FROM THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ALERT BULLETIN - What's new for your brain today??
We direct you to Swami Jai Sivananda's great blog. Read the whole article HERE.
The Swami says "Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate"
Remember ... the brain is input.
We need our emotional intelligence more than ever these days. I recently observed a job interview where many of the questions involved "fun." I wasn't sure what they were getting at. Fun to me is being challenged in a comfortable zone in a relaxed atmosphere where there's always something to do. Turns out this is what Csikszentmihalyi had in mind, and what the better managers are trying to do these days to stop the hemorrhage of departing employees. Average length of a job these days: 18-24 months. [To learn how to handle the 'new' job interview these days, order my ebook called "How to Ace the 'New' Job Interview." It isn't the same old interview, and you need to prepare and know what to expect. Believe me, the 'new' questions can leave you mystified. If you've found yourself wonder What on earth are they after here? order this ebook now. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc .]
And now, an excerpt from the Swami's blog. Listen to how much this relates to Emotional Intelligence. Remember that Emotoinal Intelligence makes your life work better, and makes you feel better, and ... the bottom line is always HEALTH.
There is a wise old saying that advises: `Play, that you may be serious.’ We can toy around with that to add, `Play, that you may be seriously healthy.’The internationally renowned psychiatrist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who developed the famous `flow’ theory, on the fluid manner in which true genius achieved great heights, would agree.
He discovered some kids treated everything as play, even activity which adults would dismiss as hard work. Other kids would find everything tough, labeling every activity, including games, as `work’.
Following these kids into their adolescence he found, not surprisingly, that those who treated everything as play were socially more content and far more happier than those kids who continued to treat every activity as drudgery. Today over 2,50,000 surveys worldwide have been done to study the `flow’, confirming everything that Csikszentmihalyi intuited. Some of these surveys, focusing on the health benefits of `the flow’, threw up intriguing impact of play on our bodies.
Play reshaped the neurological map:
- It organized emotional circuits, a function otherwise performed by rapid eye movement (REM) during dream sleep.
- It impacted neuro-transmitters, our internal communication, facilitating the creation of those which energized and pacified the nervous system.
- It acted as a pill to the ills of panic, so we could grow. Panic, like all negative feelings, can stunt emotional intelligence, which is today an important criteria to judge a person’s true merit.
Other innovators have taken up the baton from Csikszentmihalyi. The New Games movement, originated by the international play expert Bernie DeKoven, argues the case for fun. The big bonus, says DeKoven, is health.
Muscle relaxation. When we have fun, particularly a bellyful of it, muscles progressively contract and relax. When we are laughing the abdominal muscles are alternately contracted and relaxed.
Play provides ample scope for `internal jogging’, by calling into play powerful muscles which are not directly under our control, like the heart muscles and the diaphragm (involved with respiration). Play can be likened to a sort of gentle aerobic exercise.
It lowers blood pressure. High blood pressure is, as everyone knows, a silent killer.
What may be defined as play? Csikszentmihalyi, who studied over 90 of the world’s most creative people (including scientist Jonas Salk), defined this as any activity where there was the perfect balance between challenge and ability.
If there is any tilt towards either of this, the result can be catastrophic.
If challenge is greater, than we are strung out and stressed. When the ability is greater, we begin to yawn and turn comatose.
This is why companies are increasingly trying to staunch the high attrition rate in jobs(particularly in BPOs) with the new-fangled `fun’ managers who ensure the employees walk the tight-rope between challenge and ability and retain the playful flow. That is why watching TV cannot be categorized as play, since it involves neither challenge nor ability.
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If you're an introvert you'll especially enjoy this definition of flow. You may have been in a stimulating discussion with someone who had you on the edge, enjoying yourself tremendously, and then hear the person say, "Well, that's enough. Let's get together some time and have some fun." When you were having quite a bit of fun right then and there! For more on introverts, check out Nancy Fenn's BLOG. She's the national expert on introverts. Visit her Introverts site. You'll be so glad you did. She's the Introverts' Coach.
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What are you doing for your immune system? Our emotions effect our immune system, and our immune system is our health. Order Arbonne's DefenseBuilder and stay ahead of the game. It's the emotionally intelligent thing to do.
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Click HERE to take The EQ Course(r). Get prepared for the holidays.
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