This quote really rings true to me.  How about you?  (It also metaphorically describes the biology of habits and neural pathways.)

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” Henry David Thoreau

Despite all our technological advances, isn’t life still full of mystery?  One enigma is our emotional inconsistency.  Some days we are the essence of centeredness and calm.  Then, out of seemingly nowhere, we are quick to explode.  We may be expert at hiding our emotional eruptions.  But even if they aren’t apparent to others, we know (if we’re honest with ourselves) that our inner switch is flipped—we’re enraged, furious, incensed.  Then we feel ashamed.  We deny our feelings to others and our self.  But do we take the time to ask—why does this situation lead to a sudden burst of anger?

Emotions don’t always give us “accurate” information about our environment but if we learn to use this unique internal software, we can benefit from our emotional data.  Through trial and error, we can learn our personal “program.”  We can repair any “faulty wiring” and analyze the emotional reports generated moment by moment.  Then we can use our emotions as an internal GPS—a guide through the dizzying array of choices we face everyday.

This week, on two different occasions, I was uncharacteristically outraged.  As I thought about each event, I realized that my anger was recurring –and growing.

My short fuse shows me that my choices aren’t working.  In one case, I’ve found myself fuming after a prospective buyer is a ½ hour late for a showing of our home.  Why such an over-reaction?  It “shouldn’t be” such a big deal.  Then I realize that after a year of showing the house, I’ve become more frazzled and frustrated with the endless trials of selling a house.  My emotions tell me, “Enough!   It is time to give up (for now).”

My other challenge is a relationship.  I’ve tried to “make it work” but my reactions give me another message.  I’m not weathering minor conflicts well.  Each small struggle seems huge to me.  I’m quick to feel outrage, to sulk, or brood over an injustice that, in other situations, I’d barely notice.  When I think of ending our contact, my anger subsides and I immediately feel calm.   I may argue that I “shouldn’t” let this friendship end.  Maybe I “shouldn’t.”  But if I’ve worked through my psychological blind spots (an ongoing task), my current emotions may discern more about a situation than I (as yet) consciously understand.  It may be months or years before I finally comprehend what my unconscious emotional self knew all along.

I don’t like being angry. (Who does?) Rage is murder on the immune system and people don’t like a furious person.  But anger gets my attention.  It’s like a good friend who will tell me the truth, even when I don’t want to hear it.

All emotions send us daily data that we can use for better living.  Are you utilizing the messages of your emotions–your internal GPS?

I’ve been spending a bit of time lately trying to ‘feel’ things without the usual accompanying thoughts in my head. This, it turns out, is exceptionally difficult for me! I do ‘feel’ a lot and often use those feelings to help me navigate through my life. However, in some ways, I have a brain that I rarely turn off and it seems sometimes that thoughts and emotions are so interconnected for me that I don’t separate the two.

The first thing I noticed is that just relaxing and trying to ’feel’ with no thoughts attached, just acknowledging my feelings, is tough for me at this point in the process. The next strategy I tried was to ask myself “Are you feeling _____?” “How about ________?” This worked pretty well but then left me feeling a bit rudderless, still unable to linger in a feeling even after identifying it, partly because my brain was leaping ahead and thinking about the feeling and what to do with it.

I spent a few days working on this and I came up with a ‘template’ for myself I’m calling thoughts_to_feelings that helps to get me into a space where I can make contact with my emotions and then stay in contact for a while, without thinking about the ‘why’.

At any given time there is always a ‘current event’, if you will, in my head and heart. Something I’m mulling over and having feelings about. I decided on the third day to start with that current event. I then took myself through a series of questions about that situation and identified the feelings I was feeling and, most importantly, allowed myself to rest there for a few moments or for as long as I wanted to. Here is my template of questions for myself:

What is my ‘Current Event’?

What is the overriding feeling about this?

What are the other feelings floating around?

What have I felt about this in the past?

Why did I feel that way?

Do I still feel that way?

Today what do I feel?

Next Steps?

