How can emotional intelligence help
«Ei» will help you choose the best response to any given situation
For a long time we have experienced how our thoughts and emotions may ask for different things and this has led us to behave wrongly on many occasions.
Reflective practices like Mindfulness may help us discover the automatisms or conditioned habits that lead us to act in an irrational or incongruent way with our own personal values.
For instance, the simple word «speaking exam» can be a situation of high emotional intensity that causes stress, nervousness and insecurities. This could be an automatism that you may not be aware of.
How about STOPPING and BREATHING to consider what it would be like if you stayed calm instead of reproducing the conditioned habit of stressing yourself out and feeling insecure. How about becoming more aware of your certainties instead of your insecurities. How about diminishing your emotional reactivity (I will get nervous and fail the speaking exam).
Developing full emotional intelligence may take you from thinking «I am just like that» (no theoretical knowledge of how to respond to emotions) to «I know what to do and I do it because I understand what impedes me» (adaptive socio-affective response).
Adapted from PINEP UMA
May what I think, feel and act be in one direction
I’d like to invite you to watch this video on the brain in the palm of your hand. Dr Dan Siegel explains how our brain is structured. Once you know how the brain works you can not only learn how to direct your attention but also change the function and the structure of your brain.
This Hand Model of the Head Brain has been used in classrooms, corporate offices, mediation, meditation, and people in general who are trying to improve their lives.
So remember there are three areas in your head brain:
- your REPTILIAN brain (300 million years old) not only takes information from your body and regulates how you breathe or digest food, for example, but also creates the response that comes when you feel threatened
- your MAMAL brain (200 million years old) together with the reptilian brain work in creating emotion in working with the body, deciding whether things are good or bad, and connecting with the feeling of protection
- your CORTEX (only 3 million years old!) helps you integrate the whole system and live in harmony
Mindfulness takes on special relevance when it is projected toward situations of high emotional intensity. Reflective practices like Mindfulness can help you have your brain become more integrated: the pathway toward more wellbeing in your Life.
La vida, sin prisa
