Emotional Intelligence Explained (Interview)

Hereby I share my interview that I answered questions about emotional intelligence. If you would like to learn more about emotional intelligence and how I approach it in my own therapies, I hope you enjoy reading it!

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Here is my interview about emotional intelligence, I hope you enjoy reading it!

Q: What is emotional intelligence (EQ)?

There can be many definitions about emotional intelligence, but for me it is the ability to make your rational brain with your emotional brain which is in your heart so that you can have a balance and with this balance, it's easier for you to make decisions. For example, it's easier to relate to other people; it is easier to communicate better if you are in a good balance; if your emotions are overwhelming for example. So for me, that would be the best definition: the ability to connect both intelligences.

Q: How can one develop emotional intelligence? Is it something we have naturally or do we develop during adolescence or adulthood?

It needs to be improved, it needs to be developed and it needs to be learned. We have the potential internally, yes, but it needs to be developed. The sad thing is that emotional intelligence is not taught at schools. Those kinds of education programs are starting in some schools but not very concrete examples and situations. But normally, you know, the academic curriculum focuses on you know, the usual traditional subjects that we know but yes, it needs to be taught and developed. For EQ to be developed, we need to have five EQ skills. The first one is self-awareness. It is the ability to recognize what's going on with you. Self-awareness is the very first step. If you don't know what 's going on within you; even if you don't put the focus inside you instead of externally then it's going to be very difficult to manage whatever is inside because the second skill is emotional management. You have acknowledged, you have become aware that there is an emotion going on within you called maybe fear, maybe sadness, maybe anger or happiness whatever and what do you do with it? How do you manage it? Because emotions need to be, as I said, balanced. The third EQ skill is self-motivation. How do you drive yourself and live your values and what is your life project? What is your life impulse that keeps you motivated that makes you wake up in the morning having energy and positive thought? The fourth skill is, also very very important, social skills. How do you relate to other people? How do you communicate it needs to be it has to do with social media. How do you communicate? It is more to do with social abilities. The fifth one is relationship management. How do you set boundaries with others? So these five skills are far more important for you to be successful in life than the ordinary IQ skills. According to Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who made this term popular in the 90’s with his book called Emotional Intelligence, EQ is far more important to develop, to be successful and he came to the conclusion that EQ is important in 77 percent of your life compared with 23 percent of the ordinary IQ. Basically it will make a difference about how happy you are in your life.

Q: What are the practical actions one can do to improve those skills?

Well, there are so many techniques and approaches. Psychology has evolved so much in the past decades that we have so many approaches. For me, the first one, let’s talk about self-awareness, it has to do very much with being present. We stay in the present moment, for example, meditation helps a lot to actually turn the focus. Instead of so much living on the outer world to you know, drive it and refocus it to your internal world. Because human beings have the tendency to make the world adapt to their needs. The world needs to adapt to my needs so that the world needs to make me happy. It's a bit like a subconscious demand that we make on the world. And that rarely happens and the world normally turns out to be quite disappointing because if you finally get the world to satisfy your needs, it'll be temporary. So that's why it's so important you to turn your attention, your focus to inside. The 90-10 principle says, 10 percent is what happens, namely the events in your life. And the 90% is how you interpret that event. What do you do with it? The meaning that you give to that event.That 90% has to do with your thoughts, your emotions with how you manage the situation internally in your mind, according to your mental programming of cours, because events are neutral. The same event can be a disaster for one person, and can be a huge happiness and joy for the other. So it's how you interpret each event, what is going to decide the level of your happiness. So that would be one technique. Let's call it being present or mindfulness attitude, meditation. The second one, let's talk about emotion management. What do you do with your emotions? There are many techniques to manage emotions starting with the body, bodily techniques. For example, doing physical exercises with breathing. Also there are some other techniques at more cognitive levels, for example, reinterpreting your emotions. Let me give an example of what I mean by these. Imagine fear. Fear is a commonly experienced emotion, everybody experiences fear at some point of their life. Fear is a very useful emotion that prevents human beings from dying, from external objects of threat, for example from a lion eating you. fear is the emotion that predisposes you to fight or flee or stop. As I said fear is a really useful emotion, but today we don’t have any objective threats in your life. If you count how many times you are afraid of something, it is maybe hundreds of millions of times but there were no external threats outside. We are a bit confused with what we have learned in life because we are calling an emotion as fear when it is not fear. For example, you park your car outside and you have the worry that someone might steal it. you have this fear that your partner will abandon you one day. You have this fear that your children get addicted to mobile phones. There can be so many fears but it's no fear! It is an attachment. fear, is only when your life is threatened. Just like that. Let's call it fear when we see a lion is trying to attacking you but the rest are attachment. You are attached to your car, you are attached to your wife or husband, you are attached to the idea of how you want your children to be. so if we starting pulling the thread, we realize that most of the time it wasn’t fear what we felt. It was an attachment. According to Buddhism, attachment outward the source of suffering.

