Emotional Intelligence 6 Seconds Rule

Know Yourself:

Everyone has feelings – all the time.  What are yours?  Not just the obvious ones, but the ones hiding in the background? Remember that emotions are data.  They’re chemical signals to help us handle threats and opportunities.This page has a whole bunch more tips & exercises for self-awareness.

Choose Yourself:

When a situation just starts to heat up, “press the pause button.”  Take a big breathe.  Get some water.  Say, “Let me think about this for a moment.”  There are very few situations that actually require an instant reaction. Remember you have many options.  Sometimes it’s hard to see those.  You can change your thoughts, engage new feelings, experiment with new actions.  You might not have “the perfect solution,” but you do have possibilities!

Give Yourself:

There’s always more to the story.  When people do or say something annoying, get curious: What’s really going on here? Your choices matter.  The way you respond affects others and affects you — so you affect the future.  What’s the effect you want to have?

Here is an overview of the history, “Dr. Daniel Goleman on the Origins of Emotional Intelligence”  — and a more in-depth article on the origins of EQ “Emotional WHAT? Definitions & History of EQ“

Thoughts, Feelings, Actions

One of the most powerful ways to put emotional intelligence into action is to learn the difference between thoughts, feelings, and actions — and how these three interact and affect us. They’re all important, but they are different.