Emotional Intelligence:  Learning how to manage emotions is part of growing up. However, becoming aware that our feelings are making us dumber is not always easy. How do successful people deal with emotions to make better decisions?

Developing Emotional Intelligence

Although it is normal to have emotional highs and lows, successful people separate their emotions from their thinking to make the best decisions.

For example, things look easier and more appealing when we are on an emotional high. With these feelings, we may overcommit our time and money.

On the other hand, things look more difficult and unpleasant when we are feeling down. Emotional lows can prevent us from working well with others. Furthermore, when emotional lows shut us down, we can fail to take advantage of opportunities all around us. Our coping skills become less effective. Our relationships with others become more difficult.

Here are twelve steps that may help.

Live in the present moment

Get out of our head. Focus on what is in front of us and around us. This focus enables us to make good decisions and take the best actions. Leaders live in the world around them and not in the crumbling castles in their head.

Let go of Resentments

Ruminating on past wrongs drains our energy. Furthermore, holding on to resentments create a permanent state of anger.

This anger clutters our mind. Decisions become more difficult. Patience and compassion disappear. We either act out our anger or become passive aggressive.

Let go of guilt

Carrying around guilt lowers our self-esteem confidence. There are only two things you can say about guilt. Either you were wrong and you will try not to do it again. Or you were not wrong. Therefore, you are not going to worry about it.

Let go of fear

Fearing the future creates clutter in our mind and weakens our imagination. Many of the things we fear never happen.

Solutions:  When we are feel resentful, guilty or afraid I take a deep breath. I step away and take a break. Often either exercise or rest help me move beyond these feelings.

Make new mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. Smart people only make a mistake once.

Mistake made.
Lesson learned.
Moved on.

Furthermore, if you never make any mistakes, you have settled in to trod the path paved for you. You are doing nothing new. Creativity dies. Growth stops. Your career has high walls on either side. When you reach a cliff in your career, you can’t go further.

Allow yourself opportunities to try to new things. Furthermore, do not punish yourself for being less than perfect.

Focus on the process not the goal

Create the goal. Create a plan to reach your goal. Continually update the plan.

However, the way that things turn out is beyond our control.

For example, a retail goal is to make sales. A store can plan to increases its sales when it increases the number of shoppers in the store and the amount of time each shopper spends in the store. Retail stores focus on the process of getting and keeping shoppers in their stores.

Measure results, adjust, and move on

Even with a perfect process, stores may miss their sales goals. Many things are beyond anyone’s control:  the weather, a catastrophic event, a sudden shift in the economy.

Don’t make excuses for missing goals

However, adjust and learn from the experience. If the weather or a catastrophic event weakens a store’s sales, the store can stay open longer hours when things return to normal. If the economy is weak, stores can carry a wider assortment of less expensive products. Stores can change their process.

Practice, practice, practice, and continue to practice

From practice comes powerful instincts and heightened intuition. Companies teach people and show these people how to practice and improve their skills. Employees practice new skills. Furthermore, through practice, they increase their ability to use the skills they already have. Great performers and athletes practice before, during, and after practice.

The purpose of practice is to raise a skill level. Yet what really happens is that practice creates instincts and intuition to work at a higher level under pressure. As your skill level rises, you feel less stress. You perform better and have more confidence.

Embrace consistency and assess change

One of the business clichés is to embrace change. Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is way to get lost in the wilderness.

Change can create many feelings. Positive change lifts our spirit. Negative or uncertain change is stressful.

One solution is to assess the value of changes. From there, focus your attention and your effort on positive change. However, don’t focus on the prospects of change. Remember, we can’t control the future.

Leaders value relationships as much as they value tangible assets.

It is a lot easier to lose a client than to get one. Pleasing other people may sound shallow, but pleasing other people is the reason for repeat business.

Limit your daily activities

Leaders set priorities based on the things they can get done today. This process removes anxiety over things beyond their control. Focusing on today’s priorities empowers the leaders to follow the process from their plan.

Hang out with winners

I need advice from real humans. It is so easy for me to believe my thinking, because I have always heard it. When I isolate, I become inefficient. I spend too much time at my desk. I overlook deadlines and let important matters go unattended.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

 

Ultimately, Kipling suggests that embodying these traits leads not just to success but to the fulfillment of one’s potential as a human being. This poem resonates across generations because of its universal lessons on character and strength.

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father’s Advice to His Son

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” Zig Ziglar

Never equate your self-worth with your success.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  Winston Churchill

Success is not final.

Even repeating our actions does not guarantee success. As our circumstances change, the actions we need for success change. For nearly thirty years, I built a recruiting business based on using a telephone, a database of file cards, and paper mail.  Over time, the need for a telephone shriveled to a small part of my business communications, my database went from file cards to my computer, and emails have all but replaced postal mail.

Failure is not fatal.

Over all the years of recruiting, I had many failures. I had candidates turn down offers. I lost clients through company mergers, acquisitions, and changes in recruiting practices. I had to learn that my business was a numbers game. The number of contacts I reached determined how much money I made. Everyone has failures. Focusing on my failures would only create more failures and eventually kill my business. Focusing on the numbers of contacts I made and not the failures I encountered, I moved through decades of change successfully.

During a period of frustration, I called a friend and told him of my fears that my business might fail. He suggested that I just think about what was on my desk, act on those things, and let the results take care of themselves.  I had to learn that success was not a matter of thinking, but a matter of planning and acting.

I called a partner one time and told him that I had a problem.

I began by saying,” I was just thinking.”

He cut me off. He said, “That statement explains your problem. You have to stop thinking and start acting.”

Planning has its place as a form of action but not as a form of painful mental processing.

It is the courage to continue that counts.

Finding courage is an inside job. Ruminating produces worrying. Here are some things that help me stop ruminating and find courage.

1. Eating when I am hungry
2. Resting when I am tired
3. Stopping to help other people
4. Meditating to rest my mind
5. Turning anger into an opportunity to take a walk

I am not perfect. I still become overconfident when I am successful. When I experience failure, I become frustrated, angry, and fearful. I sometimes lack courage to face problems. However, when I allow myself to get back into action and to live a healthy life, I find the courage to accept failure and find new ways for success.