This may seem like a lot of thinking about feelings but the result was that this worked beautifully! I had a wonderful ‘feeling’ experience and ended up crying tears of absolute joy afterwards. I have worked some with this basic template each day since. Often it’s the same current event (I have a big one in my life right now!) but that’s okay with me. I have no agenda except to practice feeling and this process is helping me immensely. For me, this is a journey and a chance to quite intentionally work on this important skill that I want to improve. I wanted to make sure to treat myself kindly and not be disappointed that this was hard for me but rather, to ask myself what it would take to move forward. I know I will get better at doing this and won’t always need to follow this prescribed course but this opened the door for me. I hope we all try to treat ourselves kindly when we realize that something is hard for us and praise ourselves when we make progress, even slightly, in the direction we want to go. The experience of success helps us want to continue and makes for a positive experience we want to keep repeating!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens to our EQ competencies when we’re stressed or compromised. This came about after taking the SEI several months ago and then taking it again recently with dramatically different results. I thought about the ‘snapshot’ concept and tried to place my frame of mind the first time I took it. Upon reflection, I could think of quite a few reasons why the results might have been as surprising and low as they were the first time around, based on my state of mind and body and heart at the time. I could also imagine many reasons my results might be different the second time around (including actual growth of my EQ!)

I then had a productive debrief with another person where we did a combination of debriefing each other as well as discussing the process in general. We ended up delving into all the valuable information we can gain from seeing which parts of our EQ are actually compromised most when we find ourselves in a difficult time, either for the short or long term. What a great way to approach the tool! It completely changed my view of the first SEI I took. All of a sudden I saw this enormous opportunity to learn amazing and important things about myself from that first report.

Extrapolation? It’s important to realize all we can learn from the ‘down’ side of things if we can open our eyes and hearts and not be afraid to look deep inside.

A true story.

Rick and I are selling our home. Several weeks ago, we readied ourselves to interview several realtors. Still, we knew our tendency—to go with the first person we met. That was Bob. Nice guy. After hellos, we sat at our dining table and Bob took us through his glossy brochure. He described his brokerage, his sales strategies, and selling philosophy. Then we paged through the contracts. After an hour, we were ready for a walk-thru. As we pointed out improvements and made excuses for eccentricities, Bob said little. We moved quickly from room to room, shook hands, and Bob left.

“So, he seems ok, right?” Rick knew our busy schedules and how much we both hated this interviewing process.

I wanted to go with Bob so we could be done with interviews, but his silence felt like disinterest, or worse. How could he sell our home if he was apathetic (or appalled)?

I arranged another interview. Denise came over the next evening, while Rick was at a Cubs game.

She shook my hand and launched into the living room. Denise had worked designing new homes. I feared she would detest my unconventional art and my “unusual” design choices. But Denise wasn’t a snob. She immediately began talking about what she saw-the furniture, the colors, the architecture. She “got” my style and offered helpful suggestions to make our home more “mainstream.” We spent two hours, going from room to room.

It was now 9 pm. Denise was in heels, but she impulsively began moving my furniture. I grabbed the other end of a couch so it wouldn’t drag on the oak floors.

“Do you always do this on your first visit?” I teased.

“Only with clients who will let me.”

Denise and I had never sat down. She had never formally pitched herself or her company, but here she was, at the end of a long day, moving furniture throughout my home. Her passion for real estate was palpable.
Rick came home from the game to a newly staged living room.

While Bob seemed competent, ethical and kind, Denise’s incredible zeal closed the deal. From the minute she entered the room, it was clear we would employ her talents and enthusiasm. In all lines of work, there is no substitute for passion.

What are you passionate about? Is there a way to bring your passions to your work?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about intuition and Emotional Intelligence. Writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and António Damasio have explored how “hunches” come from unconscious processes that involve our emotional brain. These intuitions provide extremely valuable information. Emotional Intelligence helps enhance this faculty.

Here’s a lengthy quote from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, on this subject.

