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self regulation

4 Steps to Unlocking Your Potential with Emotional Literacy

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Isn’t life an emotional rollercoaster at times? Do you feel that and wonder, how can I not get caught up in my emotions all the time? It’s true, gaining emotional literacy is the key to unlocking your inner awareness and untapped potential.

It’s about starting to think, feel and act more intentionally rather than just react to life.

We all experience emotions constantly, but it is rare that we understand exactly what they are and what they are telling us. We don’t realise it, but our emotions are a source of endless information about ourselves, the people around us and the environments we’re in! The trick is to observe them more!

So, what is emotional literacy?

Emotional literacy is not just having general knowledge about emotions but becoming fluent in your very own emotional language.

Developing emotional literacy allows you to:

  • Improve your problem-solving skills.
  • Make more informed, emotionally intelligent decisions.
  • Become a better leader and team player.
  • Learn vital information about your thinking and behaviour.
  • Strengthen your relationships with others.

Deciphering Emotions

In The Heart of Leadership, Joshua Freedman tells us that all emotions fall on an intersection of two continuums: pleasantness and intensity.

So your emotions range from pleasant to unpleasant on one continuum and from mild to intense on the other. The location of an emotion on these two continuums can dictate your decision-making, how you perceive and respond to others and your performance. This is why it is so important to have emotional literacy so you can be aware and place your emotions. Test the truthfulness of what you’re feeling or whether you need to shift emotions to see the issue differently.

The following steps are a starting guide to learning and interpreting your emotions.

1. Realise your emotions are assets

As a culture, we tend to deal with our emotions in a very unproductive way. We stifle them because we think they are weak or ugly, or we respond to them in a way that is unhelpful.
Wouldn’t you like to experience your emotions guilt-free and actually benefit from them? It sounds too good to be true, but it is possible.

Your emotions are letting you in on the very nuanced details of your life:
‘You didn’t get enough rest on the weekend’.
‘This person does not seem trustworthy’.
‘You should work on more projects like this’.

In Essentials of the Human Brain, John Nolte explains that the limbic system, or the emotional brain, is responsible for providing input from our surroundings and to indicate how our body is doing. It sends this data around the body and you feel emotions as physical sensations. How amazing is that?

It’s time to stop thinking about emotions as obstacles and realise they can move you in new and exciting directions.

2. Stop ignoring emotions

The next step is to stop ignoring your emotions. Have you ever had a feeling in your chest during tense or uncertain circumstances? Does that feeling ever go away without a change of some sort? Perhaps not.

If nothing changes, unpleasant emotions like stress, fear and anxiety can grow in intensity. Our brain just gets more desperate to have its message heard and acted on. If you feel apprehensive about a big meeting one week prior and don’t do anything to better prepare yourself, you will surely feel terrified one hour before.

On the other hand, pleasant emotions need to be followed up. If you feel happy about something, that is a great indicator that you should keep doing it!

3. Start to name your emotions

Now that you’ve started paying attention, you can start thinking about and speaking about your emotions more explicitly. It’s amazing how much of a difference it can make to pause and think or even speak about what you are feeling!

When you name an emotion, you’re acknowledging that it’s there, opening up a channel to begin considering that emotion. Sometimes, naming an emotion is powerful enough to change the direction of a situation. As you make this a habit, you’ll notice yourself becoming more present in each moment as your inner dialogue begins to change.

4. Understand the wisdom of your emotions

Once you have developed your emotional literacy, you can begin to better understand how your emotions are sharing wisdom that your mind hasn’t caught onto yet.

You can also start to observe emotional patterns, triggers, shifts and their strength. Don’t judge, just observe. Track particular emotions over a time period – consider emotions you want to have more and less of. Expand your emotional vocabulary by naming your emotions and see how you can express your emotions through conversation, art, writing or music.

It takes time to learn the language

So, the more you listen to your emotions consciously and learn to understand them, the more you can see personal and professional growth. Well-developed emotional literacy takes time and practice. Be gentle with yourself!

Continue to imagine what you might achieve when you know how to work WITH your emotions rather than AGAINST them!

 

Want to join the Greater Good Collective? Launching 1 May

On 1 May, I’m launching the Greater Good Collective, a 3 month personal leadership journey to live and lead courageously to create a better world.

