Monthly Archives: January 2012
Emotional Intelligence Training
Walking Out the Positive Part of Emotional Intelligence training to Make
My Life Extraordinary
FROM A 2D, SMALL SCREEN BLACK AND WHITE LIFE TO A HIGH DEFINITION, IMMERSIVE 3D, LIFE IN VIVID FULL COLOR
Emotional intelligence training benefits #1: You will learn to handle your anger
I’m not sure how many men experienced what I did. When I finally got a handle on anger, I was able to eliminate it from my life. It wasn’t perfect, but compared to what I felt beforehand, I’d say I had gotten rid of about 90% of my anger.
But the the world was pretty flat. I had realized that not only was my DOMINANT emotion Anger, it was pretty much my ONLY emotion! Not literally, of course, but if you were to rate my emotional range on a scale of 0-10, my anger used to run as high as an 8 or 9, but nothing else got past a 2 or 3! Suddenly the world was like a two dimensional, small, blurry black and white television screen.
Emotional intelligence training benefits #2: You’ll transform your life from blurry screened to high definition
I know I might be dating myself. I actually had a small, blurry screened, black and white television when I was young. For those of you too young to remember them, you’ve probably seen blurry black and white videos online. We used to call that “television.” That was what my life was like before I decide to attend emotional intelligence training.
Emotional Intelligence Training for a Much Brighter Kind of Life
LIFE is an immersive, holographic, high definition, surround sound, giant screen adventure – and I was missing it. I got to go places. I got to see things. I got to do things. But I was still missing it.
You see, it’s Emotions that connect us to the world around us. It is what gives life color, spice, flavor, resonance, the full spectrum equalizer… the VIVIDNESS of REALLY living!
Emotional intelligence training benefits #3: You will learn to find your REAL emotions
That required some work from me. I’ve already told you about getting behind the Anger to find out the REAL emotions of change I was feeling. I started to change what needed changing so I could GROW. I used to just react, and react poorly, and that can get things pretty messed up!
The other side of my adventure was amplifying the good! I was already mastering the troubleshooting side of life… while still missing the good stuff! So that was my next adventure.
Emotional intelligence training benefits #4: You will learn to pay attention to the good stuff
I started out by making a simple change: REALLY pay attention to the good stuff! Get into it!
For that, I learned a technique called Heightened Association.
I was a bit detached from the good things, sort of an observer rather than a participant. My positive experiences were muted because I was disconnected from them. I don’t know how common an experience that is for people, but it was how I was living.
Emotional intelligence training benefits #5: You will learn all about Heightened Association
Heightened Association begins by really immersing yourself in what’s going on. I stepped in to what was happening around me and started to notice things I would not normally see. I paid attention to the meaning of events and started to really enjoy life more! In one major shift, I realized how many amazing things I’d been missing in life.
Emotional Intelligence Training To Help You Focus on Good Things
I learned to focus my attention on the good things. I learned to think the thoughts that would keep me focused. I started asking myself better questions that would guide me to focus even better. “What is good about this?” “What else is good about this?” “What good can I take out of this?” Considering how little training I had at the time, I was doing pretty well.
More than that was necessary for me, though. In the years since, Heightened Associations seems to be plenty for most people. I was a bit more messed up than that!
Instant State Change skills completed my skill set. The short version of this skill is that you learn to fully and completely express. This is another case where I have Tony Robbins to thank. At a live seminar I learned how to ramp up my expression of emotion. I learned how to create excitement in myself, how to be enthusiastic, how to be really happy.
Funny thing is that after I learned it from him, I realized I sort of knew it already! You see, in martial arts, we learn to move with confidence and strength. Like in boot camp, we learn to stand at attention. We learn to combine loud, strong, powerful shouts with loud, strong, powerful movements. Maybe that’s why I learned Tony’s lesson so quickly. I already had a reference for it!
Since the emotional intelligence training, I’ve gotten to live my life in full color. More than “just full color,” I’ve gotten to live life in immersive, holographic, high definition, vivid full color!
NOTE: I’m giving a strong promotion to Kevin Cole of Empowerment Quest International (www.empowermentquest.com), and his lessons have helped me continue to expand my toolbox. I got to share my Language of Emotions material with him a few years ago, and that kicked off a powerful relationship of mutual teaching. I highly recommend Kevin Cole both for private coaching and for his live training. In one 16 day course, I probably doubled my toolbox of specific techniques to help people in one-on-one coaching and counseling. Tell him I said hello! Full Disclosure: I get no fee for promoting him! I just REALLY liked his training. I have the utmost respect for the man!
Application of Emotional Intelligence
My Personal Application of Emotional Intelligence to Really Start Living
Life!
