We want ourselves and our children to be successful and happy. But we often forget that it is impossible to put an equal sign between these concepts. You can be successful, but at the same time constantly feel unhappy. Or you can constantly experience difficulties in your studies or career, but treat them not as a tragedy, but as a step forward.

Why are emotions so important?

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

Charles Swindoll, writer

The modern world is full of stressful situations that are difficult to handle even for adults, not to mention children. They do not understand and do not know what emotions they experience at one time or another, how to manage them, therefore they have a distorted idea of ​​what is happening. This leads to neurosis, apathy and other depressive states.

Exaggerated demands of teachers, instilling in a small personality the importance of victory and superiority (many want to be the parents of winners) - all this is too heavy a load for fragile children's shoulders. The heavier this burden, the more important it is to deal with the feelings and experiences of the child.

Already in adulthood, we see that people who cannot control their emotions have trouble in all areas of life, including in their careers.

When a person is overwhelmed by negative emotions and cannot objectively evaluate his feelings, desires and opportunities, a devastating effect is guaranteed.

Relations with others deteriorate, a person withdraws into himself, loses faith in himself, his strength or his professionalism, becomes irritable, becomes even more confused in his feelings. And then the question arises: “What level of emotional intelligence does he have?”

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is responsible for recognizing and correctly interpreting emotions. It is he who gives a person psychological flexibility and the ability to effectively interact with the outside world.

That is why the concept of "emotional intelligence" was first voiced in relation to career building and self-realization. However, psychologists immediately caught the infantile subtext in this, because the fundamental development of the personality occurs precisely in childhood.

For a child, the development of EQ is an opportunity to create a streamlined and understandable system of perception that will allow you to effectively interact with people around you, perceive criticism correctly, recognize the feelings of adults and peers and adequately respond to them.

Aggression, apathy, poor sleep, absent-mindedness, inability to establish contacts with peers and other disturbing manifestations in the child's behavior are obvious signals that indicate the need to develop emotional intelligence.

How to develop emotional intelligence from childhood?

The most important thing in the life of any child is parental love. Love your child, show him tenderness and care. Tactile communication between mother and child does not lose its significance for children older than infancy.

Love makes every person feel secure and confident. This is a reliable foundation for the development of a successful personality.

In addition, it is very important to create the right associations with different emotions. Show your child with a real example what joy is. Maybe it's the smell of the cake? Maybe ringing a bell? What about friendship? Do you associate friendship with hugs? If not, then what does it look like in your imagination?

Create a colorful and vibrant world around your child, in which every feeling and sensation has its own color, aroma and taste. So you will not only open the doors to the world of emotions for the child, but also get closer to him, further strengthen the trust between you.

A similar method works for . Do not just read, but play fairy tales, tell children magical stories through a game or a small performance. Play a scene in front of them, use tactile sensations, aroma oils, appropriate intonation - this will allow the child to feel the whole gamut of sincere emotions that a magical story evokes.

Each of these methods is well described in our book Monsiki. What are emotions and how to deal with them. Ours, because we created it together with my son Gleb, based on our own experience. It can be safely called a detailed guide for parents, where one of the most effective methods for developing EQ is shown through interaction with fairy-tale heroes Monsic. Each of them represents a certain emotion and has skills that will help children understand these emotions and deal with them with various difficulties. Monsics are kind fairy-tale creatures, and a fairy tale is best perceived by a child.

Working on emotional intelligence in childhood is the key to successful development and well-being in the future.

Most likely, such a child, as an adult, will be able to avoid most of the psychological problems that modern society confronts us today.

Children are more receptive to everything new, their psyche is like plasticine - flexible and ingenuous. But what will be molded from this plasticine often depends only on adults. So let's start with ourselves.

Simple EQ Exercises

The EQ development methodology is simple and straightforward, but requires care and regular practice. Here are the most simple and effective exercises.

Mindfulness exercises

emotional diary

To learn to be aware of yourself here and now, write down every three hours the emotion that you are experiencing at the moment. At the end of the day, isolate the prevailing emotion and think about what needs to be worked on.

After a couple of weeks, you will learn to feel in real time without any difficulties.

This exercise will be made more effective by a kind of check - an analysis of the physical state when experiencing a certain emotion. This practice is also good for improving health.

Stop!

How often are our actions accompanied by ? We do not think about what we are doing, but simply perform some familiar, regular manipulations. Exercise "Stop!" is to abruptly stop any action in order to get rid of inertia and allow yourself to think about the situation. Only in this way can you feel yourself here and now, begin to control your reality.

