All About Emotions

Emotional Intelligence means being aware of and able to identify your emotions, i.e., how you feel. Margaret Loris, the SunHealer, has made a neat podcast about emotions. She says:

Let your emotions flow…
Want more emotional intelligence?
Here is a transmission of 300 emotions that will expand your awareness of how you feel.
As you learn to identify and name your emotions, you grow and become more skilled at creating more of the emotions you desire.

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What about those things you don't want to feel?

Let's face it, there are feelings we don't like to have - sorrow, anger, grief, self-righteousness, pointless entitlement, jealousy, envy, longing.

There are feelings we wish we could engender in others. I'm partnering expert on a major website, and every day I get a request "How can I make him love me? How can I get her back?"

There are times we want to manufacture feelings -- "I must make myself love this person, or even like them, since I have to work with her every day."

Will power doesn't work. Besides that, it will exhaust you before you even get out the starting gate. There's a better way!

The EQ COURSE will help you understand how emotions/feelings work and what you can do about it.

Many people call it "the missing piece."

It is a law of emotions, just like a law of physics, that if you stuff down one emotion, you stuff them all down. This is important to understand if you want to have a full, enriched, successful life. So what about the ones we don't want to feel, I mean REALLY don't want to feel?

• If you refuse to deal with hate, you cannot love.
• If you refuse to mourn, you cannot feel pleasure.
• If you will not forgive you will eat yourself up from the inside out.
• If you choose to be bitter and cynical, you will further restrict your life.

Some emotions are even what we would call "destructive". See the Dalai Llama's book on this. Did you know that 5 minutes of anger suppresses your immune system for up to 8 hours??"

So how on earth do you keep from getting angry? (without becoming a numb robot that is) Let me show you.

I love emotional intelligence. It's my passion. Let me share it with you! email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc and let's get to work!

Honesty, the first step to happiness

HONESTY: The First Step to Happiness (guest article)

The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, which applies to awareness of your emotions. "We are our emotions." Authenticity is one of the competencies. Being honest about your emotional state can be hard ... take The EQ Course to develop your emotional intelligence.

I apologize for the grammatical and spelling errors in the article. They are not mine!

Today's guest article:

Honesty is the first and most basic step to being happiy [sic] and healthy. It is not a surprise that it is teh [sic] first step in the 12-steps as well. The 12-steps are not just for addicts or people who believe in God. As a clinician I have developed an appreciation for how simply enacting the spiritual principles of the 12-Steps can drastically improve anxiety, depression, anger and addiction. Spirituality is more than just religion, it is a way of life. These principles are present in every religion, and are helpful even for those who are not religious. Let’s take a look...

Honesty. The first step in being happy is to be honest, not only with others, but also yourself. This means developing a strong awareness of self, what you like and need, what you truly can control, and your feelings and what they mean.

Many people who are depressed, anxious or addicted fail to realize the real reasons for their misery. They see the immediate answer---what triggered the negativity this time. What they fail to realize is that their fears and/or anger is usually all related to one or more deeper causes.

Humans have six basic fears: isolation, failure, rejection, loss of control, death and the unknown. When you get angry or anxious, ask yourself which of these fears you are experiencing, why you fear it and how rational that is.

For example, you may be nervous going in for a job interview---fear of rejection, failure, the unknown. Okay, they may not hire you (rejection from the employer), but are you also fearing rejection by someone else? Does failure to get this job mean you are letting someone else down such as a parent or spouse? Aside from the fact that you did not get the job, do you really care if the prospective employer liked you? In reality, does this change the way your loved ones feel about you? Yes, you would prefer to get the job, but if you do not is it really that much of a catastrophe?

Another part of honesty is being aware of how you contribute to your own misery. Do you fail to take responsibility for your actions and blame others, look for the easy answers or might you be intentionally making yourself miserable. Intentionally? Yes! Maybe not consciously, but there are many people who inadvertently sabotage their recovery, because being miserable is so rewarding. When you are depressed, wrought with anxiety or in your addiction, people pay attention to you, overlook/make excuses for errors and it gives you a built in excuse for failure. Many people are afraid of failure because they see failing at any task means failing as a person and/or they equate failure with rejection. Both of these are basic and powerful (though not always rational) fears.

