Emotional Fitness – Mindset Makeover

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is one’s ability to identify, evaluate, control and express emotions.  When someone has a high EQ it means they have the ability to understand, empathize, and connect with people around them.  It is however, totally different from Intellectual Intelligence (IQ) which is used to determine academic abilities. Ones EQ will trump ones IQ when it comes to dealing with life’s curve balls.  Emotional fitness, is defined as someone that lets their choices dictate their emotions.  Emotional suicide, is letting your emotions dictate your decisions.  Someone with a high EQ will face a problem and see it as an opportunity to grow, they will use the negatives as a teacher to learn from.  Someone with a low EQ will tend to channel their energy on the conditions of their life as an opportunity to blame – people, places and things as the reason for their circumstances rather than taking personal responsibility for their results.  It is only when someone participates in their own rescue that they start to see a change in their life conditions.  The way to do this is to become more emotionally fit.

If you ever take the Emotional Quotient Assessment, which I highly recommend that you do, it breaks down your emotional intelligence into four categories. The first three are about intrapersonal emotional intelligence which is the ability to understand yourself and how you interact with yourself.  The first is Self-Awareness, which is the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others.  The second is Self-Regulation, which is your ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment to thinking before acting.  The third is Motivation, which is a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status and a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence.  These all build on each other as it becomes difficult to self-regulate emotions you are not aware of.  The last two are interpersonal emotional intelligence with is about what goes on between you and others. Empathy, is your ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people and Social Skills is a proficiency in managing relationships and building networks.

Once you take the assessment you can then pick where you scored lowest on your scale and pick 2 or 3 of the suggestions to start to raise your emotional intelligence.  Let me tell you how powerful this assessment is.  I had a client that took the assessment and she scored almost a 10 on all levels except self-regulation.  She said, that’s interesting, I am always aware of how I’m feeling but tend to blame people for my erratic moods.  She realized that she needed to work on her ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and to suspend judgment before acting. She said that she also noticed that following a diet plan was difficult because when she would get frustrated or angry she just gave into whatever food was in front of her.  She became aware that she really needed to work on how she responds to stressful situations and be more disciplined and unwavering in her decisions and not to let her emotions control or dictate what she acts on.

So, how can you be affected by each of these areas?  If your self-awareness is low then it means you might not be aware of what you are feeling and why you are feeling a certain way.  The first step to change is being aware of this, the assessment will give you suggestions to increase your own self-awareness.  If your motivation is low that means, in a work scenario that maybe you are motivated by compliance rather than an intrinsic motivation to go above and beyond.  If this is low then you will need to be challenged to do more than the status quo and to be coached with new tools to be more hopeful.

The last two are Empathy and Social Skills.  People buy emotionally and then back it up logically.  If you sell based on facts, you will find that you run into the dreaded “price” objection, what seems like, all the time.  Seeing things from the customer’s point of view is what will build on your ability to empathize even more.  Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person, being able to put yourself in their shoes, so to speak.  It is different from Sympathy, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others, it’s acknowledging another person’s hardships but when you are truly seeing things from another person’s perspective it makes you connect with people on a deeper level.  What can hold us back from being more empathetic is having too much to deal with in our own lives and not having much more to give.  It’s true that, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Social Skills is our ability to manage relationships, and from a prospecting perspective it’s all about relationships.  What tends to bring a low score for social skills is when we tend to focus on our agenda above our clients, when we are focusing on a transactional sale verses a relationship sale (long term relationship) and being persuasive to engage in conversation.  Sometimes, sales people are just unorganized and can’t find their client/prospects contact information and don’t communicate on a regular basis and that hurts the relationship.

Assessment:

The best way to identify where you are is to take a piece of paper and draw a line in the center, horizontally.  This represents your energy line.  At the top of the page write the word “Empowered” and the bottom of the page write the word “Disempowered”

Now let’s take the 7 key areas of your life and you decide where they belong on your page.  If you feel empowered (positive emotions) in a particular area of your life then put that word above the line.  If you feel disempowered (negative emotions) put that below the energy line.

Life Purpose (what drives you)

Personal Relationship (parents, spouse etc.)

Business relationships

Health

Mental expertise (intelligence)

Financial wealth

Leadership (people follow you)

Vocation (how much work and how much money you get from your time, ratio)

If you have any of these listed under the energy line, it may mean that you have a limiting belief holding you back.  A limiting belief is any feeling you have, that you feel certain about, that holds you back from becoming the best version of yourself.  Unlike IQ, EQ can be learned, so nothing is set in stone.  If you wish to take the Emotional Intelligence Assessment contact Advanced Results!

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