Application of Emotional Intelligence : NOTHING BUT ANGER TO BEING A WHOLE HUMAN BEING
Tony Robbins (http://www.anthonyrobbins.com/) was the first one to teach me that the experience of a person’s life was the emotions you felt in it. If you are a wealthy, successful person in the world’s eyes, but your dominant emotions are anger and guilt, then your life is anger and guilt. If you are poor, scraping your way in the world, and you’re happy most of the time, then you’re life is happiness!
Application of emotional intelligence rule #1: Live with Passion
One of Tony’s persistent sayings is “Life with Passion!” I used to, but the only “passion” I felt was anger. I was either flat, or I was angry. When my temper finally gave way in 1983, I was left flat. Based upon Tony’s lesson, it didn’t matter what I did, what I accomplished, or how well I succeeded at anything, my life was flat.
Application of emotional intelligence rule #2: Avoid living a Flat Life
A flat life really isn’t much of a life at all. Neither is an angry, bitter life. Who wants to live that way?
Not me.
I didn’t know what to do, though. Do I start to let myself cry? Be the sensitive man? Do I admit when I’m scared? (Without using code words like “stressed” or “concerned.”) How does someone go from an angry life to a full life? How does someone go from a flat, two-dimensional, dull black-and-white life to an immersive, 3-D, vividly full color life?
Application of emotional intelligence rule #3: Live a Full and Two Dimensional Life
One of the things it took was realizing I had to expand my emotional range. But for me, Mr. Logical (remember, I used to be nicknamed Mr. Spock as in the Star Trek Vulcan), I needed a logical path to a deeply emotional life. Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? How does one use LOGIC to achieve EMOTION?
Application of Emotional Intelligence: Emotion is a Matter of Focus
Application of emotional intelligence rule #4: Have focus
Once gain, Tony Robbins got me started. He taught that emotion was largely a matter of your focus and your physiology. So I tried that. I learned to use my will and my logic to focus on the aspects of my life that I thought would logically generate the emotions I desired. It worked – at least compared to what I had been feeling before. I tried using posture and movement and words to create the emotions I desired. That worked for me, too.
I am immensely grateful to Tony Robbins for starting me down this path. I had attended his live events, including Mastery University (where I also met and began my learning relationship with several other leaders). I listened to over a dozen different programs, and I read his books. It was a good start! I credit Tony Robbins with helping me break free of that flat, logical, and otherwise meaningless life I had been living.
Application of emotional intelligence rule #5: If things worked, then keep going
Then I just kept going! As I started to see how things worked, I used my own mastery of martial arts principles to grasp what was going on at a different level. I was able to systemize it so I could better understand what I was doing and how to do it.
Application of emotional intelligence rule #6: Recognize your true emotions
Suddenly I could take apart emotions and see what they really meant. That let me start to feel a whole range of emotions. Instead of always feeling angry like so many men are taught to do, I could actually see when I was really hurt, or afraid, or feeling helpless or overwhelmed. I used to hide all these emotional behind anger. When I realized that my anger just meant that one of my rules were being broken, I started to discover “rules” that said I wasn’t ever supposed to be afraid (even if I called it “stressed”), or overwhelmed (which I also called “stressed”). When I could admit to the real feeling behind the anger, the anger disappeared. Then I learned how to deal with the real emotion.
Application of Emotional Intelligence for Personal Growth
Application of emotional intelligence rule #7: Set better goals and plans
I used the Language of Emotions to start guiding my personal growth – though I didn’t start calling it the Language of Emotions for many years. I started to see where I needed to change rules (using my anger to help me rather than hurt me or others). I started to see where I needed to learn new skills to be ready for things (using fear) or reprioritizing to avoid overwhelm. I began to take action to understand and use hopelessness to help be set better goals and better plans.
Even admitting to being hurt started to help me learn new skills that dramatically improved my relationships. I found that most men sort of “armor up” and keep their emotional distance to avoid being hurt. Once I understood what was going on, I was able to develop new, more empowering coping mechanisms so I could take the kind of risks that really hurt most people and know I could some out the other side! I would have never guessed that I could USE hurt that way until the Language of Emotions was really coming together.
Application of emotional intelligence rule #8: Emotions of change
Of course, getting a total grasp on negative emotions (Emotions of Change) was just half of the quest. It was the easy half for me, but I’m strange that way. I work best in areas where things need to change. I love growth, and growth requires change. Not all change is growth, though, and that was the problem I had when I was young. I let life change me, and sometimes it changed me in ways that didn’t really work out so well. Once I took the helm, I liked who I was becoming.
Next time, I’ll talk about how I expanded from Emotions of Change into Emotions of Duplication, and the kind of Total Life Supercharge THAT brought about!