Bilateralism is a design principle underlying the evolution of advanced organisms. Nature seems to have learned to design in pairs; it not only builds in redundancy but achieves capabilities not possible otherwise. Two legs are critical for rapid, flexible locomotion. Two arms and hands are vital for climbing, lifting, and manipulating objects. Two eyes give us stereoscopic vision, and along with two ears, depth perception. Is it not possible that, following the same design principle, reason and intuition are designed to work in harmony for us to achieve our potential intelligence?

Systems thinking may hold a key to integrating reason and intuition. Intuition eludes the grasp of linear thinking, with its exclusive emphasis on cause and effect that are close in time and space.  The result is that most of our intuitions don’t make ‘sense’ – that is, they can’t be explained in terms of linear logic.

Very often, experienced managers have rich intuitions about complex systems, which they cannot explain.  Their intuitions tell them that cause and effect are not close in time and space, that obvious solutions will produce more harm than good, and that short-term fixes produce long-term problems.  But they cannot explain their ideas in simple linear cause-effect language.  They end up saying, ‘Just do it this way.  It will work.’

As managers gain facility with systems thinking as an alternative language, they find that many of their intuitions become explicable.  Eventually, reintegrating reason and intuition may prove to be one of the primary contributions of systems thinking.

What is your experience uniting reason and intuition?

What Makes Us Happy
Barbara Fatum, M.Ed., Ed.D.

It’s an age-old question; “what makes us happy?” Is it true love? Is it fulfillment in our careers? Is it status, respect, intelligence, money, family, friends, health, or any combination of these factors? Well, we have an amazing source to turn to for some answers to this question. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930’s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. The architect responsible for continuing the study, Dr. George Vaillant, has dedicated his career since 1967 to following the men of the Grant study. (Arlie Bock, a physician who took over the health services at Harvard in the 1930’s, conceived the project with his patron, department-store magnate W.T. Grant.) Dr. Vaillant has said, “To be able to study lives in such depth, over so many decades….it was like looking through the Mount Palomar telescope.”

Dr. Vaillant identified with the longitudinal method of research, which tracks relatively small samples over long periods of time, in 1961, while a psychiatric resident at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Dr. Vaillant points out that longitudinal studies, like wine, improve with age. As the Grant study men entered middle age (in the 1960”s) many achieved wonderful success. Four members of the sample ran for the U.S. Senate, one served in a presidential Cabinet, and one was president. There was also a best-selling novelist. But there were also darker stories. By age 50, almost a third of the men had at one time or another met Dr. Vaillant’s criteria for mental illness. Although the Grant study men remain anonymous, some have revealed themselves. Ben Bradlee, the long-time editor of The Washington Post and John F. Kennedy both revealed themselves as part of the study. (President Kennedy’s records have been withdrawn from the study office and sealed until 2040).

Dr. Vaillant’s central question in the analysis of the Grant men has not been how much or how little trouble the men met, but rather precisely how-and to what effect- they responded to that trouble. Calling these responses “adaptations,” or defense mechanisms in the traditional psychoanalytic tradition, Dr. Vaillant feels that adaptations shape or distort a person’s reality. There are four categories of adaptations from worst to best. The unhealthiest adaptations are “psychotic” adaptations – like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania. The healthiest or “mature” adaptations include:

altruism (commitment to others’ wellbeing – i.e. empathy)
humor (acquired through knowing yourself)
anticipation (creating a sense of positive outcome – ie optimism)
suppression (a conscious decision to postpone an impulse or decision, to be
addressed in good time – ie consequential thinking)
sublimation (finding outlets and expressions for feelings that promote growth and
good decisions – ie, pursuing a noble goal)

Interviews, physicals, assessments with standardized instruments, and extensive physiological measurements (brain scans, heart scans etc.) have been the basis for analysis of the men’s lives. The data is rich, in qualitative style, and empirical, in the tradition of 1960’s psychological assessment. After following the study for a quarter of a century, Dr. Vaillant identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically: employing positive adaptation, education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Dr. Vaillant has said that the major difficulty in healthy aging is alcoholism, which he termed “the horse, not the cart, of pathology.” The key to happiness, according to Dr. Vaillant? “It is social aptitude, not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” When asked what he had learned from his 40 year association following the Grant study men, Dr. Vaillant replied, “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

