Tag Archives: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 – P.O.P.E
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 - PUMU: Perceive, Understand,
Manage, Use
When I was young, I had very little grasp of my own emotions. You can imagine I wasn’t all that great at knowing what someone else was feeling! I could tell that when my girlfriend was crying, it was bad. I didn’t understand why she was crying, so when I’d try to do something about, sometimes I’d just make it worse. I wasn’t even sure what the crying meant!
Back then I just figured I’d done something that hurt her. I had no idea she might be crying because she was overwhelmed, or scared, or feeling helpless. I certainly didn’t know what questions to ask! The only thing I had going for me was the “guy reflex” to “fix” whatever it was. Trying to fix a woman’s emotions is almost always a mistake, but trying to fix it when you’re clueless? Disasters waiting to happen. I had a few of those disasters.
I was observant enough to realize that there were different kinds of crying times, but I had no idea how to decode the words, lack of words, body language, and whatnot. I knew I was looking at SOMETHING, but I had no idea what. I sure didn’t know what to ask! I had no idea how to connect, how to relate, or how to really listen. I just sort of sat there trying to make it all stop.
Pretty clueless, at least compared to now! I know there’s a chance there’s a few people who read this and think, “Ummm, that’s kinda where I am!”
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 – Language of Emotions!
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – P.O.P.E.
Perceiving Other People’s Emotions, or POPE, is a skill. One challenge is that if you don’t even know what you feel, how can you tell what someone else is feeling? Again, Understand from PUMU (Perceive, Understand, Manage, Use) comes to our rescue!
So long as someone expresses their emotions, most people can tell when someone is angry, hurt or really scared. It’s more difficult to spot more subdued emotions. It is challenging to distinguish between close cousin emotions.
Intuitive people can usually tell what someone is feeling. The problem is that intuition is very difficult to teach! How can you teach “Y’know… you just sorta… know!” Intuitive people don’t often understand some of the subtle things that go into their intuition. While most people with intuition may not understand how they do it, there are ways to tap into intuition-level insight and make these discoveries.
I admit there are some subtle tricks that are beyond an introductory course, and certainly far beyond a short article! The techniques and tricks are fairly easily taught in a live seminar where I can show you how it works and let you practice, but for a short article, we’ll stick to a few simple things I can easily teach here.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 - QUESTIONS ARE YOUR ANSWER
Obvious is obvious, so that’s your starting point. Most of us can already do that.
The next level requires some skill at Understand. Overwhelm, for instance, means there’s too much. Someone might be crying, so it might seem like you’re dealing with Hurt, which means some feels damage or loss. That’s when you blend Understand with Perceive to help you Perceive better.
Something as simple as “Talk to me. I’m listening.” can open you up to information that will help you know what someone is feeling. If they say “I don’t know how I’m supposed to get all this done” or “It just all too much!” tell you that Overwhelm is at least part of the picture.
Fear means “Something’s coming; I’m not ready.” If someone says “I don’t know what to do!” that could be fear (I’m not ready), or it could still be Overwhelm. Either of them would leave someone not feeling they know what to do. You would need more information.
With a statement like “I don’t know what to do” you’re probably dealing with Fear or Overwhelm, and the solution to each is different. So you need to ask more questions. Something like “What’s going on?” can help you find out.
If they tell you something specific, that tells you that it’s Fear. They know what’s coming, they don’t know what to do, so they feel Fear: Something’s Coming, I’m Not Ready. If they tell you “a lot of things,” or “too many things,” that means it’s Overwhelm.
THEN WHAT?
Here, we’re talking about Perceive. What you do next requires Understand (which we’ve talked a bit about here). We’ll build into that as we continue through this series.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 opens the door to mastery in such a clear, systematic way that you can walk it out in less time than it takes to read about it! Sure, it takes a little while to learn and some practice to master, but it really does take the messiest part of human relationships and make it pretty straight forward!