How do I be more Emotionally Intelligent?

"Everyone needs emotional intelligence
and opportunities to be brave and kind."  
                                         Marc Brackett, PhD

For most of my life, emotions have been a mystery to me.

Actually more like a nuisance, if I’m completely honest.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin where work was what we did best.

If an emotion other than happy showed up, we weren’t quite sure what to do next. What we mostly did was try to ignore it and press on anyway.

Recently I discovered Marc Brackett’s book Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success.

The subtitle caught my eye. Emotions to help achieve both well-being and success?
He had my attention.

Dr. Brackett developed an approach he calls RULER to give us a step by step process to understand and regulate our emotions. All of them!

During the August Roundtable of Executive Women Leading Change, we worked with his model.
The impact was palpable. And we are continuing to work with it throughout the month of September.

I’m even using it with my 2 ½ year old granddaughter and experiencing lovely results.

We all have the same emotions. They flow like a river through us all the time. What we do with these emotions determines if we live in a state of stress or well-being; success or failure.

When it comes to dealing with our emotions, too many of us resort to various addictive behaviors and other strategies such as avoidance, procrastination, poor health habits, withdrawal and denial, among others to wrestle with both pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

Dr. Brackett’s RULER process gives us a better way.

He has five clear steps to use our emotions as they were intended; to give us information and uniquely guide us. The steps are:

1. Recognizing and using cues to understand what we are feeling and what others are feeling.
2. Understanding the causes and consequences of an emotion.
3. Labeling and giving our emotions a name. Very important.
4. Expressing and showing our emotions in socially appropriate ways.
5. Regulating so we can feel more or less of a particular emotion or keep feeling the same amount of an emotion.

He says we can actually decide to feel more or less of a particular emotion. That was welcomed news to me!

Dr. Brackett has specific strategies to help us practice a life of success AND well-being.

I know I can use all the well-being practice I can get these days!

That's why I'm forming an Emotional Intelligence practice group.

We'll meet for one hour once a week via zoom. Come as often as you can to get support, share successes, ask questions and enhance your well-being.

These are vital skills, especially when it comes to how you emotionally interact with those you love.
There's no cost to participate. But you do need to reach out to me to get the zoom link and the rules for confidentiality.

Men and women at all levels of emotional intelligence are welcome.

All you need is a desire to expand your awareness, apply the Permission to Feel strategies and show up as often as you can.

My goal is to kick off in late September or early October.

Reading Permission to Feel will be helpful, but not required to participate.
​
Text of email me if you'd like to join us. 612-598-6614  Rita@wiseleader.net
Until next time,
Dr. Rita
612-598-6614 
Rita@wiseleader.net 
www.WiseLeader.net

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