To start to develop self-awareness, keep a journal in the morning and evening. It only takes a few minutes. Ask yourself, how do I feel emotionally (happy, sad, grumpy, lonely, resentful etc…), mentally (confused, sharp, creative, foggy…) and physically (sick, weak, lethargic, strong, energetic etc). [We suggest The EQ Checkin(tm) - Ask yourself h you are feeling emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.] Then identify why you feel that way, what you can do to change the negative things, and what you have no control over. This is your journal, you do not even need to write in full sentences, just pay attention. In the evening, repeat the exercise to see if you are feeling better, if your interventions are working or if you need to do something differently.

Some things you can do to help yourself out include asking yourself:

 “Will this matter 6 months from now?”

 “Does worrying/being angry or regretful about this help me in any way? How could I better use my energy to do something about the problem?"

 “Is this worth the negative impact it is having on me and my family?”

 “What parts of this do I have control over?”

“What does this mean about me as a person?”

 “Realistically, what are the consequences of this?”

If you are tired, confused or “foggy” figure out why. Sometimes it is the easy answer---you did not get enough quality sleep. To fix this, set a wind-down routine. This will cue your body into when to go to sleep. Secondly, eliminate caffeine within 12 hours of bedtime. This includes soda, coffee and lots of chocolate. Set up your bedroom to be comfortable for you to sleep---clean, smells good, dark, quiet etc.

Often times, people are actually getting too much sleep or their sleep is fitful because of all the stress their muscles are holding. If you are getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep, try adding some physical activity—walking the dog, gardening, walking around the block during your lunch break, yoga, tai chi. . .whatever you are willing to regularly do for at least 20 minutes every day.

A third thing to evaluate is your diet. Too much sugar, caffeine or not enough water can cause confusion, tiredness, depression, irritability, difficulty regulating your body temperature and poor sleep. Make sure you are not dehydrated. If you do not like water, try lemonade, flavored water. Just try to forego the carbonation and drinks with caffeine or alcohol---both of which will make you dehydrated.

All of these things: awareness of how you feel emotionally, mentally, physically; awareness of what you have control over and what your body’s signals are trying to tell you will help you feel happier and more content. It takes practice to learn to pick your battles and accept you are not in control of everything, but once you do, you will see how much it not only improves how you feel, but also how much it improves your health and relationships.

This article is part of a 12 part series on integrating the 12-steps into a healthy life.

About the Author: Dr. Dawn Snipes received her Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling and Addictions and her PhD in Counseling and Education from the University of Florida. She is an ordained Christian minister . Currently she runs two online continuing education sites (http://www.allceus.com), continuing education for rehabilitation counselors, addictions professionals, social workers and engineers (http://www.engineeringceus.com) and has a part-time private practice.

Source: www.isnare.com

Susan is the author of "EQ & Addiction: the 14th Step" and offers individual coaching, Internet courses and ebooks around emotional intelligence for your personal and professional development. Contact sdunn@susandunn.cc for more information.

Retribution, Retaliation, Re-attribution, Reality

THE MIDDLE EAST: Contribution of Basic Cognitive Errors to Cycles of Retribution

He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t the OpEd article by Daniel Gilbert, Harvard professor and author of "Stumbling on Happiness." Notes:

"He hit me first" provides an acceptable rationale for doing that which is otherwise forbidden. Both civil and religious law provide long lists of behaviors that are illegal or immoral — unless they are responses in kind, in which case they are perfectly fine...a punch thrown second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first....That’s why participants in every one of the globe’s intractable conflicts — from Ireland to the Middle East — offer the even-numberedness of their punches as grounds for exculpation.The problem with the principle of even-numberedness is that people count differently...

In study conducted by William Swann @ Univ of TX, pairs of volunteers played the roles of world leaders who were trying to decide whether to initiate a nuclear strike. The first volunteer was asked to make an opening statement, the second volunteer was asked to respond, the first volunteer was asked to respond to the second, and so on.

