Emotional Intelligence 101 – Who Are You?

Emotional Intelligence 101 – Who Are You?

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Emotional Intelligence 101 – Who Are You?

Samuel Osho

After being brutally beaten and robbed, a man was left unconscious on the roadside. A psychiatrist was passing by, he paused, looked at the man and exclaimed: “My God, whoever did this, really needs help!”

What’s the difference between a psychologist and a magician? A magician pulls rabbits out of hats whereas a psychologist pulls habits out of rats. 

Long before the field of psychology received significant attention, there was little or no importance placed on the value of emotional intelligence. But recent studies have convincingly proven that to succeed in today’s world, high intelligence quotient (IQ) is not enough. For guaranteed success in leadership positions, you need an excellent blend of IQ and emotional intelligence. 

You must have heard people say that managing people is a tough job. That’s why leadership and management will be a hard nut to crack for anyone that fails to intentionally understand people and why they act the way they do. But how can you understand others if you are not fully aware of who you are? 

It’s easy to manage robots – no mood swings, no sick days, no anger feats, and all sorts. But when your job requires managing a team of four to six people, a headache pops up and then you are about to explode. 

It’s clear that it’s impossible to separate human beings and their emotions. Your typical day can best be described as a rollercoaster of diverse feelings and emotions – angry, happy, sad, ashamed, afraid, anxious and we have some emotions that are without names.  

It’s a huge challenge to effectively deal with emotions because our brains are wired to always give emotional reactions an upper hand. When you receive signals from your sensory organs – sight, smell, hearing and touch; the signals pass through the spinal cord at the base of your brain to its destination (the frontal lobe – the back of your forehead). But before the signal reaches the frontal lobe, it has to pass through the limbic system. The limbic system is the seat of emotions while the frontal lobe is the seat of rational thinking and logic. So, the signals get tampered with and evoke some emotions before they reach the center of logical thinking. That’s the popular emotional hijacking! 

 

In the book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, Emotional Intelligence was divided into four core areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. 

The first two – self-awareness and self-management drive your personal competence because they have to do with the understanding and management of your personal emotions. 

The last two – social awareness and relationship management controls your social competence because they involve comprehending the emotions of people around you and effectively manage your interactions with them. 

In conclusion, low emotional intelligence is not the end of the world. Not when you are determined to see it grow and improve. But the foundation of all the four core areas is self-awareness – it sets the pace for the development of other areas. The journey to increasing your emotional intelligence starts with YOU – it does not start by pointing fingers, it starts by going inside out.

For further reading on Emotional Intelligence, you can check the following books: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

My 5 Best Reads of 2019

My 5 Best Reads of 2019

My 5 Best Reads of 2019

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DECEMBER 2019

Samuel Osho

Asides my love for writing, I am a voracious reader that devours books both for relaxation and education. Reading helps to relax tense mental muscles and amplify imagination, it’s also an avenue to gather information on a new subject. 

In 2019, I read more books than I have done in previous years, and I am excited to share some of my best reads with you. I hope you find these books inspiring. The books on my list were necessary not published in 2019; in fact, some are quite old, but they are still relevant in their respective fields. 

5 Best Reads of 2019

1. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott’s compendium of instructions on writing is a superb blessing for any passionate writer. The book uncovered some nuggets via personal stories blended with humour. 

Lamott insists that to become a superb writer, you have to write more and don’t judge your competence based on your first drafts. You will have terrible first drafts. The earlier you know that, the better for you. For storytellers, Lamott’s advice is to keep writing until you unravel the hidden gems – the profiles of your characters, the dialogue forms, the setting and many more. The book offered tasks you can do to warm your writing engines before embarking on the “big” writing project. 

To finish a story, if you need the help of experts on unfamiliar subjects, don’t hesitate to reach out. Get those conversations going, and the perfect words might just come to you. Lamott also emphasized the essence of joining writing groups and seeking constructive criticism from editors or writers that believe in you.

2. The Dip by Seth Godin

Success requires lots of dedication, hard work and resilience. Everyone knows that, but Godin introduces a new angle, which is knowing when to quit a project, a company, a relationship so that you can win in other things.

Godin describes those tough times before success as either a dip or a cul-de-sac. In a cul-de-sac, you recite the mantra of resilience and perseverance, but it’s a ploy to drain your energy and resources – it’s a dead end. While a dip mirrors the same climatic conditions you face in a cul-de-sac, except that it’s going to lead you to a bright side – things get better if you push hard enough. 

A dip is a shortcut to success and weeds out your competitors. Still, it takes intuition, wisdom and sometimes, data to know the difference between a cul-de-sac and a dip. If you spot a cul-de-sac early in your journey, quit the race, save your energy and resources for better ventures. That’s how you quit to win.

“What a blessing it is to love books.” – Elizabeth von Arnim

3. Zero to One by Peter Thiel

This is a must-read for anyone interested in today’s style of entrepreneurship and start-up business. Peter Thiel is a highly intelligent founder and entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience in pioneering innovative technologies. The book makes a case for the true meaning of technology and demonizes the word “globalization” as copying what others are doing.

Thiel goes deep into business secrets that every entrepreneur needs to explore before making entry into new and existing markets. The book contains logical arguments fit for discourse in our ever-evolving world. Although the book tilts towards collaboration between businesses and paints unhealthy competition as idiotic, it has answers for entrepreneurs in both monopoly and competitive terrains.

What takes any business from zero to one is doing what others are not doing – creating new solutions and not merely repackaging what others are doing. I love the part that delved into how to set up a mafia team for a start-up, how to distribute and sell a new product, how to build a company with a robust culture. 

4. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

Ramit Sethi’s expert advice on personal finance is a brilliant place to start if you are bent on living a life of financial freedom. Management of personal finances requires one to take charge; don’t be reactive but be proactive. The book propels you to take necessary actions towards your long-term financial goals. You will learn the rules of optimizing my credit card(s) and how to enjoy the perks that come with it. 

The book shows practical ways to supercharge your negotiation skills and avoid unnecessary bank charges. It went deeper into practical strategies for investing and how to start immediately. Ramit shows how to create a conscious spending plan after looking closely at your monthly spending behaviour. And then the exciting part kicks in with using automation as a smart way of saving more money. 

 In the end, I enjoyed the comments on saving for a wedding, getting a prenup, buying a house and buying a car. I am more confident about my finances and equipped with the information to make better decisions.

5. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Jean Greaves and Travis Bradberry

Greaves and Bradberry teamed up to create an instant supercharger for Emotional Intelligence. The book is a robust tool for anyone interested in learning about Emotional Intelligence and seeking practical ways of improving their Emotional Intelligence Quotient.

The introduction gives an eye-opener on how the emotional part of the brain continually overrides the rational part of the brain. It explains why the default response of human beings is usually a gust of emotions and not a series of logical and thoughtful reasoning. The scheme of emotional hijacking as many call it. 

The book further emphasizes the impact of High Emotional Intelligence on personal and professional pursuits. I learnt that Emotional Intelligence could be seen through four lenses: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. Asides painting what it looks like being in the top or bottom percentile of each category, there were several daily practices you could start immediately to increase your emotional intelligence.

Conclusion

For a list of my favourite books, you can find them here

 

It’s your turn, please share with me in the comments section – what are the best books you read in 2019?

Do you have an idea that you would like to share with me?

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