If you see good in someone - Tell Them

Part of emotional intelligence is to understand how an emotion might impact another person. But before you can do this, you have to understand how that same emotion impacts you. This, one could say, is the fundamental basis of emotional intelligence, because an understanding of how emotions work to create real events, real reactions and instigate real change in people, can only be done through a deep internal and introspective understanding of the emotion as it exists within yourself first.

So you can only relate to an emotion and it's impact outside of you, if you first understand it's impact on you.

So let's say you see someone behaving in an unusual way. The first thing you would do from an EI perspective would be to examine what might be different in that persons life. What might have changed that is making them behave, say in an angry, sad, pensive or even overly happy way (it doesn't always have to be a negative change in behaviour :-)

Next, you see clues in their environment which tells you what might have changed in their life to make them behave in an unusual way. For example, they may have recently changed job or moved home, or maybe they're having a relationship problem or maybe they're just extra happy because they've gone into a new and exciting relationship (remember it does not always have to be negative).

Now, your own emotional self is the best 'test environment' to test how change impacts a person's behaviour, because if you consider the changes that you see in the other persons life and then place yourself at the centre of those changes as if they were happening to you, then you can 'test' what YOUR emotional response to those changes would be. It's very similar to putting yourself in another's shoes, except that here you are putting yourself in another's 'emotional shoes'. Once you understand YOUR emotional response, you will be in a better position to understand the other persons 'range' of possible emotional responses, which leads to a better understanding of how to better deal with that person or maybe even improve that person.

From here it's a simple set of logical steps to instigate change in that person, by telling them that you understand what they are experiencing. If that person is experiencing something negative in their lives, then just the fact that someone else took the time to understand their situation without prompting, firstly demonstrates to them how emotionally intelligent you really are and secondly and probably more importantly, makes their burden infinitely easier to bear (knowing that they are not alone with their problem). Of course, it does not always have to be negative, so if the other person is in an overly happy state of mind and behaving as such, by understanding the emotional aspects of that happy state, puts you in a good position to reinforce their positive behaviour and to better share their happiness with them.

So this is all pretty standard stuff, but what happens if it is applied for example in a work situation? Let's say you are a manager and you need to get the best out of your people. What better way than to instigate change and reinforce positive traits and behaviours in your people by reinforcing those traits right from the emotional centres where they are formed?

This takes me onto the point that if you see good in someone, it is absolutely your duty to tell them, even of you can't stand that person, in fact, especially, if you can't stand that person! If you see good, then say it. It makes people valued and it also makes people value you as they see you as an insightful person and a person who can see beyond prejudice or personal opinions, a person who sees a higher vision and cause. Above all, it appeals to their sense of self-worth and they see you as the person who made them feel emotionally better, the person who instigated a change for the better in them right from within themselves. Remember, even a prisoner, a thief, or someone whom society classifies as 'bad' has something good about them. It's just a matter of finding it and being sincere in telling them what good YOU have seen. So if such people have good in them, then surely there is some good in just about everyone?

Returning to the discussion on EI, what about if you are fighting for a good cause? By understanding the deep emotional aspects of what motivates people to believe and work for a good cause, empowers you to move and activate people into actually getting things done rather than just talking about them. A good cause could be anything from an idea or vision that you have to create a new business, for example, or to organise and complete a challenging task, or a belief in some kind of change in society or maybe a desire to change the way people think about something. A deep understanding of how emotions work and how they motivate people is what led great leaders in history to do great things. Thus, without a doubt, people such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein, The Dalai Lama and even those with an ulterior motive such as Adolf Hitler, all clearly possessed great intelligence, but the ability to instigate great changes in society (good and bad) came from their deeper rooted emotional intelligence and knowing how to use it.