At the end of the conversation, the volunteers were shown several of the statements that had been made and were asked to recall what had been said just before and just after each of them...
The results revealed an intriguing asymmetry: When volunteers were shown one of their own statements, they naturally remembered what had led them to say it. But when they were shown one of their conversation partner’s statements, they naturally remembered how they had responded to it...What seems like a grossly self-serving pattern of remembering is actually the product of two innocent facts. First, because our senses point outward, we can observe other people’s actions but not our own. Second, because mental life is a private affair, we can observe our own thoughts but not the thoughts of others.

Together, these facts suggest that our reasons for punching will always be more salient to us than the punches themselves — but that the opposite will be true of other people’s reasons and other people’s punches...

Examples aren’t hard to come by. Shiites seek revenge on Sunnis for the revenge they sought on Shiites; Irish Catholics retaliate against the Protestants who retaliated against them; and since 1948, it’s hard to think of any partisan in the Middle East who has done anything but play defense.

In each of these instances, people on one side claim that they are merely responding to provocation and dismiss the other side’s identical claim as disingenuous spin. But research suggests that these claims reflect genuinely different perceptions of the same bloody conversation.If the first principle of legitimate punching is that punches must be even-numbered, the second principle is that an even-numbered punch may be no more forceful than the odd-numbered punch that preceded it.

LEGITIMATE RETRIBUTION is meant to restore balance, and thus an eye for an eye is fair, but an eye for an eyelash is not. When the European Union condemned Israel for bombing Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, it did not question Israel’s right to respond, but rather, its “disproportionate use of force.” It is O.K. to hit back, just not too hard.

Research shows that people have as much trouble applying the second principle as the first. In a study conducted by Sukhwinder Shergill and colleagues at University College London, pairs of volunteers were hooked up to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other volunteer’s fingers.

The researcher began the game by exerting a fixed amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert precisely the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. And so on.

The two volunteers took turns applying equal amounts of pressure to each other’s fingers while the researchers measured the actual amount of pressure they applied.

The results were striking. Although volunteers tried to respond to each other’s touches with equal force, they typically responded with about 40 percent more force than they had just experienced. Each time a volunteer was touched, he touched back harder, which led the other volunteer to touch back even harder. What began as a game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate pokes and then hard prods, even though both volunteers were doing their level best to respond in kind.

Each volunteer was convinced that he was responding with equal force and that for some reason the other volunteer was escalating. Neither realized that the escalation was the natural byproduct of a neurological quirk that causes the pain we receive to seem more painful than the pain we produce, so we usually give more pain than we have received.

Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.

None of this is to deny the roles that hatred, intolerance, avarice and deceit play in human conflict. It is simply to say that basic principles of human psychology are important ingredients in this miserable stew. Until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others — and to start trusting others themselves — there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback .

Comments to the article included:

"The lesson is: Don't start it, because even fair-minded people will pay you back with some extra punishment that you richly deserve for breaching the peace. ..."

"I am a strong believer in the human capacity to use knowledge to modify our behavior in beneficial ways. So, it can only be hoped that these experiments will add to our store of self-knowledge and thus improve our decision-making process. ..."

Research also shows that the best marriages are those where the couple soothe one another in a conflict rather than escalating or agitating.

Now there's a BUDGET EQ COURSE. What's your excuse?

Forgiveness - Emotional Intelligence

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMPETENCY: To be adamantly and relentlessly self-forgiving.
From this, you can forgive others.

What is forgiveness? From "A Moment to Remember"



Remember that you forgive for yourself. Otherwise you become the skeleton at the feast.

Emotional Intelligence: The Kiss

THE SECRET IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

It's so easy once you get the secret --- that we are our emotions. And our emotions come from our thoughts. There is no emotion that doesn't have a thought attached to it. Our perceptions of life, our past experiences and emotions attached to them, the neuronal firing patterns we have developed in our brains, and our particular slice of reality.

Healing is about emotions. It's not all "in your head," but it IS all in your brain -- and, thanks to the vagus nerve, which extends from the brain down into the intestines -- in your stomach and intestines. Actually in every cell of your body, according the Candace Pert, Ph.D., who is one of the people largely responsible for the development of Prozac.

