What is Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is about becoming intelligent about our emotions. It is the ability to accurately perceive our emotions and stay aware of them as they happen. To use this awareness of our emotions to positively direct our behavior. To pick up on emotions in others and understand what is really going on. It enables us to use our emotions and the others’ emotions to successfully manage interactions.

Emotional intelligence is learned and is learnable by everyone whereas intellectual intelligence is not learnable. The daily practice of doing emotional labor is what develops emotional intelligence. In the beginning this practice often requires a ‘leap of faith.’ Later, this leap is rewarded by better results.

The energy we choose to surround our self with has a dramatic effect on our emotions and results. Right now, billions of neurons in our brain are working to generate a conscious experience and not just any conscious experience. Our experience of the world around us and of our self within it. According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we are all hallucinating all the time. When we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality."

Whether positive or negative, emotions can spread like an emotionally contagious energy virus throughout an organization. The mirror neurons in our brain can resonate with the energy of the people around us who are having the experience. We experience their emotions just as if we were the ones having that experience. Our ‘open-loop’ emotional system depends on external sources to manage itself. This is how we can ‘catch’ the feelings or mood of the others in the group.

Brain plasticity or neurogenesis refers to the brain’s ability to change and develop new habits, beliefs and behaviors at any age. Our brain can reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons).

Every day the brain generates 10,000 stem cells that split into two. One becomes the daughter line that continues making stem cells and the other migrates to wherever it is needed in the brain and becomes that kind of cell. Very often that destination is where the cell is needed for new learning. Over the next 4 months that new cell forms about 10,000 connections with others to create new circuitry. The brain is continually reshaping itself according to our actions and experiences. When we try to overcome an existing habit, we are up against the thickness of the circuitry (neural network pathways) of something we have practiced and repeated thousands of times over the years. This is the unconscious default option we do automatically.

It is important to realize that our unconscious habits, attitudes, and beliefs are thousands of times stronger than our conscious goals and desires. In order to develop new habits, attitudes, and beliefs we must be committed to practicing new and better actions. This is how new neural network pathways are created. As we start to form a new habit the new pathway is competing with the old habit pathway. To make the new habit strong enough to win these internal battles we need to practice the new behavior repeatedly. Mastery is achieved when the new habit becomes the brain’s default way of responding. The more we practice the new habit the stronger the connection becomes. As we learn and practice the habit of mindfulness, we become less resistive, judgmental, and attached to outcome. This is the key to our emotional intelligence and success.

Phil Johnson, Founder & CEO

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