Real World Emotional Intelligence Testing
SAVORING CHRISTMAS
Emotional Intelligence Testing: Emotional Intelligence Tested in the Real World
This time I’ll be sharing a story of how we do emotional intelligence testing in Conway home. This Christmas, we had another family staying with us, so they joined us for Christmas. They told us that from now on, they intend to do Christmas the way they saw us do it, and they intend to share with many others. Word is spreading. I thought I’d join in the sharing.
Does this have to do with Emotional Intelligence, Developing Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Intelligence Testing? Quite a bit, actually. This is Emotional Intelligence testing applied to the Real World. You develop it by doing something that triggers, supports and sustains positive emotions. You put it to the test by how your Emotional Genius manifests in your life.
ORDINARY
Christmas is a very special time of the year, and for weeks, months in some cases, gifts have been sought, purchased, wrapped, and have made it under the tree. The excitement of seeing gifts under the tree with your name on them stirs the imagination of many a child – adults, too! Curiosity, wonder, anticipation… all wonderful feelings that seek sweet release on Christmas morning!
This is how I’ve watched Christmas unfold in many households over the decades. There is some variation on a theme, but it goes something like this: Everyone tears open their presents, reacts with various levels of excitement, and in about ten minutes all but the most interesting, fun gifts are set aside and play begins with a handful of them.
Some households take turns so everyone sees what everyone else got, but even so, in ten to twenty minutes, it’s all over. Maybe someone keeps a list of who got what from whom so thank you cards can hypothetically be written later. Those cards, if written at all, are often the result of a certain measure of nagging on the part of a parent – and in the face of playing with new toys, is a sometimes Herculean task.
EXTRAORDINARY
This is how we do presents in the Conway home.
Someone is the “elf,” and it is the job of the elf to try to find one present for each person. Then we take turns, starting with the youngest, and everyone says who the gift is from, reads the card if there is one, and opens it. Everyone gets to see it. And then… we’ll come back to “and then.”
The next person opens their gift, and then the next person until everyone has opened a gift and everyone has seen everyone else’s gifts. Here’s the “and then” I wanted you waiting for….
We write thank you cards.
Yes, right then. Before we open the second gift, a thank you card has been written for the first gift. Gratitude is demonstrated in card writing immediately after the gift is opened, and only after the card is written does the next elf get the next round of gifts.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
First of all, this turns a ten to twenty minute gift opening session into a much longer event. Because of the extra people in our home, we spent nearly three hours enjoying and being thankful for gifts. Normally it takes about half that time. Think about how long it takes to shop for gifts! We get to spend as much time opening and showing gratitude as an average shopping trip!
Secondly, it keeps us in an attitude of gratitude. Gift by gift, we show our gratitude for the gifts, large and small, and for the gift giver. Etiquette says you should give a card to anyone who is not present when you open the gift. We make it a habit to do it for everyone. If we know we have more than one gift from someone, we keep the card open with space for the rest of the gifts. The card thanks each giver for every gift!
Third, it keeps us focused on more than just ourselves. We really do pay attention to what others get. That shows attention and respect for our family members – that they are important and what great things they get is important to us. Giving thanks as we go keeps us focused on the givers of the gifts rather than just the gifts. It helps us think about the generosity of others and be grateful for that – no matter the gift. Gifts will be on unequal footing later when they are being played with, but for a time, every GIVER is on equal footing with gratitude for the thoughtfulness of the gift.
Fourth, it lets us visit while opening presents. Sometimes there’s a story behind the gift, or an adventure getting it. This year, one of the gifts I got for my wife involved a conspiracy to sneak it out of an amusement park store, get it into town, find a box for it, and get it wrapped and hidden under the tree without her having any idea where it came from (or she would have guessed exactly what it was!). One gift for the boys had a whole story attached to it from many years ago, and that’s what inspired mom to buy it for them! That story came with many wonderful memories from their younger years.
Fifth, it is an exercise in Patience. Everyone waits their turn. Everyone has something to do before the next gift. Except when you’re the elf, you open what someone else chooses for you (even if you REALLY want to open that giant box you’ve been drooling over for two weeks!).
Mission accomplished.
MAKING IT MEMORABLE
That’s just the gift opening time. We do many other things to make the season memorable. We have established family traditions, and we pursue them purposefully. From time to time, we may not get to something that is normal for us – and we don’t worry about it. It’s not about neurotically checking everything off a list, we are making memories.
The way the Conways Do Christmas is rippling out from us to many other households. This year, for the first time, an unrelated family actually got to join us for Christmas and be a part of our way. They are very excited. Every member of the household has talked to us about how great it was and how they intend to do things that way forever.
If they are so excited about it, I thought you might enjoy reading about it. Maybe as you plan for next year, you might decide to adopt something of the way we do things.
Though I’m almost a year early, for the next Christmas coming up, make it an Exceptionally Merry Christmas!