5 Steps to Rediscovering Your Passion for Life and Leadership Step 4
With all of the knowledge, skills, talents and drive you may have, if you are not emotionally self-aware, you will not succeed at your life’s goals. You do not have to look far to find someone who has failed at achieving their life’s goals because they did not take the time to know who they were emotionally, how to control their emotions, and what motivated their emotions. You yourself may have experienced consequences due to lack of awareness of emotional strengths and weaknesses; you failed because you thought you were strong in an area where you were actually weak.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, embracing them, being able to control your emotions, and knowing what motivates you are all aspects of emotional intelligence. The concept was made popular in the mid 90s by Daniel Goleman in his ground breaking book, Emotional Intelligence. Since this ground-breaking work, you hardly hear talk about self-improvement that does not include a focus on emotional intelligence.
If you are going to achieve your life goals and rediscover your passion for life, you will need to
develop your emotional intelligence (EQ). Three things should happen for us to grow in EQ: (1) we must become self-aware, which will lead to (2) proper self-management, (3) which should help us understand what motivates us.
1. Self-awareness is the ability to know your strengths and weaknesses, and to be okay with them.
You should be able to admit where you are weak and ask for help, as well as embrace your strengths.
Perhaps you believe that admitting weaknesses is a sign of weakness. In reality, to admit your weaknesses is really a sign of strength, for it takes a strong person to admit they need help.
Here is the good news about weaknesses: we all have them, so there’s no need to pretend you do not have any.
As a self-aware person you take responsibility for your emotions. You do not place the blame on others for your anger, hurt, happiness or joy.
As a self-aware person you know you alone are responsible for your emotional responses or reactions to life. Whatever emotional reaction life elicits is always what you allow.
2. Self-management is the ability to control your impulses to use them for good.
The emotion you feel when you get angry could be used for good or ill depending on whether you are in control of the emotion or the emotion is in control of you.
Every experience you have is first met with emotions then reason. You may have had the experience of emotionally reacting to a particular situation, and then in retrospect admitting you over-reacted.
As you develop your EQ in the area of self-management you will learn to turn even the most powerfully negative emotional experience into something positive because you are in control of your emotions.
Relationships with family, work colleagues and friends are easily sabotaged because you allow others to highjack your emotions. To achieve your life goals you must be able to be in control of your emotions. You and only you are responsible for the emotions you feel and how you allow them to impact your life and the lives of those around you.
3. Motivation is what drives you from your core to pursue your life goals and live with passion, vision, purpose and excellence. Money, prestige, status, or power does not drive you. Rather, the desire, drive, and passion to pursue your life goals define you.
When you know what motivates you, you are not easily dissuaded to settle for compromises or second best in what you are trying to achieve.
Motivation is the result of knowing yourself and managing your emotions so you make the best choices in pursuit of your life goals.
A word of caution in conclusion: Embracing your strengths and weaknesses, controlling your emotions, and knowing what motivates you are no guarantees that you will not make mistakes or fail at some things.
You are still an imperfect human being who will get it wrong sometimes.
The good thing about developing your EQ in the three areas mentioned above is when you do get it wrong, you will be the first to admit it, take responsibility, deal with it, and continue with the pursuits of your goals.
Questions:
- How are you doing in the areas of your EQ?
- Do you know your strengths and weaknesses and have you embraced them? How are you doing in the area of self-management, and do you know what motivates you?
Give us a call at 208 880 0307 or email us at errolcarrim@gmail.com to set up a complimentary coaching session to explore these questions regarding your EQ.
Photo credit: Ken Wilcox via http://photopin.com