Living life in 4 dimensions means being aware of your body and how you move in the environments you inhabit, how you feel moment to moment, your thought processes and having a clear understanding of why you do the things you do.
However, the way you feel often determines your ability to generate energy and rest, work and play efficiently.
The words Emotion, Move and Motivate share the same Latin root - Emovare, which means to move. Emotions are probably the most powerful source of our personal energy. This is because our emotions are connected to our desires, passions, needs, dreads and fears. All of which can activate our ancient Feed, Fight or Flight response, which has access to extraordinary levels of energy.
Psychology has revealed that we probably ‘feel’ emotions before we have thoughts about a person, place or thing. These emotion-fuelled thoughts will then dictate our behaviours and the actions we take. And it seems the sequence of events happen in that order: feelings, thoughts, behaviours and action. This is because the emotional part of the brain (limbic system-amygdala) responds before and independently of the cognitive rational brain (neocortex).
However this psychological sequence can lead to ‘emotional hijacking’ as the emotional centres in the brain can cut off access to our rational, logical functions. We might then fly into a rage or become very sad or scared. This is a function left over from primitive human’s instinctive response to danger, which would trigger fight or flight merely from various nonverbal or environmental signals. Early humans needed an instant warning and rescue system, as they had not yet developed the intellectual capacity to analyse and decide what sort of danger he/she was in. Unfortunately this warning and rescue system software is still running in our brains, therefore, we need strategies to implement before any emotional hijacking takes place. We need to learn to recognise our ‘trigger mechanisms and situations’ in order to do this.
Because so much of what we feel is to do with the biochemistry of our bodies and old patterns of thought we associate with feelings from childhood it is vital that we have an intellectual understanding of the psycho- somatic dynamics of emotion.
Understanding why and how we feel the way we do helps us to intelligently manage our feelings, thoughts and behaviours.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Self Awareness
Are you aware and in control of your emotions?
What strategies do you use to manage your emotions?
When is it hard for you to manage your emotions?
Why?
What could you do to help improve the situation?
Other Awareness
Can you easily recognise what others are feeling?
Are you easily able to empathise with others?
How do you behave?
When is it difficult for you to recognise the emotions of others?
What do you think might help to improve the situation?
The psychologist Antonio Damasio has revealed that our emotions are a product of an entanglement of both internal and external physical feelings and thoughts that might not necessarily be connected. For instance, if I am a naturally anxious person, because of the way my body produces cortisol and adrenalin, I might be particularly more anxious in the mornings. As a result if you engage me in the morning I will feel differently about our interaction (and you) than if you engage with me in the afternoons. If I know this, I can better manage my feelings thoughts and behaviours to compensate.
The key to working with emotional intelligence is in first understanding when, how and why we become emotional and then trying to understand the same in others.
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