Self-Esteem Exercises

What a luck!

Teach yourself to think positively, reacting even to unpleasant events with the phrase: “What luck!”. Such a reaction will come as a surprise to others, but this fact will also benefit you, because then you will find even more advantages in the situation. To enhance the effect, you can use the phrase: "It's so great, because ...". Why? Think about it.

Sell ​​your flaw

An effective technique that allows you to interpret even the negative aspects of a person in a positive way. Tell the audience about your shortcoming in other words, give it a different color. For example, can caution be considered cowardice, and courage recklessness? But it all depends on which side you look at. The synthon approach relies on a positive approach to development. He says: you have no flaws, you have features.

You need to develop your strengths and work on your weaknesses.

With this approach, you can sell any of your shortcomings. For example, sell insecurity. Tell the audience honestly and truthfully how you, having this quality, before taking an important step, consider all options for events, look at various solutions, and only then take the most beneficial step for you.

Motivation Exercises

Openness to new

To develop this valuable quality in yourself, you can use a simple but very effective exercise, which is to find as many uses for the most ordinary things as possible. Let it be a regular towel, an old bucket, or just a piece of cardboard. Come up with as many options as you can use these things. It is not only interesting, but also fun. Therefore, practice this exercise with your family and children. They will have a great time and work on their imagination and ingenuity.

Two random words

Open any book or magazine, randomly select any two words from the text and try to find something in common between them. Compare them, analyze, reflect and make relationships. It's efficient and fun.

An exercise to increase adaptability

Finally - the well-known Elevator Pitch method - the presentation of your business project in 30-60 seconds. Imagine that you are your own business project. Start presenting yourself as brightly as possible, while remaining honest with yourself.

To get started, use this template:

1. Profession.
2. Hobby.
3. How do I change the world for the better?

Each of these exercises will help you become better emotionally and psychologically. However, do not take emotional intelligence as a universal key to success. Life is quite multifaceted. Therefore, improve your mind, body, soul and love yourself. After all, the only thing we have control over in this world is ourselves.

Emotions can help or hinder you, but you cannot know until you understand their essence. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 will help you understand and manage your emotional states.

We have chosen five tips for you that will help you to correctly perceive your own emotions.

Stop perceiving feelings as good and bad

Humans tend to divide their emotions into two simple groups: good and bad. For example, most people automatically classify guilt as a bad emotion. You do not want to experience this feeling and are ready to struggle with yourself, wanting to get rid of it. In other situations, you unleash your arousal. Sometimes you pump yourself with energy, and sometimes you spray it in all directions.

The downside of labeling emotions is that you can't really understand exactly what you're feeling when you label them that way.

When you give yourself the opportunity to calmly deal with the emotion and understand what it is, you get a chance to find out what causes it. Relinquishing judgment about emotions will allow them to do their thing and disappear without a trace. And constant thinking about whether you should feel what you feel, awakens new emotions to life and does not allow the original feeling to be realized.

Therefore, immediately pay attention to situations when certain emotions begin to develop in you. Refrain from labeling your emotion as "good" or "bad" and then you will be able to understand something important.

Write down your emotions

The main problem in developing self-perception is objectivity. It's hard to get a perspective on your emotions and tendencies when you're trying to start climbing a mountain from the bottom every day. By writing down your thoughts, you can record what events triggered your emotions and how you responded to them.

You can write about what happened to you at home or at work - there are no restrictions on this. In just a month, you will notice a stable pattern of your behavior and the emergence of emotions, and this will allow you to better understand your tendencies. You will begin to better understand which emotions make you feel depressed, which makes you feel elated, and which emotions are the most difficult for you to deal with.

Watch carefully for people and situations that push your buttons and unleash your strongest emotions.

Describe the emotions you experience every day. Don't forget to also describe the physical manifestations that accompany them. You gain the ability to see more clearly because putting your emotions on paper makes it easier to determine what your tendencies are. Your diary can be a great resource to draw upon when evaluating your self-image.

Notice the presence of your emotions in books, movies and music

If you find it difficult to look within yourself to understand what your emotional patterns and tendencies are, you can discover the same information through movies, music, and books that you feel connected to. If the lyrics of a song or its mood resonate with your feelings, then this can tell a lot about your inner feeling, and if you constantly remember a certain character from a book or movie, then this may indicate that his thoughts and feelings are parallel to yours. A careful study of these points can teach you a lot about yourself. In addition, with this tool, you can tell a lot about your feelings to other people.