But why not learn, with emotional intelligence, to make use of your body/brain's OWN "prozac."

It's easy with emotional intelligence. It's the secret.

The thoughts propel the feelings. That's the secret. This video, actually, contains only words. Watch it and see how you feel, how you WOULD feel if you amped up your emotional INTELLIGENCE:



Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for a free ezine about emotional intelligence.

IN MEMORIAM: Chettie
One of the sweetest spirits who ever graced this earth.
9-15-78 - 4-1-99

BLOW A KISS, CHETTIE

Wired to Connect

WHAT IS BETTER THAN A TRUE FRIEND??
public weblog('jaysen naidoo')

Yes, our brains are wired to connect. Connections, of the good sort, help eliminate or alleviate stress, help us cope better, emotional intelligence is built on a good support system and network, and we are wired to connect with other humans and also mammals. Many people's best buddy is a dog!

Studies show that ISOLATION is harder on our health than smoking, overweight, stress all combined. Think of that!

Emotional intelligence shows you how to work with this natural ability and need to connect with others at a meaningful level. We are our emotions ... if you aren't connecting with others emotionally, you can be alone in a crowd.

Must as I am ambivalent about cell phones, I always think of the connection. The cell phones start ringing at work around 5, and people start to wind down their days, and long for connection with their loved ones. Lovers call each other on the cell all day long, ot txt msg, and it makes them happy.

Stay connected!

Robert Solomon - True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions are Really Telling Us

IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT SOLOMON
Solomon was the author of more than 40 books, a gifted teacher and an expert in existentialism and emotions. He was born in 1942. He was Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT Austin. He had a bachelor's degree in molecular biology and a master's and doctoral degree in philosophy and psychology.
"Six billion people in the world and counting ... nevertheless what you do counts."

Clip of Solomon in the animated film, "Waking Life" talking about existentialism. "Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82EV4KBIsNk



Among Solomon's books: From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds (1972) arguably the best introductory text on existentialism in English, and The Passions (1976), considered a classic on the emotions.

From an ode to him on the Oxford University press blog. For the full article go HERE.

From the preface to Solomon’s most recent book, True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us:

I have always been fascinated by emotions; watching and dealing with them in other people, coping with and often joy-riding with my own. To be perfectly honest, I've also been terrified of them. As a child, I had a vile (though rarely violent) temper. As a young man, I fell in love often, and hard. As I matured, I learned to actually love, though perhaps more slowly and awkwardly than I would like to admit. And all along, I found myself brooding on, speculating about, luxuriating in, and terrified by my own emotional dispositions, responses, and preferences. I was already (although I did not know it at the time) a philosopher.

When I actually came into philosophy (from biology and medical school, where I had developed an interest in psychoanalysis), I brought with me that very personal fascination with the nature of the emotions ...

What were my emotions, my passions, or-more vaguely-my "feelings"? Did they, as it sometimes seemed, just happen to me-"sweep me away"-or even possess me, "take over my personality"? Or were they, as they also seemed to be, what was most me, most mine, what best (or worst) defined me? Were my emotions good and good for me, or were they bad and bad for me (as my less emotional friends would continually caution me)? What did it mean-that sixties' expression-to be "in touch with one's feelings"? What was it to be an "authentic" person? ...

Over the next thirty years, I explored those questions by way of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and biology... I had long been indignant that emotions were so neglected in philosophy, the self-appointed discipline of "rationality." ...

...Now the philosophy of emotions, and the idea that reason and emotions are in cahoots rather than antagonists, is a major research area in psychology and the fast-advancing neurosciences.

Check out the other clips from "Waking Life: on youtube.com. Interesting.

R.I.P.

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Not a Laughing Matter

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace.
No, it's not touchy-feeling, group-hug stuff, it's serious business when emotions take over. If you aren't in touch with your feelings, when they 're driving you (and that includes pride, pig-headedness, one-upping, and so forth), your life is out-of-control.



You'll laugh when you see this. People observing this sort of male rutting always laugh, but the results aren't always funny.