Check it out here to join us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start? This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
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Finding your Purpose in a Noisy and Distracted World

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Want to carve out time and space for thinking and reflection in 2020? Join me once a month online for 90 minutes for reflection, inspiration and connection. Our next gathering is on the 28 January and you can use the coupon bemyguest to try it for free for the first time. Or better yet, commit to growing your reflection muscle by registering for all the 2020 Alyceum Live gatherings here.

“All change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about.” – Margaret Wheatley

Finding and living your purpose is more important than ever in a world that can lack meaning and connection. But how often do we truly focus our attention on what’s important to us?

Do you feel a little lost at times? What about turning up the volume on your inner voice and work on a purpose that resonates with you.

I’m going to be honest, it’s not easy. Like any type of self reflection work, it is work! The answers won’t all come immediately. You do have to work at it and it will take time. You can continue to evolve it too, it will become your life’s work. But it is nice to think about the body of work you want to create in the world.

Before you jump into the three powerful activities below, I have a few smaller recommendations to get you started:

• Get out into nature more. Less screens and walls means you can breathe more deeply, get more oxygen into your bloodstream and connect back with you. Research says that nature helps our heads as well as our bodies stay healthy. You know the feeling you get after a walk or hike in the bush, a stroll on the beach or a day at the river. Diarise nature time to clear your head.
• Insights and understanding come with time. Set up a habit to reflect often. Just like any other skill or habit, it will take time to get into your reflection flow. The great news is those who take the time to reflect are better learners, happier people and more productive. Join me at the next Alyceum Live online gathering for reflection, inspiration and connection on the 28 January using the coupon bemyguest (First time user only).
• Move your body. The insights can come when we move, that’s what our bodies were made to do! It gets the blood pumping and gives you inspiration. Exercise is not only crucial to physical health, but it’s good for your head too.

Purpose Activity 1: Identify and Utilise your Signature Strengths

Living your strengths each and every day can be one of the most powerful strategies you have to creating a life of meaning, happiness and personal success.

Martin Seligman, Professor and founder of the University of Penn’s Positive Psychology Centre, has invested in a huge amount of research into the benefits of identifying and living your strengths as a way of living a flourishing life. They have developed an online (free) survey to identify your top 5 character strengths. (Head to Questionnaires and check out the VIA Character Strengths Survey).

These researchers found 6 universal virtues, which can be broken down into 24 core strengths. Here’s a look at the 24:

  • Courage: Bravery, Perseverance, Honesty and Zest
  • Wisdom: Creativity, Curiosity, Critical thinking, love of learning and perspective
  • Humanity: Love, Kindness and Social intelligence
  • Justice: Teamwork, Fairness and Leadership
  • Temperance: Appreciation of Beauty, Gratitude, Hope, Humour and Spirituality

Personally, I’ve gained much over the years by reflecting on my key strengths and incorporating them more and more into my life. It makes me happy when I get to use my strengths and it brings me a sense of purpose. Understanding my key strengths has given me an awareness of my leadership superpowers too. My strengths (and my unique mix of strengths) as my leadership brand and people get to know me for my strengths.

Ryan Niemiec and Robert McGrath, authors of the bok, The Power of Character Strengths shared that there are telltale signs to know what is a signature strength of yours. There are three tell tale signs: Essential (It’s a core part of who you are as a person), Effortless (It feels natural and evokes a sense of flow when you’re using it) and Energising (It lifts you up and makes you feel happy).

For those playing along at home, my top strengths are hope, zest, gratitude, leadership and creativity. What’s yours?

A note to beware– after mentoring many people to focus on their strengths, the catch is that people see their strengths as so easy or commonplace that they dismiss their power. You might think – how is this my superpower? Isn’t everyone good at this? This is nothing special. The simple answer is NO! Not everyone has this strength. How can you deepen your mastery of this strength, practice it deliberately and enhance its use in your life?

Purpose Activity 2: Understand your Hedgehog

This concept was highlighted in Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, and is based on the ancient Greek parable about the hedgehog and the fox. The story goes, despite all the tactics of the fox, the hedgehog always wins because it knows how to do one thing really well and that’s defend itself (think roll in a ball of spikes!).

So this model asks you to think about the intersection of three questions:

1. What are you great at? These are your strength areas! Focus on them, practice them, improve them and know them! What can you be best in the world at?
2. What does the world need? What will people pay for? Or what does the world need and are willing to pay for?
3. What are you deeply passionate about? What makes you curious? What do you love or brings you joy? What’s important to you?