Finding the reflection of your emotions in the playing of artists allows you to learn a lot about yourself and discover feelings in yourself that are difficult to express in words.

Sometimes you are simply unable to find the right words to express the right emotions ... and suddenly you hear exactly how the hero of the film pronounces them. Listening to music, reading books, watching movies, and even looking at an artist's painting can open the door to your deepest emotions. The next time a movie or book grabs your attention, try to dig deeper - you never know what you'll find as a result of your search.

Don't let bad mood fool you

We constantly succumb to a bad mood, when it seems to us that the whole world is against us. This state covers our thoughts, feelings and everything that happens to us with a thick and dark fog. Your brain has one focus. As soon as you fall into the power of a bad mood, you lose sight of all the good things in your life. Suddenly you start to hate your job, your friends and family annoy you, you are dissatisfied with your achievements, and your optimism about the future disappears like smoke. Somewhere deep down you know that everything is not as bad as it seems now, but your brain remains deaf to it.

Part of our self-perception is awareness of what we're going through, even if we can't get rid of it. Admit to yourself that your bad mood is like a cloud covering everything you see. Remind yourself that your mood is transient. Emotions change constantly, and bad mood will pass - you just need to wait a bit.

A bad mood is not the best time to make important decisions.

You must be constantly aware of what mood you are in. If you think you can make sound decisions no matter what your mood is, you will end up with even bigger problems. It is important not only to reflect on what events led you to the current mood. Sometimes these reflections themselves (if you do not get hung up on them too much) can be sufficient reason for a bad mood to pass by itself.

Understand how you behave under stress

If you learn to recognize the first signs of stress, you will be doing yourself a huge favor. The human mind and body speak their own language to you (at least when there is stress). Through emotional and psychological reactions, they let you know when it's time to slow down and take a break. An upset stomach, for example, may indicate that you are overwhelmed with nervousness and anxiety. Indigestion and fatigue are the way your body asks for time to rest. Indigestion may indicate tension and anxiety, while symptoms such as headache, stomatitis or back pain may be an expression of other internal problems.

Your self-image in times of stress and tension should serve as a third ear, listening carefully to your body's voice or its cries for help.

When you push too hard, your body has a lot to say to you. Take the time to listen to these signals and recharge your emotional batteries before the emotional stress causes permanent damage to your internal system.

“Emotions lead to delusions and this is their value, the value of science is in its unemotionality.”

"The Picture of Dorian Grey".

Have you ever noticed how emotions distort or transform reality? In psychology, there is a special term "Emotional Intelligence" and it has a special designation - EQ. They started talking about him again at the beginning of the Zero. Let's talk about what this concept is and how to develop emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence management became of interest to me long before I heard this term. It was an intuitive understanding that the development of the situation, or the lack of results, is influenced not only by my thoughts, but also by my reaction to them, the emotional state. Rather, it is emotions that form thoughts, and not vice versa. Negative thoughts appear precisely because a person does not have complete information about ongoing events, experiences, experiences fear, resentment, anger, and from certain expectations. Agree, most conflicts arise because our loved ones do not behave the way we expect them to. Psychologists note that clarifying the relationship, or who is right, occurs because a person does not receive strong, vivid, positive sensations from reality, and the struggle is designed to compensate for this shortcoming.

Stressful situations become a gold mine for a certain circle of people. This includes soothsayers, magicians, fortune-tellers, psychics. Various sessions act like morphine, they remove the negative for a while, leaving positive experiences and a feeling of relaxation. As a result, the client comes again to get not the prediction itself, but the confidence that everything will be in order. This is at best.

Some of the psychics and magicians deliberately increase the level of anxiety of clients in order to inspire even more fear and, in this way, lure large sums of money. They cling to what is important to a person: relationships with a loved one, health, and so on. Emotional intelligence exercises helped me move away from constant feelings of fear and anxiety, think soberly and seek constructive solutions to problems without turning to third parties for help. I will talk about several effective techniques.

The concept of emotional intelligence

Psychologists Kahneman and Smith conducted research in the field of behavioral psychology, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. They managed to prove that most people, when making decisions, are guided by emotions, not logic.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to see one's strengths and weaknesses and accept them in other people, the ability to share personal feelings and facts. There are low and high levels of emotional intelligence. A low level of emotional intelligence is characterized by such emotions:

• envy;
• criticism;
• condemnation;
• tunnel vision of the situation (a person sees only one possible scenario and, most often, in negative tones);
• suppression of feelings;
• high level emotional intelligence is characterized by:
• mental flexibility;
• variability of thinking (a person can find many options for the development of events and work out each of them in detail);

EQ - intelligence helps to find a common language with people of different social groups and ages. Emotional intelligence management is useful in business, sales, and any team work that requires organizing and inspiring people.