Fundamentally, each and every one of us has a basic need. The need is to be fulfilled as a person, it is what makes us complete, what makes us feel that we are worth something to others and to the world at large. How, within ourselves do we achieve such fulfilment? The answer is that we constantly take emotional feedback from others and our responses to the world, our behaviour, our outlook and our perception of who we are and the value that we hold are all based on this feedback. It is exactly this constant flow of emotional feedback which meets our basic need to be fulfilled, because fulfilment ultimately comes from being acknowledged by others for who we are, being understood and having a feeling that we belong and that we are wanted. In my opinion, it is these fundamentally deep needs and the fulfilment of these that forms the entire basis of emotional intelligence. Even a bad person, a person who hurts others, is either not having these needs fulfilled and therefore becomes 'bad' in response to the deficiency in fulfilment of their basic emotional needs or it could be that the person has had too much of the 'wrong' type of emotional feedback which leads them to do things, as they feel fully justified in what they are doing, as a direct result of the emotional feedback they may have received. In either case, the subconscious emotional centre is driving their conscious actions, whether good or bad.  

Now, when we see a strong person who is able to handle life's battles with ease and succeed, we wonder how they became strong. People from underprivileged backgrounds or those who grew up in extremely difficult circumstances, who still seem to succeed in their lives despite their circumstances, may well have been shaped by their environment, becoming hardened to the harshness of the world and thus succeed because they simply overcompensate their shortcomings by pushing harder and working harder. Nevertheless, environment alone cannot completely give all the feedback a person needs to know if they are right or wrong about something and whether or not they are making the right decisions about different events in their lives, yet ultimately, if they are successful, then surely they must have made a net number of the right decisions over time in order to become successful. And this is where emotional intelligence comes in because those decisions, which were the right decisions, will have come from an inner sense of confidence, self worth and surety that they are indeed the right decisions. That confidence and surety, in turn, will have come from the emotional feedback that they will have received from others and therein lies the 'Eureka' moment, when that person absolutely knows they are doing the right thing. In this way, I can absolutely guarantee, that if you were to ask any successful person, the reasons for their success, ultimately it will boil down to the influences from others which fed their emotional centres, which then led them to make the right decisions, which ultimately led to their success. Thus, in order to deeply understand the human world around us, we need to be perceptive and open to giving and receiving this constant flow of emotional feedback and to be able to recognise when it can be of value to us.   

A final point: Ever heard the phrase 'If it isn't broke, don't try to fix it'? Well, for me, the meaning behind this (apart from the obvious) is also 'don't keep looking at life and people you encounter to find only their negative aspects. Instead, look at things to find the positive aspects'. In this way, don't find wrong where there is no wrong and thus don't try to fix wrongs that don't exist. its futile. If you only see negative things, you will always be trying to fix them. If you see the positive, you will learn to appreciate life and others and thus find ways to tell them what you see as positive in them, reinforcing such behaviours and thus instigating the change in your world and in society that YOU ultimately desire!

Be Extraordinary, Because It's Bloody Boring Being Ordinary!

In this post, I refer to 'success'. However how does one define success? - well, this is the subject of  a different blog, keep reading :-)

A Million Dollars!

The other day, I was thinking about what it takes to give selflessly to others and the mechanics and motivations of generosity. The folllowing thought crossed my mind:  

Let's say there's a man who has a million dollars to spend on whatever he wants. So he decides to spend 50,000 Dollars on charity or buys a gift for someone close to him for this amount of money.

Then there is another man or woman who has 1000 Dollars to spend on whatever he or she wants. This person decides to spend 200 dollars on charity or buys a gift for someone close to him or her for this amount of money.

Now, if we do the math, the first person spent only 5% of their available disposable income on charitable giving, whilst the second person spent 20% of their disposable income.

So, who's the more generous one?

It's just a thought and a simple scenario at that, which I'm sure evokes many different views. I'm sure there are lots of different scenarios, however, it would be great to hear your thoughts, do you agree? or disagree?

Please Comment.

and remember........

Be Extraordinary, Because it's Bloody Boring Being Ordinary! 

How is the human mind similar to a relational database?

