I’m just as guilty as you are. We fill up our lives with so many things: materials, activities, you name it, we’re drowning in it. We have jobs, and hobbies, and volunteer work, and family. We strive to be awesome at all of it. And, to be honest, I think we can be awesome at a number of things. I make a point of ignoring illusions that tell me that my potential is limited.
I want to be (and absolutely can be) a great marketer, writer, speaker, trainer, strategist, business woman… sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. But the path is always in a positive direction.
So, if I’m comfortable with big and varied goals, what is this noise I mentioned at the start?
Noise is when we’re so busy we don’t have a moment of calm. It’s when we’re so caught up in getting things done that we neglect to reflect.
Virginia Woolf, one of my absolute favourite thinkers, told the world women (and men) need time and a room of their own in order to be creative. Leonardo da Vinci was a master of many crafts and he also believed that we need time for quiet reflection in order to be creative and get inspired.
If minds like da Vinci and Woolf suggest too much noise, activity, demands (call it what you like) are problematic, that’s enough for me to believe it.
So why guilty? Because we bring it upon ourselves. The same way we choose our goals we also choose a stressful and stifling life IF we don’t make room for quiet, peace, and reflection.
Furthermore, we limit our creativity and capacity to perform by being so busy we can’t figure out how to be good at any of the number of things we’re busy doing. In effect, we’re too busy to be good.
Intelligence is a mental image of someone who is excellent in analytical reasoning, planning, and problem solving. He can comprehend basic and complex ideas.
Emotional Intelligence is another type of Intelligence that was found as an important factor in attaining success in life. It allows an individual to successfully set priorities.
It is more focused on how a person understands, recognizes, and chooses his values. It shows how good a person is in understanding others, and how good he is in making decisions. It is how good a person can apply what he learned to be happy, how a person can love and interact with others.
Studies show that it is not the IQ or Intelligence Quotient of a person which is responsible in attaining success in life. EQ or Emotional Quotient is the main factor responsible for a person’s success in all aspects of life.
Unlike Intelligence Quotient, Emotional Quotient is present to everyone. It only needs to be developed. Developing Emotional Quotient can help in decision-making, and in building good relationships with other people.
It focuses more in attaining intangible success in life. Success is attaining by knowing how to deal with emotions, feelings, and interactions with others.
It was proved that attaining material success does not promise personal contentment. Success is defined as being contented, happy and satisfied in life. Focus on nurturing Emotional Quotient because Intelligence Quotient alone cannot attain these things.
In 1990, Emotional Quotient was introduced in the world market, affirming that a person’s ability to handle relationships and his ability to use the appropriate emotions in every interaction are much more important than a person’s intelligence quotient. It was agreed that Emotional Quotient is essential in creating a good leader.
A leader who has a high emotional quotient score is expected to be more positive in life. Emotional Quotient gives a person courage to stand again after a fall. Emotional Quotient gives person strength to face fear.
Being worried, always in doubt, accepting mistakes, and admitting mistakes are just some of the challenges a leader in a business will face. It is believed by many company owners that a team leader worthy of selection should possess high Emotional Quotient to be able to face these challenges.
A successful person lives his life through his values. He knows his purpose. Being accountable in all the things that are happening in life is an example of having high emotional quotient.
Here are some tips on how to nurture Emotional Quotient:
1. Always live with courage. Experimenting and trying different things entail different experiences and open the mind with other possibilities in life.
2. Commit to responsibilities. This drives a person not to give up. It is also a way of earning other people’s trust.
3. Exercise doing personal accountability. Being accountable is being dependable.
4. Identify comfort zones. Trying to escape these comfort zones can make a person explore other things.
5. Identify fears and try facing them. Doing this can develop self-confidence. It can attain assurances that anything can be overcome.
6. Practice to be humble. Accepting mistakes in life attains high self-esteem.
Being true to oneself is one way of living life to the fullest. EQ is much more important because it drives a person to be successful and have a more contented life.
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About the Author
Abbas Abedi–Check out my blog at http://stressmanagementtraining.blogspot.com
Habits, for good or for bad, absolutely shape our daily lives. I think it was Stephen Covey who said that “our character is basically a composite of our habits.” They dictate our patterns, every moment of every day and eventually become our character. Habits leave an indelible impression on our personal and professional relationships, so we have just cause to assess our habits and see how they are affecting us.
