5 Principles to Raise Your EQ

Have you ever been passed up for promotion or missed out on a great opportunity, but you're not really sure why? Well, in this episode we're going to jump into a potential roadblock that might be holding you back, and it's called emotional intelligence. So let's elevate you.

You know, it wasn't that long ago that I had to pass up a team member for a promotion that they actually wanted. Really for the fourth time. They were loyal, they were reliable, and they did a great job. At least their normal job well. So you might be asking, why did you pass them up in the beginning with unfortunately, it's simple. No one wanted to follow them. And when it came down to it, their own personal level of emotional intelligence was actually holding them back. People seldom care about how much they know until they know how much you care. So unfortunately, this person came across to others as rash, rough around the edges, and had a bit of a dictator style of leadership. Now, they've since worked on their own emotional intelligence and done very well. But I don't want their frustration to become your frustration. Remember, people want to be around people who bring them authentic value. Emotional intelligence is the anchor to your progress. Master it and you'll become unstoppable. The term emotional intelligence originally came from psychologists Mayer and Saladay. They discovered that a person's success in a healthy lifestyle was directly connected to these following Self awareness. Your ability to know your strengths, your struggles and your blind spots in any situation and bring value to that self. Situation Self regulation. The ability to regulate your emotions in a healthy manner and at times, no matter the situation. Primary motivators are primary motivation, which is your ability to align your motivations to the goals of the team or community rather than just your own person's selfish needs. Next up, expression and comprehension of empathy. Your ability to experience and validate the emotional values of others. Your emotional intelligence, or EQ as they like to call it, is where your logical self and your emotional self collide. It controls your capacity for resilience. Motivation, empathy, reasoning, stress management, communication and your ability to read social cues in any given situation. Did you know that over 90% of the world's top earners have very high levels of emotional intelligence and high levels of EQ are great predictors of how far you will actually succeed personally. That's why I'm going to share five principles that can help you raise your emotional intelligence and increase your personal opportunities in every single area of your life. Principle number one goes like this. Express empathy. When you express empathy with someone else you are building trust. It's important to remember that empathy is the sharing of an emotional feeling and not about solving a problem. Empathy says, I hate you having to experience that. I know it can be tough. Can you help me understand how it's affecting you? Empathy does not say, here are five ways to fix the problem or toughen up, buttercup. Let's get going. At least not at the first interaction. When it comes to empathy, simply be sincere about trying to understand what it's like from that person's perspective and their point of view. And when in doubt, simply say, can you help me understand? Principle 2 use an approachable Posture as a high D personality Style this one has been probably the hardest for me because my brain says tell me more, but my body says stay away from me. I think I'm mad at you, which is crazy. So as you can imagine, crossed arms and hard stances and arresting stink face if you will, will never let others know it's okay to communicate with you. Even though your brain is like mine saying seriously, I want to help. Always make sure your posture matches your emotions. And I'll be honest, some of us will have to become more conscientious than others. I have to intentionally relax my posture, soften my tone and mirror my facial expressions. I of the other person who I'm trying to communicate just to make it work. But it's worth it in the end. Principle number three Listen to understand and not to debate. In order to connect with others, you have to seek to understand others. Only listening can help us gain understanding because it's when we listen that our mouths aren't in the way. I've missed some truly important social and verbal cues even today because I wanted to share my ideas where or a quick fix for another person that simply wanted to connect. Seriously, if you want to raise your emotional intelligence, you're going to have to listen to understand nothing more and nothing less. Principle 4 Build bridges, not ditches. Bridges are best built by finding common ground and a win win way forward. What most of us do instead of looking to build bridges is take our imaginary shovel and start digging right? Trying to get our own way from a selfish perspective. In almost every case, there's more than one solution for every problem. And I can tell you from experience that if you're known for digging your heels in early and often, other people simply won't want to engage with you on a regular basis. Always be thinking in your head, how can I build a bridge and find common ground? That way you can avoid getting lost in your own self dug ditch and alienating yourself from valuable relationships that you actually need to win. All right, next up principle five count to 10 or you'll have to do it again. So often our greatest frustrations come from our expectations not being met and well we can get pretty frustrated and blow our top accidentally. Instead, you should change your environment, step outside, take 10 deep breaths and actually gather your emotions and process your feelings. You'll save yourself from overreacting or an emotional blow up. I personally pay the price for this on a regular basis and I have to teach it to you to make sure it actually sticks for me. Those who seek Win Win strategies always find them. I'm convinced that if you put these five principles into practice as I have, your opportunities will increase, your emotional intelligence will improve while you attract new partners to move towards your personal Win Win vision forward. So put it into practice. See you in the next one. If you enjoyed this video, I highly recommend you also watch our whiteboard lesson we did earlier. We did an even deeper dive on emotional intelligence, especially if you want to learn how to kick start it for your growth. Also, we put together an Entire Life Mastery 101 playlist right here on YouTube, so please check it out.