Now spend a bit of time to consider these questions individually – think of them as three circles in a venn diagram. Then the interesting part is finding something that intersects all three of these. According to Jim Collins’s book, organisations that have focused on one thing (the intersection of these three questions) and done it really well, outperform all their competitors and stand the test of time.

What’s in the intersection for you?

Purpose Activity 3: Focus on the Intrinsic Motivators

In life, you can easily get caught up with, as author Brian Johnson would call it, ‘society’s candy’. Which is when there is an over-emphasis on our extrinsic motivators – namely fame, fortune and how you look. It’s okay to focus a little on these things but an over-emphasis can actually, at worst, make you depressed. Yes, that’s right. If you are living the rat race where you are continually focused on material wealth, chasing fame and focusing on what you look for appearance sake – you are in danger of having poorer mental health because of it.

Instead, it’s best to reorient yourself to focus on areas that intrinsically motivate us – fostering strong relationships,

learning and growth, and contributing to a community. It’s been found that people who are motivated by these intrinsic motivators are more likely to be healthy and have higher self esteem.

When you look at your goals this year and in life, what is driving them? Is it about status, power, money or comparison?

Or is it about how you can learn and grow as a person, or the people who mean the most to you, or how you can give back to a greater purpose in life? It is so interesting to use this filter when you come across advertising. You start to see the extrinsic motivators that advertisers use to try and get you to buy their product. Where does your focus truly lie?

Last word

My last word is this – no one is going to do this important work for you. It’s up to you to take responsibility for clarifying your purpose in life and living a more meaningful existence.

We live in a really lucky time (and place) in the world where we can focus on meaning and purpose in our life. Don’t underestimate the power of these simple reflection activities. Join me on social media and share your purpose!

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start? This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

25 questions to improve your emotional intelligence

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There is a lot of talk about the governance experience required by board directors to fulfil their duties on a board(which is a good thing!). What is talked about less so though but is becoming more and more important is the ability for board directors to bring emotional intelligence into the boardroom.

Exceptional board directors lead with humility, respect, have the awareness of the impact they have on those around them and know when to speak and when to listen.

Need a reminder about what EQ is all about?  Emotional intelligence is described by Perter Salovey and John D. Mayer as:

The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate amongst them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, he classifies emotional intelligence into five domains:

Self Awareness: Knowledge of your states, preferences, resources and intuitions.
Self Regulation: Management of your states, impulses and resources.
Motivation: Emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals.
Empathy: Awareness of others’ feelings, needs and concerns.
Social Skills: Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.

Here are some reflective questions to ask yourself to develop your emotional intelligence as a board director or team member.

Self Awareness

1.  Honestly do you know the strengths and weaknesses you bring to the boardroom?
2.  How do you define yourself? Are these self perceptions accurate? How do you test these?
3.  Do you listen and seek opportunity to understand how others perceive your strengths and weaknesses?
4.  What are your personal values and are they aligned with the organisation you serve?
5. Do you rate yourself as a continual learner? Would others have the same view?
6. Do you act with humility rather than arrogance?

Self Regulation

7.  Are you respectful in your language and actions to your fellow board directors, staff and stakeholders?
8.  Are you able to keep calm during conversations?
9.  Do you listen openly to other’s points of view?
10.  Do you notice when you’re frustrated during conversations?

Motivation

11.  Do you truly understand what motivates you to serve on a NFP board or in your work team?
12. Do you serve the long term interests of the organisation rather than your own concerns or short term objectives?
13. Do you act from a place of authenticity?
14. Are you self motivated to serve on a board or at work?
15. Do you set and aim to reach goals personally and as a collective on the board?

Empathy

16. Do you put yourself in the shoes of the people you serve?
17.  Do you understand the values, strengths and goals of your fellow board directors or team mates?
18.  Do you share the workload equally on the board?
19.  Are you willing to see how others perceive situations and decisions to be made?
20. Do you work hard to be trustworthy?

Social Skills

21. Do you commit to working respectfully with your fellow board directors?
22. Do you reach other to develop a strong relationship with your fellow board directors?
23.  Do you make time to have conversations outside of the boardroom to deepen your relationship with your fellow board members?
24. Are we committed to working as equals in the boardroom?
25. Do you act with a positive attitude?

Emotional intelligence is a critical component of an effective board. Are you actively cultivating the skills of emotional intelligence?

Ready to step into your full leadership potential?

GET THE FREE GUIDE:
15 WAYS TO FIND AN NFP BOARD POSITION
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