Emotional intelligence

 

  • Knowing your emotions
  • Managing your emotions
  • Motivating yourself
  • Recognising emotion in others
  • Handling relationships

>>>>> positive impact on others

Self awareness

  • Understand my own strengths,
    weaknesses, needs and drives
  • Recognise how feelings affect me
  • Openness to feedback for development
  • Confidence based on real strength

Social awareness

  • Listen to others
  • Understand others’ perspectives
  • Sense how others are feeling
  • Empathise at a group level,
    eg understand how a particular organisation or team works

Self management

  • Manage feelings and impulses
  • Choose words carefully
  • Avoid hasty judgements
  • Follow through on promises
  • Be open to new ideas and adaptable in the
    face of new situations
  • Motivate self to achieve
  • Take action to make the most of
    opportunities in the future

Relationship management

  • Recognise others’ specific strengths
  • Inspire and motivate others
  • Overcome obstacles that prevent improvements
  • Nurture relationships
  • Promote a friendly, co-operative climate

Emotions

Emotion = to move

  • Sad
  • Mad
  • Glad
  • Scared
  • Anger
  • Sadness
  • Fear
  • Enjoyment
  • Love
  • Surprise
  • Disgust
  • Shame
  • Anguish
  • Ecstasy
  • Desire
  • Terror

Mark Rothko

The master aptitude

Channelling emotions towards a productive end

  • controlling impulse
  • regulating moods
  • motivation to try again
  • entering flow

Good moods

  • enhance flexible thinking
    Laughter

    • as tension release
    • increases flexibility of thought
  • encourage risk taking

Hope

“Believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals, whatever they may be”

  • People with high levels of hope motivate themselves, are more resourceful, flexible, can switch goals, break down tasks into smaller pieces.

Optimism

  • See failure as something that can be changed to succeed the next time around.
  • Achievement is a function not just of talent but a capacity to stand defeat

Self-efficacy

Approaching failure in terms of how to handle it rather than worrying what might go wrong

Flow

Get into flow by

  • intentionally focussing on the task in hand
  • engaging in a level which slightly taxes ability

Strained concentration > increased cortical activation > increased anxiety > decreased performance

Person styles for dealing with emotions

  • Self aware – clarity about emotions
  • Engulfed – swamped by emotions
  • Accepting – no change,  though aware

Multiple intelligences

  • Verbal
  • Mathematical-logical
  • Spatial capacity
  • Kinaesthetic
  • Musical
  • Interpersonal skills
    • Organising groups
    • Negotiating solutions
    • Personal connection
    • Social analysis
  • Intrapsychic capacity (insight skills)

Abilities

  • Leadership
  • Nurture relationships
  • Resolve conflicts
  • Social analysis

How to learn

  • Confidence – of a likelihood of success and that adults will be helpful.
  • Curiosity – a sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure.
  • Intentionality – the wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of confidence, being effective.
  • Self control
  • Relatedness – the ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others.
  • Capacity to communicate – exchanging ideas, feelings, concepts. Related toi a sense of trust with others and pleasure in engaging.
  • Cooperativeness – balancing needs with others in the group.

Emotional relearning

The helpless person who thinks “I’m dead” in a dangerous situation is more susceptible to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – the feeling that ones life is in danger and there is nothing that can be done to escape it. These symptoms of learned fearfulness can be accounted for by changes in the amygdala:

  • numbing of certain feelings
  • neural hijacking – life is on the verge of becoming an emergency

This can result in fear conditioning – something not threatening becomes dreaded and associated with something frightening. This normally subsides with time and natural relearning. By reliving the trauma safely, the memory gradually becomes desensitised.

  • Regain a sense of safety.
  • Regain a sense of control over what is happening.
  • Retelling and reconstruction of the story to develop a more realistic understanding of and response to  the traumatic memory that it triggers.
  • Mourn the loss the trauma brought.

While we cannot decide when we have emotional outbursts, we have control over how long the last. Trauma memories can be visited like any other memory rather than erupt uncontrollably.

Temperament

Moods that typify our emotional life:

  • timid
  • bold
  • upbeat
  • melancholy

Key ingredients of active prevention programs

  • Emotional skills
    • Identifying and labelling feelings
    • Expressing feelings
    • Assessing the intensity of feelings
    • Managing feelings
    • Delaying gratification
    • Controlling impulses
    • Reducing stress
    • Knowing the difference between feelings and actions
  • Cognitive skills
    • Self talk – conducting an inner dialogue
    • Reading and interpreting social cues – social influences on behaviour and seeing oneself in the perspective of a larger community
    • Using steps for problem solving and decision making
    • Understanding the perspective of others
    • Understanding behavioural norms
    • A positive attitude towards life
    • Self-awareness
  • Behavioural skills
    • Nonverbal
    • Verbal

The self science curriculum

  • Self-awareness
  • Personal decision making
  • Managing feelings
  • Handling stress
  • Empathy
  • Communications – talking about feelings effectively
  • Self-disclosure
  • Insight
  • Self-acceptance
  • Personal responsibility
  • Assertiveness
  • Group dynamics
  • Conflict resolution

EI resources

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence

Further emotional intelligence resources

 

Scroll to Top