Why is it needed

Not everyone understands why it is necessary to develop EQ - intelligence. There are several reasons for this:

1. Adequate assessment of one's own capabilities, acceptance of the strengths and weaknesses of one's personality, effective use of internal resources.
2. Understanding the causes of certain emotions.
3. Understanding and caring for the feelings of others, family.
4. Understanding the needs of other people and building a line of behavior based on them.
5. Acceptance and understanding of the conditions of objective reality.
6. Management of emotions, quick search for solutions in a given situation.

You will receive not only emotional stability, but also the respect of other people, both in the team and from the management. A person who can understand others can grow up to be a good leader. You can, for example, write your own book on managing emotions, or become the head of a company, or maybe in the future you will conduct personal growth trainings yourself? Today, this direction is very popular, the experience of people who, without special education, were able to understand themselves and rise to a new level of well-being is especially appreciated.

Such masters include, for example, Joe Vitale, who became a multimillionaire after a few years of living on the street, or Niko Bauman, who wrote a series of books on the power of mental focus without any special education. The young author founded his own online school, conducts webinars and intensives in which he teaches people to control their attention and direct emotions in the right direction.

stages

Experts distinguish 4 stages of development of emotional intelligence:

1. Clear and intelligible communication with other people, the ability to listen and the ability to explain expectations. The ability to motivate people to action, teamwork, leadership of a small group of people, the ability not to get involved in open conflict.
2. Feeling comfortable among a large group of people, regardless of whether you classify yourself as an introvert or extrovert, the ability to understand the emotions of other people, rare cases of misunderstanding with someone.
3. Knowing and accepting all the positive and negative aspects of your personality, comfortable existence with them, understanding your emotions and their influence on ongoing events.
4. Skillful management of emotions, limiting their destructive influence, the ability to fulfill promises and obligations, maintaining long-term relationships, acting according to circumstances.

Development Methods

Let's take a look at 7 main ways to develop emotional intelligence in adults.

1. Refrain from sharing feelings. From an early age we are taught to divide things into categories: this is good, this is bad, there is black and white. But such a division is very subjective, because in general you don’t know what prompted a person to commit a not too good deed from the point of view of society. Maybe if you were in that situation, you would do worse. This is me to the fact that there are semitones in the world. Anger, for example, is classified as a bad emotion, but there is a hidden desire for everything to become better than it is, and this is already a positive side. For many people, during a fit of anger, a source of inner strength opens up. Refusal to separate emotions into “good” and “bad” helps to understand the cause of the occurrence of those that are commonly called negative.
2. Write down the emotions you experienced during the day. By keeping notes in a diary, you can easily track what triggered the experience. In addition, over time, you will be able to track how your reaction to a similar situation has changed. Write without limiting yourself and you will understand what makes you worry, how you react, for example, to fear, and what makes you move on.
3. Observe people and situations that make you feel a wave of strong emotions. Describe in the diary the physical sensations of the experienced emotions.
4. If you find it difficult to track and write down your emotions, watch your preferences: what you prefer to watch, listen to, read about, what fills your mind day by day. What songs or films do you feel an inner connection with, why did you make this choice? Which characters and why do you feel inner sympathy? Answering these questions will help you start tracking your emotions.
5. Sometimes our emotions and words are spoken by other people, in the lines of a song, in a speech, in a movie. They experience the same emotions as you, which makes you feel a certain euphoria. You can remember a few catchy episodes.
6. The surest way to understand another person is to put yourself in their place. Think about how you would feel under those circumstances or if the other person told you what you said.
7. Think over the worst scenario of the development of events, what will you do in this case, how can you get out of the situation? This will help you calm down.

Own your emotions, do not let them control you, you are the masters of your life. Even the most unpleasant situation can be changed simply by looking at it from a different point of view. By sorting out what makes you uncomfortable, you can become a strong personality, because the internal state does not depend on money in your pocket, or on position, or on the presence or absence of a partner nearby. You are the creator of everything that happens, it is in your power to take off or fall.

Emotional intelligence is the development of such skills as understanding both one's own feelings and the emotions of others. Thanks to this, we can effectively manage the reaction to the feelings of others and, thus, be more productive in our work. The main task in developing emotional intelligence is not to suppress or ignore difficult emotions or feelings, but to intelligently control them.

