Carl Rogers the originator of Person Centered Therapy suggests the following core values in developing emotional intelligence: 1. Openness to experience - having an accurate perceptions of your experiences in the world and being able to accept your emotions. 2. Living in the here and now - accepting the past and not overanalyzing things that have past and cannot be changed or placing too much emphasis on an unknown future but being fully present in the moment 3. Trusting ourselves - to do what is right, this does not mean being selfish and doing things that may deliberately hurt others but accepting our thoughts and emotions and trusting our intuition 4. Using our freedom well - we feel free when choices are available to us, the fully functioning person acknowledges their freedom and takes responsibility for their choices 5. Being creative - if you feel free and responsible, you will act accordingly, and participate in the world in your own unique individual way. I would additionally add the following: 6. Having integrity - this is basically being self consistent which means applying the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you and applying the same value system both to ourselves and others. 7. Being accepting of ourselves and others – this includes not being judgmental of ourselves and others and being ready to forgive ourselves and others. 8. Always striving to have an understanding of our own behavior and to become more aware of it in our daily lives – all of us have semi automatic responses to events which is based on subconscious thought processes. 9. Self Honesty – being true to ourselves, living according to a set of values which we have set ourselves, being fully aware when we may have transgressed and holding ourselves fully responsible for our actions. 10. Building Empathy – being empathic with other people is the mechanism by which we are able to identify with others and others are able to identify with us. Now I will discuss each of these areas in more detail and give examples of how these apply in daily life. 1. Openness to experience This is simply a willingness to experience new things and to participate in experiences without judgment or over analyzing, taking the opportunity to fully perceive what is happening to us (with the possible exception of very traumatic experiences). An example of being open to experience would be to agree to play a new sport that you haven’t played before at the invitation of a friend. It would also include fully listening to what another person has to say rather than just concentrating on what you want to say about it. As you will see there is a lot of overlap between being open to experience and living in the here and now. 2. Living in the here and now The idea of living in the here and now, often now called living in the moment has been popularized recently by people like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. The idea here is that people are often distracted by ideas of what they might do or memories from the past which do not allow them to concentrate fully on what is going on in the present moment. Some planning is necessary of course and it is a good idea to review past experience in order to learn lessons, process difficult memories or simply make ourselves feel good through pleasant memories. It is also a good idea to analyze information to draw conclusions or make hypothesizes. However a lot of our thinking is unstructured and we continue to try to analyze situations when we have no new data (by definition over analyzing) which results in us just getting more frustrated. Other problems are continually dwelling on negative experiences with no objective in mind and worrying about the future. All of these activities are a complete waste of mental energy. Being in the moment also implies really tuning into what our senses are telling us which is where it overlaps with (1). Very good exercise for being in the moment includes, meditation techniques, physical exercise with a meditation element such as yoga or tai chi, the silent contemplation of nature, getting together in non judgmental groups such as 12 step groups and group therapy, individual therapy/counseling or simply being very open with a close friend. You can also be in the moment doing any activity such as work, house work, sports activities or simple physical necessities such as eating. 3. Trusting ourselves to do the right thing Trusting ourselves in fact should be implicit in everything we do, if we do not trust ourselves we do not trust our perceptions, our interpretations, our memory, our analysis of events or our decisions, and also if we don’t trust ourselves then we cannot truly trust anybody else. If we trust ourselves it doesn’t mean that our decisions will be the best possible, it doesn’t mean we will not miss anything, it doesn’t mean we will be correct in our analysis and it certainly doesn’t mean that we will always be right. It is implicit here that we chose to do things in a way that does not cause harm to others and that we can in an honorable way with an attitude of kindness of towards others. It is important here that we also need to have an attitude of kindness towards ourselves. Given that we will make mistakes from time to time and sometimes make bad decisions or say things that we shouldn’t say sometimes we must also be ready to forgive ourselves, recognize where we have made errors, apologize and make amends where necessary. 