Full Moon / Emotional Intelligence

TONIGHT IS A FULL MOON AND A LUNAR ECLIPSE.

Because of the business I'm in, I can tell you that right now many people are crabby, out-of-sorts, emotionally volatile, and emotionally under the weather right now. Relationships are being stressed.

It is a full moon. This has been well-documented to fill up jails, counselors' offices and hospital ERs, and confirmed by doctors, ministers and therapists.

It is also a lunar eclipse, thought to be "a full moon on steroids."

How are YOU doing?

Part of EQ is separating out what's internal and what's external. 911 for example, upset nearly everyone. It was an external event with near-global impact. If you then (1) picked a fight with your partner, (2) went on a spending spree, (3) ate potato chips or ice cream and gained 5 lbs., (4) began to worry about a million other small things - etc. you were choosing self-limiting and injurious ways of coping with the emotional force field going on.

Take the emotional intelligence course and learn more about you and your emotions -- and their emotions. It will help you balance and stay centered.
www.susandunn.cc/EQcourse.htm

Emotoinal Intelligence: Flaming

HOW OBNOXIOUS IS THAT??

MoneyLaw, the art of winning an unfair academic game, has a great post about emotional intelligence:

"Today's New York Times posits a scientific explanation for the difference in behavior of those who are civil in face-to-face encounters but brutally venomous in email or instant messaging exchanges. In Flame First, Think Later, New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior, Daniel Goleman (of Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence fame) explains that, in the absence of visual social cues, our brains no longer have that 'uh-oh' control that keeps us from inadvertently offending the person with whom we're electronically communicating. As Goleman puts it:

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

The blogger goes on to say that in face-to-face interatction, we get a continual barrage of emotional signs and cues which are missing, of course, in emails.

"Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy," says the blogger. "This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track."

The blog is about flaming and nasty emails.

Intentionality is an EQ competency that plays a part. Perhaps they are intentionally being insulting and inflammatory. If not, they are "clueless" -- and that's one way to describe email writing. The missing of social cues.

I could go on and write for another hour here, for instance, and I will never have a "clue" as to whether you, my reader, are bored or not.

Flaming - unless it's understood that's what's supposed to go on - is bad manners. The rules of etiquette exist, basically, to keep us form killing one another; particularly the strong impinging on the weak.

People have a lot more nerve behind the anonymity of an email and also operate without the clues of normal social interchange. It's not a good mix in the hands of someone who is also not intentional -- another EQ competency. Knowing what you intend to have happen (feelings and well as behavior). Flaming is like bad grammar. It reveals a lot about who you are.