Emotional intelligence is what separates successful leaders from everyone else. more productive in hiring new employees, better motivating colleagues, efficient in the service sector. But emotional intelligence is important at any stage of your career, especially if you want to achieve a high level of accountability for your work. And in other aspects of life, EI allows you to be happier, healthier and strengthen relationships. So how do you improve emotional intelligence and make it work for you?

1. Develop emotional self-awareness

Emotions can cause a person to behave in unusual and often unproductive ways, and self-awareness will improve your ability to understand and interpret your own emotions, moods, and inner motives. This practice will help you recognize the emotional states of other people and understand what is behind their words and actions. In short, if you don't understand your own motivations and behaviors, you won't understand others either.

What to do for this:

• Speak three phrases every day that begin with the words “I feel…” through this technique, you will gradually learn to accurately identify your emotions and increase self-awareness.
• Take time each day to experience the emotion - articulate how you feel and why.
• Remind yourself that emotions are fickle and short-lived, and therefore cannot be the basis for communication and decision making.
• Reflect on how negative emotions—frustration, rejection, anger, or jealousy—affect your colleagues and clients.
• Identify your fears and desires. This will help you better understand what worries you and drives you.
• Check how you react to stress. Do you get frustrated every time something doesn't go the way you planned?

2. Emotional self-control

It is important to develop the ability to control impulsive reactions and emotions that negatively affect your potential and leadership. This is the next step after the development of self-awareness. In short, self-control is the ability to rise above pathetic explanations, jealousy, relapses, and not let your emotions control you. Through self-control, you will think before you act and build a reputation as a reliable member of any team.

Self-control techniques:

• Do not allow yourself to join one side or the other during office dramas and conflicts.
• If the situation is emotionally difficult and charged, step back for a while, do not make a decision right away. Analyze your emotions.
• Accept the fact that life is volatile and frustration and disappointment are part of any job. And the professional response to them is brainstorming and strategy development, not complaints and suspension from work.
• Don't join the blame game, don't point fingers at everyone and everything around you. Except for yourself: learn and accept your mistakes.
• Stay focused on yourself and the things you can control, not on things that are out of your control.
• Find ways to respond to emotions that don't involve spontaneous reactions or bad language.

3. Develop the ability to show empathy

Empathy is a natural path in the development of emotional self-awareness. It allows you to move away from your personal experience and see and understand the problem from the perspective of another person. By developing empathy, you show your ability to treat people with respect, kindness, dignity, and professionalism. Empathetic people are good at recognizing the feelings of others, even if they are not obvious.

How to develop empathy:

• Live by the golden rule - treat others the way you want to be treated.
• It is easy to maintain your point of view, guided by this feeling, put yourself in the place of another person and look at the situation from his position.
• Develop the ability to listen and reflect on what your interlocutor said.
• At least once a day, ask how the person is feeling, for example, on a scale of 0 to 10. This will encourage others to express their emotions and understand them better.
• Acknowledge other people's anxieties and feelings - let them know that you see their source and realize the value of their point of view.

4. Work on your motivation

Motivation is passion and enthusiasm in your work and career that cannot be explained by money or status, it is what helps you realize your internal goals and do it with enviable perseverance.

How to improve motivation:

• In any difficult situation, and even in case of failure, try to find at least one good thing.
• Record the moment when you think and speak in a negative way. Stop doing this, pause and once again “roll through” all your thoughts and words in your mind. Change them to positive ones, even if you have to pretend at first.
• It's easy to forget what you really love about your job. Take the time to remember and articulate that, and the main reason why you want to excel in what you do.
• Remember that people are attracted to positive, energetic and inspiring people. If you increase motivation, you will get more attention from colleagues, top managers and clients.
• Set yourself inspiring yet achievable goals. Make a list of what needs to be done to achieve them. Reward yourself when you reach key goals.

5. Improve your communication skills

An important aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to interact well with other people, but this does not mean that introverts or shy people have low EI. Communication skills can take many forms, not only being friendly, but also listening, persuading, verbal and non-verbal communication skills. Leaders with high emotional intelligence are often very good at communicating, resolving conflicts and sharing their vision with the team - they set an example of behavior and values ​​that others can follow.

How to improve communication skills:

• Study conflicts and their solutions, this will help in difficult situations with colleagues, customers or suppliers.
• Learn to praise others, so you inspire the team and make it loyal.
• Try to understand the person you are talking to. You can't have just one approach that works for everyone at work.