4. Using our freedom well The right to be free is our most fundamental right, the right to not have are actions dictated to us by others. Freedom is also fundamental to people being disposed to do the right thing. People who feel that many of their actions are determined by other people become naturally resentful of the situations in which they find themselves and as a result are less inclined to do things for the general good. So what I am saying in effect is that for each one of us defending our own rights and freedoms, is not only beneficial to ourselves but is beneficial to others as well. People who are open and assertive tend to like other people to be open and assertive with them. Why? Because people who feel free to express their opinions and are open with others can be counted on to be unambiguous in their relations with others. In fact the concept of individual freedom is a vital component of healthy relationships because people know where they stand with each other. This is as compared to co-dependent relationships where one and often both partners may feel that their individual freedoms are compromised. As per the golden rule “do unto others as would have them do to you” and applying the same value system to both others and ourselves (as we shall see later critical to having integrity), if we claim and defend our own freedom we should also respect and defend the freedom of others. Also as free people we must also hold ourselves responsible for our actions and by the same virtue not hold ourselves responsible for the actions of others except in the case of dependent minors. 5. Being creative As suggested above, if you feel free in your life and take responsibility for it, you will participate in the world in your own unique, creative way this is basically the same idea as being your true self. The importance of being creative cannot be overstated firstly you are tapping to a fundamental principle of the universe which in the wider picture leads to unlimited possibilities. Being free implies that you don’t restrict yourself in what you can think about. Being creative allows your mind to go outside the box so to speak. Being creative also means that you can give yourself many more options when it comes to solving problems and this includes social and relationship problems. If you do not allow yourself to be creative on the other hand you put hard limits on what you can achieve and even more importantly on your personal growth. 6. Having integrity Having integrity is basically about being consistent in what you do, I am not saying you cannot change your mind about something sometimes or even change your way of thinking as we all develop over time but changes should have some logical development to them. For example you should always try to keep your promises but there may be cases in which you committed yourself to something but later feel you have to break your original commitment because it no longer applies to the person you are. The key point here is that you should not be breaking promises and changing your values on a whim. If you are very superficial in your moral values and never keep promises, nobody will trust you. Where you do make major re-evaluations about how you see things you should try to explain to people who may be affected, the reasons for you having to drop commitments. While your moral values and life principles may change over life, as far as consistency of behavior is concerned one thing should always be constant. This is that you should apply the same set of values to yourself and others. This is exemplified by the golden rule “treat others as you would wish them to treat you”, it is important here to understand that it cuts both ways. You should not treat yourself worse than others or love yourself less than others and yes respect others and their opinions but also respect yourself and your opinions. An important part of integrity is respecting the boundaries of others but at the same time respecting your own boundaries and not allowing others to trample them. 7. Being accepting of ourselves and others Acceptance in my opinion lies at the very core of being emotionally intelligent, both accepting yourself and accepting others. Acceptance is the foundation on which the other values are built in my opinion. Accepting yourself is necessary in order to trust yourself be free in what you do and in being the real you and accepting yourself and others is central to the ideas of integrity and being honest with yourself. Also in terms of building improved relationships with other people then true acceptance of another can be a very powerful factor in building empathy with other people. 8. Always striving to have an understanding of our own behavior and to become more aware of it in our daily lives This is very important because there is an acknowledgement that a lot of our behavior was learned when we were children and was maladaptive behavior that needs to be eliminated and replaced by new behavior. The field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has made great strides in helping people alter their negative behavior. Good examples are: Anger Management, Assertiveness Training and treatment for social anxiety. All people have different areas where they were negatively affected in terms of behavior when growing up. But all people should strive to identify their maladaptive behavior patterns in order to at least be aware for them and hopefully over time begin to modify these mal-adaptive behaviors. Another useful idea is mindfulness which is another way of being in the moment (2). In this case you develop an observer mind where your conscious mind takes a back seat and simply observes the thoughts and emotions that run through your mind in the case of your maladaptive responses. 