All Izz Well....EI in action!!
This story has been doing the rounds around the virtual space. you may have heard it or seen it. It talks about a dad leaving for work and just as he is having breakfast, his daughter accidently spills coffee on him...
He is upset, he scolds her, she bursts into tears, and misses her bus...so he has to drop her, and then reaching his workplace which is some distance from home, he finds he has forgotten to carry his file for the day....
Sounds familiar?
Wait, it doesn't end there.
Now we imagine or recreate the story with a different story line
What if the dad does this:
Gently tells his daughter to be more careful, wipes the mess, puts her on the bus, quickly changes, picks up his file, leaves for work and reaches on time...
Well that's Emotional Intelligence at work for you.
In my last post I had mentioned that I wished I had done many things differently. Well this is it. I wish I had reacted differently to different things at different points of time.
The key points to EI is a personal awareness. Knowing oneself and our emotions. Acknowledging what angers us, what makes us happy and what makes us sad....then using this information to React appropriately to the situation.
Understanding how to communicate what we feel to others, learning to understand others feelings.
Taking ownership for our thoughts and actions. Managing anger/ Stress.
That is EI in a nutshell.
We teach so many concepts to children, so much of redundant information/facts is thrust on them. Yet here is something every child should be taught from as young as you can catch them. (Easier to do this with one's own kid for starters, and then move to others).
In the second scene, the dad chose not to react negatively...and it did a whole lot of positive to him. So also we can teach our children to choose a positive response, to reject what is negative and so avoid a whole lot of frustration and vicious loop of mis placed anger.
That implies that we
* Identify our feelings
* Acknowledge and Verbalise them as soon as possible,
* Understand how we are going to react to what caused it in the first place.
There is a lot more to this and I will write as it comes to me...
But here too....an important lesson is to learn to smile and say....
This too shall Pass....All Izzz well!
He is upset, he scolds her, she bursts into tears, and misses her bus...so he has to drop her, and then reaching his workplace which is some distance from home, he finds he has forgotten to carry his file for the day....
Sounds familiar?
Wait, it doesn't end there.
Now we imagine or recreate the story with a different story line
What if the dad does this:
Gently tells his daughter to be more careful, wipes the mess, puts her on the bus, quickly changes, picks up his file, leaves for work and reaches on time...
Well that's Emotional Intelligence at work for you.
In my last post I had mentioned that I wished I had done many things differently. Well this is it. I wish I had reacted differently to different things at different points of time.
The key points to EI is a personal awareness. Knowing oneself and our emotions. Acknowledging what angers us, what makes us happy and what makes us sad....then using this information to React appropriately to the situation.
Understanding how to communicate what we feel to others, learning to understand others feelings.
Taking ownership for our thoughts and actions. Managing anger/ Stress.
That is EI in a nutshell.
We teach so many concepts to children, so much of redundant information/facts is thrust on them. Yet here is something every child should be taught from as young as you can catch them. (Easier to do this with one's own kid for starters, and then move to others).
In the second scene, the dad chose not to react negatively...and it did a whole lot of positive to him. So also we can teach our children to choose a positive response, to reject what is negative and so avoid a whole lot of frustration and vicious loop of mis placed anger.
That implies that we
* Identify our feelings
* Acknowledge and Verbalise them as soon as possible,
* Understand how we are going to react to what caused it in the first place.
There is a lot more to this and I will write as it comes to me...
But here too....an important lesson is to learn to smile and say....
This too shall Pass....All Izzz well!
It makes sense. Really.
ReplyDeleteBut
//Acknowledge and Verbalise them as soon as possible,//
I think if you verbalize immediately, then thats a spontaneous reaction which you may not be able to control, like in the first example.
pause, think and react would yield better results in positive thinking
Here the intent is to verbalise to oneself what the feeling is..and does not mean we react impulsively...
ReplyDeleteAnother positive about being EI is happiness.
ReplyDeleteIn the first situation the dad would not have been happier at the end of the day. After having shouted at his daughter he definitely would have had an hangover of the situation like why he shouted at her daughter,making her unhappy and so on.
when reacted positively in the second situation the message of the dad is conveyed to the child and both of them are happy at the end of the day.
I am not sure if it is stephen covey's principle( i have forgotten). but we introduced this to class 6 children in our module.
I have a simple one liner I try to follow. Tests you a lot of times, but we can definitely improve. Slowly albeit. Here it is.
ReplyDelete"Respond. Never react"
L_F...totally agree...
ReplyDeleteMost of the time when we choose to react, the sit. zooms out of control...
Ha! I am taking a print out and making hubby read it! :) Another nice piece!
ReplyDelete