Understand Emotional Intelligence_Final

>> Hi, welcome to Emotions 101. Ah, emotions, what a complicated and confusing topic, am I right? Can you recall what it was like to be a little kid and feel so angry, but not know why? Do you remember how frustrating that was? An adult would ask you what you wanted or needed and you had absolutely no idea. All you did know for certain was that you didn't like how you felt. Do you ever feel that way now? For example, do you ever flip out over the smallest thing and then get angry that you're so angry because you don't know how to get over it already? We've all been there. No matter how much we try to detangle the emotional web, sometimes we're at a loss. If you look in the dictionary for the definition of emotion, you'll find something like this, "An effective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like is experienced as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness." Even this definition sounds complicated. But you've probably never looked it up because you already know what emotions are. Feelings, that's right. Today, we're talking about feelings. After all, when it comes to emotional eating, emotions are a perfect place to start, don't you agree? Let's use emotional intelligence known as EI or EQ as a framework, as Daniel Goleman says, in his book Emotional Intelligence, why it can matter more than IQ. In a very real sense, we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels. Emotional intelligence is the feeling mind. In other words, it's the part of the mind that enables you to work with emotions. Awareness and flexibility are the building blocks of emotional intelligence. If you're not aware of the emotions and if you can't adapt along the way, you can't really learn to work with the emotions in helpful ways. You can think about emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize, understand, regulate, and express emotion. Let's go through each piece together. Number one, recognizing emotions. Awareness begins by recognizing or identifying what we're feeling. Again, this isn't always easy. Emotions can feel vague and confusing. And as if emotions weren't complicated enough, we also have beliefs or thoughts about emotions. We often judge them as good or bad or we should ourselves as in, "I shouldn't be feeling this way." Or we believe that certain emotions are weak. It's also normal to have feelings about our emotions or meta-emotions. For example, we might feel angry about feeling sad. Emotions are challenging to experience and often challenging to make sense of, so what do we do? Most often we deal with them in two ways, we judge the emotions as good or bad and we have void or disconnect from it. Judging, avoiding, and disconnecting can inspire unhealthful coping strategies. On the other hand, recognizing emotions is the first step in figuring out how to cope in more health promoting ways, that's because identifying our emotions opens the door to information about why we feel them. But here's the thing, in order to recognize what we're feeling, we need to sit with the feeling. This isn't an easy thing to do. It can feel really uncomfortable so much so that many people would prefer to distract themselves and try to avoid the discomfort even at their own expense. But sitting with the feeling allows us to observe it, name it, and remove judgment. This in turn allows us to move forward. Imagine you have a client who feels bored with her current diet, boredom is one of those vague labels that can leave you feeling stuck. What if you challenge that client to simply sit with that feeling of boredom next time it comes up rather than immediately reaching for some kind of coping mechanism? Maybe she'd figure out that the underlying feeling was more like disgust because she hates the foods she should eat on her current diet. Now that's some information she can use. Until we know what we're feeling, we can't move forward. We've included a done-for-you handout called the Emotions Checklist that you can print out and use to help clients navigate their emotions. But before you go out there and give it a spin, let's break it down a bit. According to Robert Plutchik we have eight primary emotions each of which has an opposite, anger versus joy, admiration versus disgust, anticipation versus surprise, and trust versus fear. You can think of it like the color wheel. Based on this idea, we experience a range of emotions based on intensity. For example, fear ranges from apprehension to terror while joy ranges from serenity to ecstasy. Two primary emotions can be mixed together to get secondary emotions. Again, think of that color wheel where the primary colors red and blue mixed to create purple. So for example, joy and anticipation would combine to create optimism, make sense? We included Plutchik's wheel of emotions in your Emotions Checklist handout so you have the visual. When it comes to identifying emotions, discovery doesn't always come as a result of thinking or analyzing. In fact, the body often provides the first clues. This is because we feel in our brains and our bodies. I encourage you to tune into your body this week and just notice what comes up. How does anger feel? Does your gut feel angry as well? Do you feel nauseous with butterflies when you're scared? Sometimes we feel emotions in our bodies before they even register in our brains. These physical sensations help create awareness of the emotions we're feeling, from there we can begin to understand them. In short, there are many ways to recognize emotions, and we have our bodies and our minds to help guide us. Number two, understanding emotions. Understanding emotions, to be more specific, understanding the purpose of emotions helps us to figure out their effects on our thoughts and behaviors. Yes, there's a reason we feel anger and fear, and elation and disgust. Emotions