Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (11 page)
Read Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Online
Authors: Travis Bradberry,Jean Greaves,Patrick Lencioni
Time helps you to self-manage because it brings clarity and perspective to the thousands of thoughts that go swimming through your head when something is important. Time also helps you to gain control of emotions that you know would lead you in the wrong direction if you were to let them drive. It’s that simple. All you need to do is force yourself to wait for the dust to settle before you make a move.
Role models come in all shapes and sizes, and they influence our lives in ways that are hard to predict. One of the most powerful ways to learn self-management is to seek out skilled self-managers to learn their tricks.
Most people’s weaknesses in emotional intelligence are simply the product of skills that don’t come naturally to them. In the case of people who are gifted in an emotional intelligence skill, they are usually very aware of what it is they do well, which makes it easy for you to learn from them.
First, find a person whom you consider to be a master self-manager. If you don’t feel that you can spot a skilled self-manager on your own, you can always have someone take the test that comes with this book. Offer to take your self-management whiz out for lunch or coffee, explain that you are seeking improvement in this skill, and ask him or her to review the self-management section of this book before the meeting. During the meeting share your specific goals for improved self-management, and ask what tactics he or she relies on to self-manage so well. Be sure to share the emotions and situations that give you the most trouble. You’re bound to learn some unique and effective ways to manage yourself that you would have otherwise never been exposed to. Before you leave the meeting, write down the best tips and choose a couple that you can begin trying immediately. Ask your self-management whiz if the two of you can meet again after you’ve had a chance to try the suggestions out.
Did you know that when you laugh and smile, your face sends signals to your brain that you are happy? Your brain literally responds to the nerves and muscles in your face to determine your emotional state. So what does this mean for self-management? When you’re stuck on a frustrating or distressing thought, forcing yourself to smile counteracts the negative emotional state. If you work in customer service, or any time you need to look upbeat when you’re really not up for it, making yourself throw on a large, legitimate smile (where your cheeks push upwards) will trick your mind into feeling the mood you need for the moment.
French university researchers measured the power of a smile by having two groups of subjects read the same comics page from the newspaper. One group of subjects was instructed to hold a pencil in their teeth while reading (which activates the muscles used in smiling), while the other group held the pencil with their lips (which does not activate the muscles used in smiling). Those who were unknowingly “smiling” found the cartoons far more humorous and had a better time while reading them than people in the group that weren’t smiling.
... it’s nice to know you have an out when you need to put on a happy face.
You can also use smiling and laughter to lift your mood by watching a show or reading a book that you know you find funny. This can feel like an odd choice when you’re feeling down, but it’s a great way to override the negative emotions and clear your head, especially if your down mood is paralyzing your judgment. Smiling and laughter won’t eliminate feeling down, and they shouldn’t—every mood has its purpose—but it’s nice to know you have an out when you need to put on a happy face.
You experience hundreds of emotions every day, some of which you are not even aware. You spend your day bouncing around from feeling to feeling, which can lead to making some decisions at inopportune times.
Think back through some of your recent decisions, and you’ll likely find that the decisions you made while hurrying through your day were seldom as effective as those made with some planning and clear thinking. The only way to ensure that you have the right space to make good decisions is to set aside some time in your schedule for problem solving. Just keep it simple. A 15-minute period each day where you turn off your phone, walk away from your computer, and take time to just think, is a great way to ensure your decisions aren’t muddled by your emotions.
Research suggests the average person has about 50,000 thoughts every day. Sound like a lot? It doesn’t stop there. Every time one of those 50,000 thoughts takes place, chemicals are produced in your brain that can trigger reactions felt throughout your body. There is a strong relationship between what you think and how you feel, both physically and emotionally. Because you are always thinking (much like breathing), you tend to forget that you are doing it. You likely don’t even realize how much your thoughts dictate how you feel every hour of every single day.
It’s impossible to try and track every single thought you have to see if it’s having a positive or negative influence on your emotional state. The thoughts that are most influential are those where you literally talk to yourself. Though you might not realize you have these thoughts, we all have an internal voice inside our head that affects our perception of things. We tell ourselves to keep quiet, we congratulate ourselves on a job well done and we reprimand ourselves for making poor decisions. Our thoughts are “talking” to us every day, and this inner voice is called “self-talk.”
With thoughts, the primary vehicle for regulating your emotional flow, what you allow yourself to think can rumble emotions to the surface, stuff them down underground, and intensify and prolong any emotional experience. When a rush of emotion comes over you, your thoughts turn the heat up or down. By learning to control your self-talk, you can keep yourself focused on the right things and manage your emotions more effectively.
Much of the time, your self-talk is positive and it helps you through your day (“I’d better get ready for the meeting” or “I’m really looking forward to going out to dinner tonight”). Your self-talk damages your ability to self-manage anytime it becomes negative. Negative self-talk is unrealistic and self-defeating. It can send you into a downward emotional spiral that makes it difficult to get what you want from life.
What follow are the most common types of negative self-talk with the keys to taking control of them and turning them around:
1.
