we unlock new emotional memories that will replace heartbroken memories sensually over time. These tactics will bring us back to the present moment, and step us beyond feeling hurt by a past memory.
We grow flexible to learn from others who differ and avoid the stagnation by looking at problems with possibilities in mind.
We grow grit and resilience by using our curiosity to empower change in how we think with confidence, act with capability, and convert mistakes into stepping stones forward.
EQ or Intrapersonal IQ are to brain compatibility what power tools are to home building. With healthy levels we enjoy calmer outcomes, aware of both our strengths and weaker areas. We find motivation to keep growing and we replace resistance and fear with resilience and resolve to bounce back from tough breaks and take on new adventures with grace and goodwill.
WHEN DOES TALKING THROUGH EMOTIONAL TRAUMA HELP TO HEAL WOUNDS?
We can heal together with others involved in our emotional trauma, only after we purify our souls and embrace healing the painful parts without shame, regret or blaming others for our trauma. It’s safe and rewarding to share truth and express intimate feelings when we go in with true empathy, compassion, and kindness. Unkind or harsh judgement against ourselves or others keeps us spinning wheels in past problems, rather than finding grace in this present moment of goodwill and opportunity. Blame and judgement alter our brains with shots of cortisol that shuts us down and leaves the other person in a toxic place too. Fortunately intrapersonal intelligence, which contains EQ is our wheelhouse for change and health that begins within and upgrades every step forward with or without others involved in the trauma.
Without intrapersonal and emotional healing and growth. we are left with painful choices to barricade others from genuinely loving us, while we continue to suffer and wilt in prisons we have locked by our actions. Safe places remain available and freedom feels forever thanks worthy whenever we take another step toward healing we find our deeper value and worth.
LINKS TO MY BOOKS AND MATERIALS TO GROW EMOTIONALLY AND MENTALLY HEALTHY
Grace Mindset Book – paperback
The Teen’s Growth Mindset Workbook – paperback
Growth Mindset Interactive Materials at TPT
Mita (Growth Mindset) Strategies in Class and Beyond
Student Assessment that Works – a Practical Approach
HOW DOES EQ AFFECT OUR SLEEP? Check links below for more information on sleep and EQ
See sleep as our friend with high EQ or foe with low EQ.
Dream of better sleep through a higher EQ?
HOW DOES EQ EFFECT OUR CULTURE? Check links below for more information on culture and EQ
Why mindset matters in healthy cultures
Ten articles on kindness as a tool to build higher EQ cultures
HOW DOES EQ REWIRE OUR BRAINS? Check links below for more information on brain rewiring and EQ
A mental manifesto to rewire for a mental and emotional growth mindset
Rewire age graciously or voraciously for higher EQ
Finally, if emotional intelligence (EQ) is our awareness and management of emotions, how can we practice empathy to folks around us? How can we find lasting happiness? We know that high EQ equips us to engage emotions as tools to improve reactions and ensure healthy relationships with ourselves and others. Much like we grow IQ or develop personality, we can grow EQ through persistence, patience and continued practice. However …
How specifically can we benefit from EQ, after feelings get hurt and the wound is felt?
1. Can we know our triggers, and plan ahead to respond well to people, activities, or situations that irk us? Answer – EQ helps us to navigate negative triggers, and to control triggers that otherwise may block good judgment and prevent good decisions. This is especially helpful as we try to respond effectively to a person who hurts our feelings.
2. Can EQ help us to embrace unavoidable discomfort at times? Answer – EQ helps us process and prioritize emotions in ways that support inner kindness, that generate compassionate reactions to all, and that develop empathetic patterns of behavior. Perhaps we will endure short term suffering in order to learn how to handle future uncomfortable emotions more thoughtfully.
3. Is it reasonable to categorize emotions as good or bad? Answer – Judging our feelings tends to leave us devastated by regret or shame. Better to use EQ to increase our success in personal and social awareness. We cannot control the challenges that come through events or other people, but EQ helps us to react in ways that do not escalate the problem or cause further hurt.
4. Can we view objectively, our feelings and the triggers that cause inner joy or misery? Answer – EQ can help us to step back from a hurtful comment or action, and choose to see the situation through a filter of grace or unconditional kindness to ourselves and to the offending person.
5. Can we identify what we do emotionally to cover emotional hurts with a Band-Aid over a deeper emotional wound that we’ve been unable to deal with? Answer – EQ helps us to look at past errors of judgement, without regret but with determination to make it right through an apology if we erred, or through forgiveness if another person erred.
6. How can we heal very painful past feelings? Answer – We can invite feedback to uncover any bias. EQ helps us to see where we failed emotionally in past and to recognize our ability to improve our emotional response in different scenarios, and without hurt feelings.
7. Would EQ recommend that we reach out to other people to get a clearer picture of our emotional responses? Answer – Yes, a trusted person may be able to suggest ways we respond to certain situations or people. EQ also helps us to identify people or situations that upset us, and to notice patterns of change that can be applied to respond to others with grace, rather than upset.
8. Can EQ show us the key reason behind our emotion? Answer – EQ reminds us to step back and decipher reasons behind our negative emotional responses, and to increase inner kindness as a way forward. Healthy emotions can guide us to discover why we feel as we do. With healthy emotional guiding, we can resolve persistent problems or unwanted tensions that hold us back.
9. Can EQ include visualization to identify why we elicit negative reactions from another person? Answer – EQ equips us to sidestep emotional outbursts and to visualize these as learning opportunities for future challenging encounters. It helps us to reflect on and reshape where necessary, the message we send to others. We may visualize a difficult person sitting opposite us in conversation as a way to understand why that person reacts the way they do in our presence.
10. After EQ strengthens our self-awareness skills, can we expect healthy self-management? Answer- Self-management, or an ability to use our self-awareness as stay-in-control-of-behavior tactic is a learned behavior. EQ helps us to remain motivated by growth we see, and to increase what we do especially well. It also equips us to improve on and grow healthier, reactions or responses we do poorly.
How does EQ and emotional growth result overall in a delightful step forward? Emotional health reduces fear of making mistakes, just as it adds courage to risk love, freedom to practice empathy and offer kindness to ourselves and others. We can become the joyful person we were before the problem arose. We can forgive ourselves and forgive others involved. We can avoid recycling past pain, and focus on a fun memory or plan for the future.
Rather than hide from painful feelings, we can admit and accept what hurt. We can define the pain, without letting the hurtful feelings define us. We can name and define our hurt after loss or mistrust. Hurt feelings are unpredictable and may take time to heal and fade. The key is to avoid letting bruised emotions take over our life in ways that rob joy or keep us feeling victim to misery.
It often helps to shift our pondering away from the hurt until we can gain perspective before we respond in any negative way. Some people choose a brisk walk in the park that may help us to feel less tense and less down on ourselves. Others meditate with a mind to move forward and in order to restore self-worth and avoid blame or accusations. The key is to avoid dwelling on past mistakes, and find a way to heal hurt emotions, without drawing out the agony of hurtful emotions any more than necessary.
Is it possible that critical thinking too often reduces us to CRITICAL, as opposed to KIND? Let’s consider KINDHEARTED thinking and then become an active part of both individual and collective EQ.
It helps to brainstorm doable EQ tactics before any similar situation arises in future. Or list what we learned by enduring a painful situation with EQ tactics, and create a few lessons to offer others in hurtful situations. We can even keep a daily journal to show others what we walked through, when they find themselves in a painful situation. EQ is a useful tool both to empower ourselves and others after feelings get us down.