Last Updated on May 24, 2022 by Editors Desk
I live in Bolton, which is part of Greater Manchester and I was invited to contribute to the it’s The Thought That Counts slot on my local radio station, Bolton FM. This is usually broadcast on the Breakfast Show at about 7.30 in the morning and on the lunchtime slot at about 1.30. Each broadcast lasts about 90 seconds.
My reflections cover; What is Emotional Intelligence?, The Myth around Positive and Negative Emotions, The Issue of Work / Life Balance, Resilience, and Change Management. I’ve put all of these together as hints and tips into this podcast. I hope you enjoy it.
The Thought That Counts. Let’s have a look at this concept of emotional intelligence. A lot of people are talking about emotional intelligence these days. But what does it mean? Emotional intelligence is all about using your intelligence around your emotions. So, it’s the way in which you combine your thinking with your feelings, in order to make good quality decisions and build up authentic relationships. The fundamental parts of emotional intelligence are what’s going on inside your head. It’s all about self awareness. Knowing what your strengths are, knowing what your limitations are, and how these combine together to work in the way in which you’re controlling yourself and controlling your emotions. In the outer world of other people, you have to use your emotions to empathise, to build up your social skills when you’re talking to people on a one-to-one basis, in small groups, or in large teams. And finally, emotional intelligence involves motivation.
How do you motivate yourself to work with other people? How can you motivate other people? All of these combine together to form this idea, this construct that is emotional intelligence. It’s not easy, but it’s great fun to work with. The Thought That Counts. Let’s have a look at emotions. The phrase “positive” and “negative” emotions assumes that some emotions are good and some are bad. Emotions are emotions. You experience them for a reason. They’ve developed over aeons through evolutionary processes as a survival mechanism. It’s not that the emotion is positive or negative, it’s the thought process and the behaviour that accompanies it that requires the label. Anger is often referred to as a negative emotion, yet it serves you well to right or wrong, to be more attentive and careful in your thinking, and to motivate you at certain times.
Fear is often referred to as a negative emotion. If it’s so negative, why can you get so much enjoyment from rollercoasters and from scary films? Happiness is often referred to as a positive emotion. It’s suggestive of a state of blissful Nirvana that you must aspire towards, yet it’s not appropriate at solemn occasions. Also, happiness is going to limit you in your ability to communicate effectively. “Hello, trees Hello, flowers, Hello Sky!” Can you imagine trying to communicate with an individual in that state? Happiness can also encourage riskier behaviours, encourage you to take shortcuts and lead you to make more mistakes.
The Thought That Counts. Often in my work, I hear the phrase “work / life balance” being used. I’m sure it’s a phrase you use quite often. The issue with the phrase “work / life balance” is that it compartmentalises everything into work activities; meetings, clients, trips, conferences, and life activities; family commitments, holidays, hobbies, keeping healthy. Think about it. The phrase is actually meaningless. Life is not at one end of a fulcrum with work on the other end. Work is an integrated part of life. You only have one life, you just happen to live some of it while working and some of it engaged in other activities. Most people over the age of 20 have a situation where work takes up a major proportion of their life, and it has to be realistically integrated into all of your activities to give you a rich, rewarding and meaningful focus.
The Thought That Counts. Resilience is a very popular topic currently. Everyone is talking about building resilience in order to cope with stresses and strains of everyday life and the odd exceptional circumstance. It’s become very fashionable in the media to talk about resilience., but what does resilience mean? Resilience is often defined as your ability to bounce back from the stresses of life. The idea of resilience as an aspect of human behaviour originates from material science, where it describes the property of having material to resume its original shape after distortion – to bounce back. Now there’s a problem with the phrase “bouncing back”, because this assumes that people will return to the state that they were in before an adverse events, so nothing’s changed. You actually show good resilience by possessing a firm, reliable acceptance of reality, a deep belief supported by strongly held values that life is meaningful, and an ability to be creative, to adapt and to improvise. This has nothing to do with bouncing back – backwards or forwards or any other direction – because you continually evolve and grow and improve yourself by learning from your environment, and your mistakes, and in this way, you develop your resilience.
The Thought That Counts. Change is constant, and it’s inevitable. For some people, change brings overwhelming discomfort. This may be linked to fear – “If the rules have changed, how can I continue to succeed?” – or a need to feel in control – “If I don’t do it my way, the way that I’ve always done it, then it won’t be right”. Some people try to deny it by focusing on the skills that have bought them success in the past, and they ignore what is required to adapt. Sooner or later, this lack of flexibility results in a mistake that can have serious repercussions. Successful people accept change and adapt to it. They examine change on its own terms, and decide what they’re in control of, and what they can’t control, and so they know what to let go of. They move their energy away from any anxiety produced by change towards developing new skills and extending their current strengths. Here are some tips how you can help to work better with change. Look for reasons how to make the change for work, rather than why the change won’t work. Make suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of change. And show willingness to learn new methods, procedures, techniques or skills. I’m Robin Hills from Ei4Change, Emotional Intelligence for Change, Empowering your Emotional Management. The Thought That Counts.
