車干軒

這次這些文章是紀錄我在美國讀書的進步路程,所以可能有些部分寫得很糟, 請多包涵, 假如有看到錯誤的地方,還請你們幫忙指證

Hsuan Pi

Kristin M. Smith

English 88

10/24/17

The only flexible intelligence: EQ

Is intelligence not flexible? Some people believe that the ability of intelligence cannot be developed in our later lives. Yet, it is true when they mean intelligence is IQ. Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence can be improved and developed by some strategies. Our emotions are the primary drivers of our behavior, and it is hard to control them. Daniel Goleman said in his book Emotional Intelligence “To recognize a foul mood is to want to get out of it” (47). In other words, if we want to recognize the whole picture of our emotions and manage them, we need to develop the skills of self-awareness and self-management. By bringing the unconscious emotions to consciousness, we can use two strategies to help us recognize what and who triggered the emotional hijacking and see the whole picture of the situation like the hawk. By changing our perspective in the way we think, we can use one strategy to develop the ability of self-management, which is giving us some time to make a decision.

Aristotle said before “Knowing ourselves is the beginning of all wisdom.” In order to expand our wisdom, we need to use two strategies to improve the fundamental ability of emotional intelligence: self-awareness. The first step to increase our self-awareness is recognizing what and who triggered our emotional hijacking. Emotional hijacking is our emotional minds take over the control of our brain. Most of the time our rational minds have the control of our brain, but sometimes there are some situations that will triggered our emotions, which can lead to us do something stupid. Therefore, to find out what triggered our strongest emotion, we can write down a list to record what events trigger our strong emotions and how we responded to them. In other words, by pinpointing specific people and situations, doing the journal can make us rethink about our own feelings and recognize them. By recording our emotions, we can develop the ability to calm ourselves down. When the next time we have the same situation, it will be less difficult to maintain our poise because we are already understand what emotions will get us down and which ones pick us up. Recording our emotions as a journal is the first step to increase our self-awareness. If we want to move toward to know inside of our heart and see the whole picture of the situation, we need to watch ourselves like a hawk.

The second strategy to improve our self-awareness is to watch ourselves like a hawk. Bradberry and Greaves write in their book “The tricky thing about our brain is that once a negative mood takes over, we will lose the sight of what’s good in our life” (78). Therefore, the solution to this situation is watching ourselves like a hawk, which is finding a way to see the whole picture of the situation. To watch ourselves like a hawk and develop a more objective understanding of the whole picture of our emotions, we need to slow down our pace. When we slow down the pace and stop what we are doing, and focus on being more objective to rethink our emotions and situations from another angle, it can allow us to step out from under the control of our emotions and know exactly what needs to be done to create positive thinking. For instance: when I’m stuck in a bad mood like feeling really homesick, I am ignoring all the good things in my life. However, if I slow down the pace and rethink about the situation from another angle, I will find out that I’m lucky because I am can studying abroad and enrich my experience. As the result, knowing the whole picture of our emotions and being more objective to understanding ourselves is the most important part to develop the ability of self-awareness because when we can look at ourselves more objective, we can get out the control of our emotions, and then take another step to develop the skill of self-management.

The way to manage our own emotions and keep our emotions balance is changing the perspective of our thinking, not emotional suppression. To change the way we see the situation need to require the strategy that gives us some time to make a decision. Time and patience are the two best friends to help us manage our emotions. Bradberry and Greaves wrote in their book: “The power of the time and patience comes from the ability to transform situations, ease pain, and provide clarity” (111). Therefore, when we are facing a difficult situation, we just need to give ourselves more extra time before we take the action and it will allowing our rational minds rethink the situation and see with more clarity the whole picture. Joyce Meyer said before: “Patience is not simply the ability to wait, it is how we behavior while we are waiting” (https://goo.gl/TTxQKd). In other words, patience is not just waiting, it is the important process which can lead us to having some time to change the perspective of our emotions. While we are waiting, we can apply the second strategy we mentioned on self-awareness: watching ourselves like the hawk. Slowing down the pace and changing the different angle of our emotions can help us; try to spend more extra time to calm down. Sometimes our friend “time” will guide us to a different perspective on a situation and help us think of an easier way to see the whole picture and make the right decision. There are thousands of thoughts in our brain, when we stop the pace and wait for the dust to settle, our view points of the solution won’t be influenced by our emotions, so it will be easier and with more clarity to make decisions by giving us some extra time to wait.

However, people who hold a different opinion argue that no matter how skilled we become in managing our emotions there are always going to be situations that push our buttons. Like what Goleman wrote in his book “Some views about anger are so common: that anger is uncontrollable, or that, at any rate, it should not be controlled, and that venting anger in ‘catharsis’ is all to the good” (59). Therefore, some people argue why we should need to learn the ability to manage our emotions. Nevertheless as Aristotle said “Anyone can become angry, that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy” (Daniel Goleman ⅩⅠⅩ). Managing our emotions is a crucial skill to improve our lives, even if we have emotional hijacking sometimes, we still need this skill. The purpose to manage our emotions is not suppressing our emotions or venting our emotions, it is the skill to rethink the situation with different perspective and take the action to show our emotions in the right timing to make other people know our feeling and motivate others.

Bradberry and Jean Greaves wrote in their book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 before “EQ is so critical to success that it accounts 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs” (21). That’s mean EQ plays an important role in our life even more important than IQ. Nowadays, in order to complete the work more efficiently almost every job requires the ability of emotional intelligence to cooperate with others. Therefore, it is imperative to use some strategies to improve our two fundamental abilities of emotional intelligence: self-awareness and self-management. By bringing the unconscious emotions to consciousness and changing the perspective of the way we think, we need to move toward to recognize what and who triggered our emotions, learn to see the whole picture of the situation like the hawk, and use skills of time and patience to make a decision. Otherwise, we will miss many opportunities to make the right decision which can change our life.