As amazing as the human brain is, we can draw parallels between the brain and the workings of a relational database. Both store data, both have subsections, divisions and partitions and both link relational inter-dependent data together to form logical conclusions and outputs. These outputs manifest themselves as our actions, our thoughts, our opinions, our words and in fact, our relationship with everything that we interact with. Here is a more detailed explanation:

Anything that we do or say that is expressed in any way can be considered as an output of the relational aspect of our brain making connections between different forms of information. This is the basis of learning, of art, of science and more or less of everything that we do. Also, if you really think about it, taking the example of art, what is art anyway? It is simply a manifestation, a realization or materialization into reality of how the artist’s mind has connected different information and related it together just like a database would if it were allowed to do so by the programmer.

Yet, some connections made by the mind may not seem logical as in the paintings of Salvadore Dali, but that is only because everyone does not see logic in the same way. Nevertheless, we admire and respect the work of such great thinkers because we admire the unique way their minds make relational connections between what they perceive and what they produce from such perception.

But what about someone we consider to be completely logical such as an engineer or doctor. Could such people be considered artists? Why so? Because if an engineer creates a new design or a doctor creates a new cure, then surely their minds too will have had to make relational connections between disparate data or information to come to an output which is manifested as the new design or the new medical cure. So what makes the doctor or engineer, both also involved in the process of creating any different from the artist, other than the fact that they are simply working in different fields? (Here I am assuming a doctor involved in independent research or an engineer with the freedom to design new products).  

Therefore, if we look at the human mind as a relational database, we can start to understand how the structure of logic is formed at its very fundamental level and how information that we take in using our five senses, although totally unconnected at the point of inception, eventually becomes connected within the neural network of the mind. The brain is therefore able to intricately analyze and connect disparate and abstract data to form coherent logic structures, which being infinitely different in their permutations, enable us to make sense of the World around us also in infinitely different, yet equally logical ways. This is somewhat of a paradox right? But somehow, it all works like clockwork

The brain does this automatically non-stop every day for the duration of our lifetimes. Yet we still ask the question, what makes our mind different from the workings of a very complex relational database, which just like the mind, can connect huge amounts of different data in different ways to produce either the same output every time or different outputs every time? The only difference I believe is who makes the rules about how the connections are made - think about it :-)

Here is a video providing a more detailed explanation of my ideas on art:

Here is a link on the how Sigmund Freud's ideas influenced the work of some famous abstract artists:

The Subconscious Mind and Surrealism

Enjoy and remember...............................

Be Extraordinary, Because it's Bloody Boring Being Ordinary!

 

The psychology of men who send people to war

What kind of a man does it take to send another man to war to face certain death or indeed psychological trauma from which he may never recover? From which he may lose so much of his sense of self-worth, that he may one day, if not killed in the war itself, then decide to take his own life (as has happened to so many war veterans over the years like those from Vietnam and more recently, the Gulf War(s) (See links).

I think, it takes a complete disassociation with basic human emotion, a complete abstraction from compassion and above all, a complete personal denial that other men are human at all. Such is the case with any war politician who can happily send his countrymen to war justified by false or non -existent evidence. A contrived war, a manufactured war, a war to last for over 10 or even 20 long years, or maybe even a never-ending war to take the lives of the noble to serve some esoteric, yet far from noble purpose.

I'm not talking about real wars which serve to fight tyranny, dictatorship and oppression. I'm talking about wars contrived for financial or political gain. Wars that serve no other purpose than to fill the pockets of a small group of individuals or perhaps to spread their political influence. To carry out such heinous acts really takes someone who either cannot feel emotion at all or is emotionally dead, or perhaps can feel emotion, but does not see his fellow man as a man at all, but simply an expendable resource.

There are such people, whose heritage breeds a separate race to us mere mortals. A race devoid of understanding of what it is to be a man who loves his family and country and will give his life for them, believing he is fighting for a just and noble cause. A race that sees others outside its own select group to be simply fodder to feed the war machine, a race that does not view those others as fellows of the same kind and therefore feels nothing of their pain, for their pain does not exist, cannot exist, as of course, they too must be emotionless. Like them, how could anyone be any different?

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/us-military-suicide-epidemic-veteran

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html?_r=0