are the driving force between what we think and what we do. In fact, emotions serve some very important purposes. First, emotions provide valuable information. We're often too quick to label emotions as good or bad, and then we should ourselves into feeling emotions that are inauthentic because we want to control or get rid of the bad emotions. This self-preservation can be helpful at times, like when you're in a bad mood and someone tries to make you laugh, to cheer you up. In fact, there's a pretty cool study that demonstrates how facial expressions can affect an emotional state. When holding a pencil between their teeth, which forces the corner of the mouth to lift, participants in the study found comic strips funnier than those who held the pencil between their lips which forces the corner of the mouth down. And laughter heals, right? So sometimes forcing a smile can make us feel better, but forcing ourselves out of our emotions can also inhibit us from understanding them and the information they provide. First of all, they indicate a perceived need. Emotions are about wanting, like anticipation or envy, or not wanting like anxiety and fear. Emotions aren't logical or practical or rational as you probably know. Trying to deal with them through our logical, analytical minds can make us feel out of control. Yet, they connect us to what matters. In fact, they connect us to our values. You might feel sad or angry when you have an argument, just like you feel joy when you make up, that's because you love that person, and you value that relationship. Emotions also motivate action. They protect us from harm by arousing us and motivating the flight, fight, or freeze response. For example, anger can inspire mechanisms of self-protection or fight while fear inspires flight. Do you tend to withdraw or reach for comfort foods when you feel sad? We act based on how we feel, as a result, we may act impulsively because as we'll discuss further in this course, our subconscious is constantly seeking out safety which is comfortable and familiar. Finally, emotions connect us to others by helping us communicate our wants and needs. I'm willing to bet that no matter who the person is, you can recognize joy on a face or sadness in posture. Feelings are universal, facial expressions and body language cross barriers and inspire empathy. Okay, so we've discussed recognizing and understanding emotions. The next step is, number three, regulating emotions. Remember how I said that understanding the purpose of emotions helps you figure out how they affect your thoughts and behaviors. Emotions are triggered in response to some kind of stimulus. Something happens, and then we feel, think, and act in a particular way as a result. But even though a stimulus triggers an emotion, our response to that emotion depends primarily on us. After all, we always have a choice in how we respond. Do you know that saying the straw that broke the camel's back? That's it. Sometimes the smallest stimulus sets us off and sometimes it just rolls off our back. Regulating our emotions means taking control over our responses to emotions. We can either use emotions in meaningful ways or choose to let them go rather than letting our emotions get the best of us. This comes in handy for the fourth step of emotional intelligence, number four, expressing emotions. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to express emotions which is much more effective if we're able to do steps one through three. If we recognize what we're feeling and understand why we're feeling it and able to feel in control, we'll feel more confident expressing our emotions and connecting with others. We'll also boost self-awareness and self-connection. Now let's review because that was a lot of material. Emotions are information and they serve useful purposes. They indicate a perceived need or want. They motivate action and they help connect us with others. Emotions are feelings triggered by a stimulus and we have a choice in how we respond. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to recognize, understand, regulate, and express emotions. Being able to recognize, understand, and regulate emotions helps you express emotions more effectively and increase your self-awareness and self-connection. How are you doing? Is that enough talk about feelings for one lecture? Fair enough, we'll stop here for now. As I mentioned earlier, we've included some great handouts to help you visualize all of this and to help your clients begin to recognize and understand their emotions. After all, self-awareness is a key piece of coaching. And to borrow the words of Daniel Goleman one more time, "If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, you don't have self-awareness." Let's take this opportunity to practice applying this material. You can find this exercise on the Skill-Building Activities handout, but I'll review it now. Spend at least 30 minutes this week sitting with and noticing your emotions without judgment. Record your observations in a journal. Notice when and how any judgments arise. Notice when you feel the urge to push them away or disconnect from them and how it feels to just sit with them instead. Think about what your emotions are trying to tell you and how that might influence your judgments about them. What valuable information can you glean when something triggers anger, sadness, anxiety or frustration? Share any insights in the Facebook group. One more super quick thing, I promise, how are you doing on those big rocks? What are your big rocks this week? In case you missed it, we reviewed these in the pre-course lecture called the Psychology of Your Success, and we included a Big Rocks template that you can print out and use each week to help yourself stay on track. Take a look. Thanks for talking feelings with me. I'll see you back here soon.