Turn
I always
or
I never
into
just this time
or
sometimes
.
Your actions are unique to the situation in front of you, no matter how often you think you mess up. Make certain your thoughts follow suit. When you start treating each situation as its own animal and stop beating yourself up over every mistake, you’ll stop making your problems bigger than they really are.
2.
Replace judgmental statements like
I’m an idiot
with factual ones like
I made a mistake
.
Thoughts that attach a permanent label to you leave no room for improvement. Factual statements are objective, situational, and help you to focus on what you can change.
3.
Accept responsibility for your actions and no one else’s.
The blame game and negative self-talk go hand in hand. If you are someone who often thinks either
it’s all my fault
or
it’s all their fault
you are wrong most the time. It is commendable to accept responsibility for your actions, but not when you carry someone else’s burden. Likewise, if you’re always blaming others, it’s time to take responsibility for your part.
This is another strategy that at first glance may appear too simple to be effective, but it packs a powerful punch. Learning to self-manage well requires a lot of practice. Yet, many of the situations that pose the greatest difficulty for you don’t come up all that often. So, you’ll have a hard time forming the neural pathways needed to make your new skills habitual . . . unless you learn to visualize.
Your brain has a difficult time distinguishing between what you see with your eyes and what you visualize in your mind. In fact, MRI scans of people’s brains taken while they are watching the sun set are virtually indistinguishable from scans taken when the same people visualize a sunset in their mind. The same brain regions are active in both scenarios.
Visualizing yourself managing your emotions and behavior effectively is a great way to practice your new skills and make them into habits. For this to work, you might want to do your visualization in a room that’s free from distractions, as you’ll need to immerse yourself fully in the scenes playing out in your head. A great time to visualize is before you go to bed at night. Just close your eyes and visualize yourself in situations where you have the most difficulty managing yourself. Focus on the details of each situation that make it so hard for you to remain in control; concentrate on the sights and sounds you would experience if you were actually there until you literally feel the same emotions. Next, picture yourself acting the way you’d like to (i.e. calming your nerves and proceeding confidently during a big presentation, dealing with someone who pushes your buttons without losing your cool, etc.). Imagine yourself doing and saying the right things and allow yourself to feel the satisfaction and positive emotions that come from this. Not a bad way to end the day, don’t you think? Use this strategy nightly and incorporate new, challenging situations as they surface.
Self-management requires patience, flexibility, and alertness, which are the first things to go when you don’t get a good night’s sleep. Getting more sleep at night will probably help you manage yourself better, but not necessarily. The critical factor for an alert, focused, and balanced mind is the quality of your sleep, and for quality sleep you need good sleep hygiene.
While you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your brain is very fickle when it comes to sleep. It needs to move through an elaborate series of cycles for you to wake feeling rested. You can help this along and improve the quality of your sleep by following these steps for good sleep hygiene:
1.
Get twenty minutes of morning sunlight.
Your eyes need at least twenty minutes of pre-noon sunlight (cloudy days are fine) to reset your inner clock, which makes it easier to fall asleep in the evening. The light can’t be filtered by windows or sunglasses. So, take the glasses off and crack your car windows on the way to work, or find some time to get outdoors before lunch-time.
2.
Turn off the computer at least two hours before bedtime.
The light of a computer screen right in front of your face late at night is similar enough to sunlight that it tricks your brain, making it difficult to fall asleep and disruptive to the quality of your sleep.
3.
Keep your bed for sleeping.
The best way to check out the moment you hit the mattress is to avoid working or watching television in bed. Save your bed for sleep and your body will respond.
4.
Avoid caffeine, especially in the p.m.
Caffeine has a six-hour half-life. Have a cup of joe at eight a.m., and you’ll still have 25 percent of the caffeine in your body at eight p.m. Caffeine keeps you from falling asleep and is extremely disruptive to the quality of your sleep. It’s best avoided all together, or at least taken in small amounts and only before noon.
Life isn’t fair . . . there’s nothing you can do about it . . . it isn’t up to you.
Moms and dads tend to beat these mantras into their children’s heads as if there were some secret Mommy and Daddy Handbook that instructed them to do so. What your folks forgot to explain is that you always have a choice—a choice in how you respond to what’s before you. Even when you can’t do or say anything to change a difficult situation, you always have a say in your perspective of what’s happening, which ultimately influences your feelings about it.
Moms and dads tend to beat these mantras into their children’s heads as if there were some secret Mommy and Daddy Handbook that instructed them to do so. What your folks forgot to explain is that you always have a choice—a choice in how you respond to what’s before you. Even when you can’t do or say anything to change a difficult situation, you always have a say in your perspective of what’s happening, which ultimately influences your feelings about it.
Many times you can’t change a situation or even the parties involved, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for you to give up. When you find yourself thinking that you have no control, take a closer look at how you are reacting to the situation itself. Focusing on restrictions is not only demoralizing—it helps negative feelings surface that confirm your sense of helplessness. You must take accountability for what you have control over, and focus your energy on remaining flexible and open-minded in spite of the situation.
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