9. Self Honesty Self honesty is to a certain extent all tied in with integrity but self honesty is more fundamental than integrity. You can be honest with yourself without having integrity, but you can’t have integrity if you are not honest with yourself. Self honesty is also vital in trying to increase your understanding of self and is critical to the whole process of personal development and as long as you cannot be honest with yourself you can never begin to find out what your true self is really like. In some ways self honesty can be regarded as the bedrock upon which emotional intelligence is built and by the same virtue it can also be argued that as a result of learning to be dishonest with ourselves in different areas of our lives, our innate emotional intelligence has become compromised. In the final analysis if we are not entirely honest with ourselves then we are deluding ourselves in some way. These deluded thoughts are usually not at a conscious level so we have to dig into our own thought processes and reflect on our upbringing in order to discover areas in which we are not truthful with ourselves or where we have been avoiding things or where we are not being honest with ourselves about our feelings. 10. Building Empathy When it comes to the relationship aspect of emotional intelligence which is a very important part of it given that human beings are a naturally social in nature, then building empathy lies at the core of building and sustaining relationships (particularly healthy relationships) with others. We can never truly know what it is like to be another person, this means that in trying to understand another person we must relate aspects of their character to aspects of our own character. The closer a person is to us the more inclined we will be to be open to them and the more we should be inclined to build our mutual understanding (empathy). The most important thing to remember when building empathy is that however much we understand and can feel for another person we can never know what it is like to be them. If the person is an important part of our lives and we feel love for them then in a healthy relationship we should wish to understand increasingly more about them at the same time knowing that we will only ever have an impression of who they really are and also understanding that they will change over time. It is our wish that they should grow within themselves and that we should grow with them. It is that process I believe of wishing to learn as much as we can about another and wanting to tell them about ourselves and therefore being completely open with each other and sharing the essence of who we are with each other. And doing this from the viewpoint of kindness and complete acceptance and at the same time valuing the other’s freedom to be who they are as well as our own freedom to be who we are with them. That I believe is the essence of love. In Summary Emotional intelligence is the combination of a large number of different attributes which are all highly interrelated. Being emotionally intelligent is all about using our emotions in an intelligent way to further the goal of being our true selves in this world. So how what would a truly emotionally intelligent person look like? “An emotionally intelligent person is a person who loves and accepts who they are and wishes to share that with others. They love the process of learning more about themselves and others and the world around them because they understand that this is the essence of what the world is about. They live in the present and you always feel that they are interacting fully with you and are not somehow distracted. An emotionally intelligent person is accepting of others as well as themselves and always trusting of themselves and others who they have learned can be trusted and is always prepared to forgive themselves and others. They are free in their life and accept full responsibility for it as well as respecting the freedoms of others and do not make themselves responsible for the problems of others rather they are supportive of others in resolving problems for themselves. An emotionally intelligent person always applies the same values to himself as he does for others and the attitude to others is one of kindness and following the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do to you. An emotionally intelligent person is aware of their behavior, both conscious and subconscious reactions. Is willing to make amends for any inappropriate behavior and is generally introspective regarding their motives for what they do. They have minimized any internal conflicts and contradictions in their thinking and strive to continue working on this. Their emotional brain is aligned to a large extent to their analytical thinking (often called being coherent in thinking). Above all the emotionally intelligent person is completely honest with themselves at all times, understanding that without self honesty they have no real control of their lives.” Just one more thought, in reality the only thing under our control is our own self. If we delude ourselves that we have control of others and our external world we are not being honest with ourselves and lose control of the one thing that matters, ourselves.
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My name is Simon Meadowcroft, I am a writer in the field of personal development, my objective is to try to enlighten people in some way however small that will lead to them becoming more fulfilled in their lives. If you like what I have to say and want to hear more, please let me know at simonmaya@yahoo.com.