How to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

We have an amazing computer in our heads. A super computer that is made up of 100 billion neurons wired into a trillion connections to each other, and we only use about 5-10% of the brains power on average. Our brains are designed to be absolutely simplistic in an incredibly fast processing limbic system, or lizard brain, and a higher-level, slow processing modern brain called the neocortex. Here is how you can develop your Emotional Intelligence.

An Emotional Conflict

Our limbic system, among other things, is designed to keep us safe. During a time 300,000 years ago when there were things out in the environment that could eat us, we had to have the ability to make a lifesaving decision within micro-seconds. We still have that ability today; however, it’s more often used to judge certain scenarios and people that we come across for the first time. It is also where we keep our emotions. Again, to be simplistic and not to offend my readers that have PhD’s in medicine, psychology or neurology, this is where we respond emotionally to something within micro-seconds…  like when someone cuts us off in traffic.

Our neocortex system is designed to take in data and, like a super-computer, analyze the information and make a higher-level decision based on the information we have looked at.

Here’s the conflict though… humans have a hard time dealing with the battle that will rage inside our heads with our fast thinking, lower-level emotional brain and the slower moving, higher-level thinking rationale brain. Often what happens is that the fast brain wins, and outcomes are less than ideal or, even embarrassing.

Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

True emotional intelligence comes to us when we are able to use our higher-level thinking part of our brain to over-ride the fast thinking lower-level brain. This takes a lot of practice and self-reflection! Here’s my practice list to develop your Emotional Intelligence:

1. Awareness. When something happens, or I respond in a certain way, I work to reflect on what happened and understand why I responded the way I did – be it positively or negatively. I then work to understand what it was about, the stimulus or situation that made me respond the way I did. With this awareness, I can…
2. Regulate the Response. With better awareness comes better decisions. With better decisions comes better results. Pretty simple except that there needs to be a feedback loop to the awareness part to gain an understanding of process to get to where you are at.
3. Motivation. True self-motivation is enhanced with developing one’s higher-level of thinking. Following a plan is higher-level thinking. Staying in bed when the alarm clock goes off for your early morning workout is lower-level thinking. When we engage our higher-level, fast thinking brain, we do the tough things first because we understand cause and effect better.
4. Empathy. Our world is crowded and complicated. With over 7 billion other people on the planet, we really are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Yet, at the same time, we are significant to the people that matter in our lives. When we develop our higher-level of thinking, we are able to be significantly more empathetic with the people that we love and are significant in our lives as well as others in the world around us. With a lower-level of thinking, we tend to think that we are all that matters (need evidence of this, just look at Donald Trump).
5. Social Skills. When we are able to develop and enhance our higher-level of thinking abilities, we will excel in social settings because of items 1 through 4 above. It is that simple.

Get Thinking

Want to learn more and develop your emotional intelligence and higher-level thinking? Here are three books I recommend:

1. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
2. Principals by Ray Dalio
3. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018.  For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Click here to get his weekly Tuesday Tune Up blog posts straight to your inbox.