When I finished reading the article describing this study in The Atlantic recently, I was incredibly excited, struck by how much the Grant study validates the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI). The healthiest “adaptations” are EI competencies that are a core part of the programs that we teach. Altruism is another word for Empathy; Humor is acquired through knowing yourself, being able to step back from a situation, and choosing how to respond; anticipation is a combination of understanding patterns and consequences; suppression is taking six seconds to allow emotions and cognitions to connect; and sublimation is giving yourself to others in a socially acceptable, selfless and noble manner. Dr. Vaillant’s conclusions are echoed by the work and teachings of leaders of the emotional intelligence and social-emotional learning movement: Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, John Mayer, Martin Seligman, Maurice Elias, the Dalai Lama, Sam Goldstein, Edward Hallowell, Roger Weissberg, Patricia Wolfe, Karen Stone McCown, Anabel Jensen, Marsha Rideout, and Josh Freedman.

We are very privileged to have the research from the Grant study to draw on. The fact that it supports the main EI precepts that we teach is incredible validation. We need to shout this to the world!!

More about the Atlantic Article is in Tessy’s EQ Planet post below

I just got back from a presentation. It went well but my perfectionist voice harps incessantly. Did that one participant need more time to grapple with an exercise? Should I have tried the roleplay together instead of letting them work separately? Since each group reacts to exercises uniquely, it is impossible to control outcomes. I’m glad I have high standards and seek to constantly tweak and improve my workshops. But it is also helpful to remember that true perfectionism can be damaging. It can cause us to procrastinate and it can rob us of enjoying our real achievements.

I am a lousy vegetable gardener. I’ve never been formally taught and since I don’t use pesticides, it is even harder to ensure a crop. But every year I learn more and every year my family enjoys fresh lettuce, broccoli, rapini, Swiss chard, peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, peppers, and (if I’m lucky and outwit the nasty squash vine borer) zucchini. My garden isn’t organized; sometimes the plants grow too close. Tomato plants have sprawled on the ground, propped up by a cockeyed collection of poles or milk crates. My focus on the vegetable beds can leave little time to weed and other areas of the yard look messy. But because gardening is a hobby that doesn’t trigger my perfectionism, I continue despite my (very obvious) mistakes and enjoy whatever the garden yields.

I continue to work to be a smarter, more productive gardener but I am also able to celebrate each delectable success.

How good are you at balancing the quest for high standards with allowing the flow of natural learning, mistakes, and life’s unpredictability?

© 2009 Laura Lewis-Barr all rights reserved

Check out the revised website for Synapse Institute — Six Seconds’ lab school for gifted & special-needs students: www.6seconds.org/synapse

There are now several photos and a movie so you can get a feel for the place.  Amazing to see what happens when children have the mix of accelerated+deep academics and a fully integrated social-emotional learning program.

Ace was a better tennis player than his sister Sophie. He usually won their bi-weekly games. Then Sophie decided to take some lessons. She had taught herself to play and now she really wanted to improve her game. Her instructor required Sophie to take apart her swing, and her abilities deteriorated. Ace teased his sister mercilessly but she persevered. Week after week, Ace demolished her on the court. Then slowly Sophie’s game improved. Soon she was back to her former ability and then, rapidly, she became much more skilled than her brother. Sophie’s technique was consistent. Her serve was impossible to return. She played with less effort but more accuracy. Ace was forced to run the court from side to side since Sophie knew how to place the ball just out of his reach. Ace could no longer compete with her.

To improve our skills in any endeavor, we often have to sacrifice our old habits and familiar outcomes. We may be more prone to mistakes at first, but if we are willing to question and dismantle our attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge, we can develop abilities that are even more advanced.

What is your experience with learning a new, more beneficial habit or way of thinking?

Working with Emma (my daughter, now 9) – she’s cutting out cupcakes for her science fair poster and cuts too much off:  “I wish there were a control-z for real life.”

I so agree!  Think of all those “emotional intelligence train wrecks” we could correct with a quick “control-z” — remove foot from mouth… ah the relief!

