CHAPTER 21

Increasing Your EI

Where Do I Begin?

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

—HELEN KELLER, AMERICAN AUTHOR WHO WAS BLIND, DEAF, AND MUTE

Start with where you are. As you were reading through the book, you were likely having a conversation with yourself. In certain chapters, you may have been telling yourself, “This is something that I'm really good at.” In others, you may have said, “Here's something that I really have a problem with.” Other chapters may have brought out a more neutral response and you found yourself saying, “I'm not too bad at this. Not great, but not too bad.” Trust your instincts on your self-judgments. If you want a second opinion, ask someone close to you whom you trust and know will tell you the truth. You can always take the BarOn EQ-i assessment. However, please don't feel that you need to do this assessment. In most cases, the people to whom I have administered the BarOn EQ-i have accurately predicted both their highest and lowest scores on the test. I'm betting that if you have read the book up to this point and have an interest in EI, you already have a good dose of self-awareness. In that case, I'm betting that you already have a good sense of where you would score in all the areas and the BarOn EQ-i would only confirm what you already know.

The question then becomes: What if I find myself needing help in a number of areas? Where do I start? What area do I work on first or do I work on all of them at the same time? Are some areas more important than others? Are some areas prerequisites of becoming successful in others?

Where Do I Start?

Start from the inside out. The inner world is the base for growth in all areas of your life. Your success in all the other areas and the amount of progress that you make will depend on how well you understand yourself and how well you think of yourself. A good sense of self-awareness and healthy self-regard are crucial. If you were a tree, your self-regard would be the roots. It is what sustains and nurtures you and on which everything else depends. You've likely heard the saying that no one can feel good about you unless you feel good about yourself. How true. Don't confuse healthy self-regard with conceit and arrogance. Many of us were brought up with the idea that humility was a virtue and may associate feeling good about ourselves with arrogance. But arrogance is the result of the ego being out of control, and is not about self-regard. It is all right to feel good about you—in fact, it is a prerequisite to all the good things in life.

“You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

—NELSON ROCKEFELLER, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, PHILANTHROPIST, AND BUSINESSMAN

If you are struggling in the areas of self-awareness and self-regard, focus on those and don't worry about the rest for now. Once you feel good about yourself, you will be better equipped to work on other areas.

• What if my inner world is okay, but I have some other areas that could use some improvement? The type of personal change we are talking about occurs because of consistent focus and effort over a period of time. For me, it works better to focus on one area and work on it consistently over a period of time. Consistency and time are important elements for transformational change. The important thing is that you stick with whatever you choose to take on for a long enough period of time so that you and others will notice a change. Often people, in a moment of enthusiasm and energy, want to change their lives overnight. After a short period of time, they are feeling overwhelmed, and not seeing any evidence of change, so they give up on the entire program. Don't set yourself up for failure by getting caught up in wanting to change overnight.
• If my inner world is in good shape, but I need work in a number of other areas, how do I prioritize them? Whatever you are drawn to most is the area that I would focus on first. There is one exception and that is impulse control. A person with poor impulse control is like a walking powder keg looking for a flame. If that is an area of work for you, I would focus on it before the other areas. The reason is that poor impulse control can cause serious problems regardless of other areas you might be strong in. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time has caused serious and irreversible damage to careers, marriages, and relationships. Once it is said, you can never take it back. Think of slips of the tongue that have ended otherwise successful political, acting, and other high-profile careers. If this is a problem area, act now to get it under your control. The other areas can wait until you feel you have this aspect under control.
• Where do I focus my efforts, on my workplace or on my home? The benefits of increasing your emotional intelligence will be felt in both your home and workplace. If you are able to communicate better with your spouse and develop a more rewarding relationship, you will be happier at work. The skills from building the relationship at home can be transferred to the workplace. Pick the area of your world that is the most urgent, the most volatile. Focus on the area that is causing you the most distress in your life at this time.
• What about my high scores? Do I just ignore them and work on the areas that I am weaker in? That's a great question and one that is not often considered in the EI world. Typically, the first thing that people notice when receiving the results of any test is their low scores. That's unfortunate as there is a growing movement in psychology (especially in positive psychology) that tells us that we are better off if we focus on our strengths instead. The usual approach is for us to concentrate on our areas of improvement and spend little time on our strengths.

Contrarian author Marcus Buckingham in Go Put Your Strengths to Work believes that in our workplaces we should not spend so much time and effort looking at our weaknesses, rather we should focus on and improve our strengths. Buckingham advances the theory that since our strengths are what we love to do, we will gain much more by working on our strengths and looking for situations to make use of them. On the other hand, he claims that we will have a more difficult time making progress working on our areas of weakness because we will lack motivation to change them and it will always feel like a great struggle to attempt to do so.

For example, my strongest EI area is independence. It explains why I have struggled in bureaucratic types of positions in which there are layers of decision-making authority and little room for innovation and creativity. In order for me to be most effective, productive, and happy in life, I need to work in an area where I have a great deal of independence, the ability to be innovative, and try out new ideas that come to me.