I’m a firm believer that we are not what we do. That is to say, good people sometimes do bad things and bad people are often found doing good things. But the real power of habit is that it heavily influences how our lives will play out. The levity of our good habits serves to elevate us from one position to another while the weight of our bad habits is designed to slow our progress to a grinding halt.
It’s hard work sometimes breaking those bad habits and it takes a while to replace them with more productive habits. Ridding ourselves of bad habits requires the effort of swapping them out with good habits. I’ve heard it said that it’s a cinch by the inch and hard by the yard. The key is to just take it one step at a time. And for the sake of accountability, get any support you may need. It’s much easier to accomplish things when you know someone will hold you accountable for having done them (think 10th grade math).
It’s absolutely worth it to retrain ourselves.
If nothing changed in your life today, could you be happy? We believe that happiness is elusive and we have to acquire it. We tell ourselves that we’ll be happy IF we get whatever it is we’ve been wanting. I work with people all the time that have plenty of reasons to be happy. We work together to achieve their goals, but they’re never satisfied. Happiness is a state of mind. I can help you, as many Life Coaches and Therapists can, to become your best self. But only you can choose to be happy.
If you’re interested in this topic, let me know and maybe I’ll host a free webinar on the topic. For now, watch this great talk by Srikumar Rao entitled “Plug into your hard-wired happiness.”
Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness
I watched this presentation today and it reminded me of some important lessons I had buried away. Interestingly, I watched this talk because I wasn’t very happy today. In other words, I chose happiness by watching this video… and it worked.
Self-awareness is the first step towards self-esteem because without knowing who you are you cannot love yourself. It is impossible to love something that you don’t know about. The better you know something, the more true love you can give. Self-esteem is essentially built up in three steps: Self-awareness, Self-acceptance and Self-love. You cannot love yourself if you don’t accept yourself and you cannot accept yourself if you are not aware of who you are. Being the first step towards self-esteem, self-awareness is thus extremely important.
Different people get stuck at different stages on this process towards self-esteem. Some people find it extremely difficult to accept themselves and therefore get stuck at the self-acceptance stage. They may not be able to accept their physical appearance, their intelligence level, their emotions or something else about themselves. Because they don’t accept all parts of themselves, they can never love themselves to 100%. Other people manage to accept themselves but fail to love themselves. This is usually simply due to lack of knowledge about how to do it. Once you can accept yourself and know how to turn that acceptance into love, self-esteem comes easily. Many people however, get stuck because they don’t have enough self-awareness. Self-awareness is more than knowing your name, address, shoe size, favourite food etc. Self-awareness is understanding how you feel and think in different situations and understanding why you feel and think in that way. It’s understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and an ability to listen to yourself and the signs of your body and to use these signs to take care of yourself.
So how do you raise your self-awareness? The only master who can teach you about yourself is you. Therefore, you need to listen to yourself. Listen to your thoughts, listen to your emotions, read your body’s signs and observe your actions. There are many techniques that can help you to do this. Meditation is one of them. This is an ancient technique and modern research has proved that it works. You don’t necessarily have to sit in a meditation posture when you meditate. Some people meditate when they are out walking in the forest or when they are lying on the beach. You can also try physical exercises such as yoga or qi gong or other martial arts with a self-focus. If you like writing, there are plenty of writing exercises that raise your self-awareness. Simply keeping a diary helps you to become more self-aware, especially if you go back and re-read what you have written earlier and try to find patterns or developments. Of course, I also recommend getting a personal coach because a coach can ask you the right questions that will guide you towards understanding yourself better.
More resources for how to raise your self-esteem
Author: Liv Miyagawa – The Self-Esteem Coach
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/self-awareness-the-first-step-towards-higher-self-esteem-2349983.html
About the Author
Liv Miyagawa, The Self-Esteem Coach, helps people all over the world to raise their self-esteem and to reach their personal goals. She opens people’s eyes to their own strengths and helps them to figure out what it really is that they want to get out of life. Liv helps people to find out exactly what steps they need to take to reach their goals, and she supports them and motivates them on their journey towards a more fulfilling future. Raise your self-esteem with Liv Miyagawa Self-Esteem Coach