In the meantime I guess we’ll have to settle for better Consequential Thinking – the capacity to assess and manage the emotional impact of our decisions.  Yes it’s learnable – harder than pushing a button though.

I’ve been reflecting on my writing practice and realize that it is a perfect tool for increasing emotional intelligence. Writing can help us reach unrealized parts of ourselves.

Discovering myself.
As I string words together, sentence after sentence, my conscious mind slowly gains access to a storehouse of impressions, ideas, memories, and knowledge from my past. From brainstorming, to rough, working, and final drafts, I become aware of what other parts of me already know. Psychologists and others (have you read Blink?) describe a delay between the arrival of new thoughts (or feelings), and our conscious awareness of them. Before a thought/feeling becomes fully conscious, we may only sense it through elusive moods, or physical symptoms. If we don’t take the time to contemplate (sitting quietly, talking to a good listener, or journaling) the thought/feeling may never come to consciousness. We then can’t retrieve the information, and if the thoughts/feelings are a trigger for us, we may react without ever knowing why.

With patience, writing pulls forth all this latent information. We can discover not only our hidden feelings and beliefs, but also creative ideas that have been haunting us. To reach our inner knowledge, we need only take the time to keep writing, through the clichés and banality, until we find an idea that feels both familiar and new. We can then keep asking ourselves, what is this idea (or feeling)? What do I know about it? What else can I say about it? I am often astounded when, after withstanding the temptation to give up on a subject, I breakthrough and brainstorm many new pages on it.

Don’t worry about aesthetics and form. Simply write to discover the goldmine of useful information inside. You have an inexhaustible source of knowledge, not only about yourself (which is priceless and exceptionally useful) but about any problem you face. I’ve always found that creative solutions are already present within a dilemma. We only have to dig for them. Journaling or blogging are great ways to begin.

What is your experience of writing?

While reflecting on yesterday’s EI class, I’ve been thinking about Josh’s 12/15 blog entry. While I’m always awed and humbled when participants ask me to solve their personal problems, I agree with Josh—there are no quick fixes to offer. What to do? I want my participants to feel good about our training. How can I meet each person’s particular needs—especially if their requests are impossible to grant?

Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.

It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.

To read the entire article, click here:

Frequently in keynotes and trainings audience members ask me for help.  They typically say, “What’s the emotional intelligence solution to _____(insert complex problem)___?” Or, “What’s the EQ perspective on ____(insert lifelong challenge)____?” It would feel gratifying and really boost my ego to tell them what I think they should do…  but most of the time it wouldn’t work.

Six Seconds has a set of five core design principles we use to guide our curriculum design and all teaching (and these also form the backbone of our Leve 1 EQ Certification Training).  One of the principles is “Wisdom Lives Within.”  That means our job is to help people reflect and discover their own answers, their own truth. Sometimes I have trouble with this because I get a great deal of positive reinforcement from “being smart” and having “good solutions.”  I guess that’s rooted in my own insecurity; I like being a “go to” person and it feels good to help and to be acknowledged as someone whose expertise is invaluable.  But that ego boost actually creates dependence – undermining what I TRULY want to give!

One of the other principles is “No Way is The Way” which means we can’t give people the easy answer because there isn’t one.  We need to help them craft a solution that’s authentically, powerfully theirs.  But the good news is they already know it! (see principle #1 ).

Again, a lot easier to sell “the secret to success,” but even if I knew the secret (sigh, I don’t), I suspect it wouldn’t actually work for most people in most situations.  There are just too many variables.

I read this quote from Colin Powell that reinforces these principles:

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

While people WANT “expert answers” that isn’t what they actually need from us as friends, mentors, coaches, trainers, teachers, partners – or even parents.  If we truly want to help people be and do their best, we need to learn to ask great questions instead.

So, that said, here’s “the secret to success my EQ perspective”:

Next time someone asks you for advice, ask yourself this before you answer: 
In the long term, would you rather be the “expert” solving this person’s problems, or have them grow to brilliantly rise to their own challenges?