Being aware of our strengths helps us to make better decisions when it comes to career directions and personal relationships. We will naturally gravitate to the areas that use our greatest strengths. With the exercises in this book, we can increase our higher scores as well and reach an even higher level in an area that we are already strong in. If we are fortunate enough to have strengths in all of the areas, we can choose which areas we want to take to the next level. Life will become a joy and an ongoing adventure.

When we are strong in all areas of emotional intelligence, life will seem like a daring adventure, one in which we can fully participate. The exciting thing is that we can all increase our EI to that point if we make up our minds to do so.

How We Think Is Crucial to Our Success

One of the things that I do is print off my strengths on my computer and hang them on the wall where I can see them. They say something like this: I AM ALREADY VERY INDEPENDENT AND A GREAT PROBLEM SOLVER. On another piece of paper I write: SOON I WILL HAVE GREATER IMPULSE CONTROL AND BECOME MORE FLEXIBLE. These signs remind me of my strengths and the areas that I am working on. Notice that I didn't put down that I was weak at impulse control and flexibility. That would be a negative statement. I turned it into a positive by stating that I was getting better in these areas. How we think about ourselves is crucial to how successful we will be. There is incredible power in being able to imagine or envision ourselves obtaining something, gaining a skill, or becoming a certain type of person.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, either way you'll be right.”

—HENRY FORD, AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIST AND AUTOMOTIVE PIONEER

When we look at areas in our lives that need improvement, it is extremely important that we look at these areas only as temporary indicators of where we are in the present. The next step is to imagine ourselves drastically improving in those areas. Imagine the good things that will come to us when we become happier, more optimistic, and improve in whatever area we are working on. Finally, we need to come up with basic improvement exercises and a plan to put these into action and keep doing them for an extended period of time. Over time, these exercises may become so integrated and even enjoyable that they become a part of us. Allen's story is a good example.

Allen's Story

The Power of Gratitude

Virtually every book on personal change and growth that I have read speaks about the importance of gratitude. I believe that cultivating a gratitude habit is essential to any kind of success in life. Whenever I find myself dwelling on negative thoughts, facing doubts, and not experiencing good feelings, I know that the quickest and easiest way to break free of those thoughts is to go to a place of gratitude. As soon as I start to look for, and focus on, the things that I am grateful for, my whole perspective on the world changes. I start feeling good inside and as a result my thoughts become more positive. I focus on what I want instead of what I don't want.

Gratitude is a good base from which to build all of the EI areas. Most highly successful people, when interviewed about their success, talk about gratitude as something that they practice on a daily basis. When we are feeling grateful, we naturally drift toward feeling happier and more optimistic. When we are feeling stressed, reminding ourselves of all the good things in our lives can take off some of the pressure. My friend Sheldon was going through a very steep learning curve in a new job several years ago. Many days he felt like he was working in a pressure cooker, expected to learn a great deal in a very short time. Sheldon was separated from his partner and had joint custody of their eight-year-old daughter, Lisee. Whenever the pressure at work started to get to Sheldon, he would focus on how grateful he was to have Lisee. At that point, he realized that even if the worst-case scenario of losing his job happened, the things that really mattered, such as Lisee, would still be there. Whenever he thought of Lisee, he immediately felt released from a great deal of tension. This allowed him to get through this difficult early period of the job. He has gone on to make a long and successful career with this organization.

Purpose

The aim of EI is to address the “how” of life. It addresses the question of how to become more successful at work and home so that we can live more fulfilling and rewarding lives. It does not address the more fundamental question of why. Before we can talk about how we can live better lives, we need to have a compelling reason to do so. We need to have a purpose. Answering the question of our purpose here on earth has been the basis of much debate among philosophers, religious groups, and thinkers since the beginning of time.

According to some philosophies, having a purpose is the core of all good in human life. Man's search for meaning, according to well-known psychiatrist, author, and concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl, is the primary motivating force in life. Helen Keller felt that happiness comes from “fidelity to a worthy purpose.” The Dalai Lama connects purpose and happiness in that he feels that the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness. This takes a more direct approach to purpose than other philosophies that espouse that our purpose is to help others and make the planet a better place to live, which will lead to happiness. Whichever comes first may be a question that writers and thinkers will debate forever. The point, however, is that there is a strong connection between altruism and happiness.

There are two basic beliefs regarding whether we choose our own purpose or whether it is chosen by a power greater than us. On the one hand, we have the belief that there is an inherent purpose in life that has been chosen by God. On the other hand, there are scientific points of view that state that there is no inherent purpose in life and it is up to the individual to find his or her own purpose.

It is beyond the scope of this book to help you find your purpose or to get into the purpose debate in any way. It is important to find your purpose in life because it forms the foundation for everything that you think, feel, and do. It is my belief that the tools and techniques in this book will help you reach your potential and fulfill your purpose, whatever it may be.