That's another way to rationalize the emotions to become aware that it is not fear but attachment. So many other great techniques to manage your emotions exist. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a great technique, especially for anxiety. There are some others called BSFF ( Be set free and fast) to erase your emotional roots.

Q: The attachment perspective to the events is novel. Can you further explain this approach?

This information comes from a new approach that I am using with my patients, neuroscience. I manage a program which we do first a test to diagnose what inefficiencies and skills your brain has. And then we work on the inefficiencies. And so what we do is that the patient sees a certain video three times. We do rational explanation about the fear as I just described. What those videos do is that they make certain learning faster, more efficient than just talking about it. This new approach is quite revolutionary that psychology has just added to create more well-being in patients. Now, more than ever, we need efficient techniques that foster calmness and equilibrium that we all are looking for.

Q: You have combined modern psychology with Ancient Teachings. Can you further explain how?

This is a good question. Well, the program I am managing I just gave you a small hint which is in Spanish is PTI - Programa de Transformación Interior, translated into English as Inner Translation Program and it consists of five levels. And the fifth level they're very last one, that's the transcendent path. And I found that not all the patients but a few of them are interested in developing the inner self beyond what it's apparent and they want to start moving a whole philosophical existential path. And transpersonal psychology is ideal for this path. As I said, not everybody is ready. We don't want to force anybody to actual do it because it needs to be done at the right moment. And if you feel that it's your moment to actually move into this transcendental path to get out of the cave like Plato was saying then transpersonal psychology is pretty useful. So we start studying ego and true nature which we call it essence or being, doesn't matter the name. And we start studying ego as a computer program that is inserted our minds and we project a world of duality in which we conceived polarities like for example, black and white, men and women; beautiful and ugly and we live in this polo world, which we consider it is real but according to this age teachings like Advaita and Buddhism, maybe it is not that real, maybe just an apparent solidification of some ideas. It's really stimulating to actually start knocking down some really strong beliefs that we tend to have about the reality and neuroscience for me has been a great discovery because it can also help to destroy limiting beliefs that also help move towards what we call being.

Because at the end of the day, what we want is happiness and balance, unconsciously we are looking for these in everything we do. We think that by having money, by having a car, living in a beautiful house. We are going to find this equilibrium, this happiness because we are desperate to actually find it. Because subconsciously we know that there is something beyond what we can see, touch and smell that is the real happiness. But not everybody knows that, in fact very few people. We get confused thinking that we are going to find any material but the transpersonal psychology saying forget about that, you know, you need to find your self-happiness is your true self with what you really are. With what you are content with, you will find the balance but it's not that easy. It's a very abstract world. But if you feel that it's the right moment, why not start to take the step now?

Q: How to improve emotional intelligence with you?

I would like to finish this recording encouraging people to ask for help. We all have some mental issues, we all have some burdens in life. It is inherent to human nature, it comes with us, but very few people ask for help. We need to have that humble attitude of saying “I don’t know how to solve these by myself, I need help let’s do it”. For me, madness is not going to psychologist, you are not mad by doing that. You are mad by doing the same pattern by doing over and over again with the same result. And the same result is usually defeating or negative or disappointing. My approach is pretty much giving patients power to manage themselves and their own emotions by giving them tools. I am practical in that sense, I don't normally do sessions in which we talk. Talking therapy is fine, we need it especially at the beginning to create our therapeutic alliance but after that it is more about doing. What can you do about the situation?

I'll give you tools. I will share whatever I know with you so that you can practice that to put it into action in everyday life. So that's normally my approach.





Tags

• EQ
• emotional intelligence