Emotional Intelligence

Fantastic. So, we often have a common notion that IQ means success, happiness, health and all the other wonderful things we aspire to in life. But… might wanna check that assumption because there’s actually a rather weak correlation between IQ and all that jazz.

What makes the difference?

As Goleman says: “a key set of these ‘other characteristics,’ emotional intelligence: abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think to empathize and to hope.”

Let’s check some of them out, shall we?!?

Howard Gardner is the Harvard psychologist who came up with the idea of “multiple intelligences”—suggesting that rather than the narrow vision of IQ, we can see the range of intelligences we can all possess: from Logical, Linguistic, Visual/Spatial and Musical/Rhythmic to Bodily-kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist Intelligence.

(He also has a great comment on the highly calibrated, and ultimately useless skill we develop while in school: “In the course of their careers in the American school of today, most students take hundreds, if not thousands, of tests. They develop skill to a highly calibrated degree in an exercise that will essentially become useless immediately after their last day of school.” :)

As we embrace the fact that our potential is not limited by the # on our IQ test or how many scan-trons we successfully filled out, the game becomes discovering where our greatest aptitudes and passions lie, and discovering our unique path for fulfillment.

So… What are your natural competencies and gifts? And, how can you create a path among the hundreds and hundreds out there to create a life of meaning, fulfillment and (personally defined) success?

We talk about this often in various Notes.

Anthony de Mello has a fun way to describe his relationship to his depression: “Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the ‘I.’ Don’t define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don’t say, ‘I am depressed.’ If you want to say, ‘It is depressed,’ that’s all right. If you want to say that depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings over to the other.”

So, how aware are you of the emotions you’re experiencing? Do you get overwhelmed by them and amplify the emotions or can you step back and SEE what you’re experiencing, accept the emotion and then choose more effective thoughts and behaviors to enhance your level of happiness?

I like Dan Millman’s take on the subject in his great book Everyday Enlightenment (see Notes): “Of course, we don’t love painful feelings like anxiety or depression. We don’t have to love or even like them, but we do have to accept them, as difficult as that can seem at times. Emotions, no matter how painful they are, are not the problem. The problem is dropping out of school or work, putting your family or duties of life on hold until such time as you can work out your emotional issues. Would you rather feel depressed while sitting alone in your room trying to figure it all out or feel depressed while getting your house cleaned or your project completed? (You may still feel depressed, but you have a cleaner house.)

The heart of accepting your emotions (and, as you’ve seen, of reclaiming your will) is to do what you need to do despite what you are feeling. Accept and learn from your feelings, but don’t let them run your life. By remaining productive during difficult emotional episodes, you are more likely to improve your emotional state than if you do nothing but ruminate and wait for sunny skies.”

Ah, the virtuous mean and the ability to feel the right emotion at the right time to the right degree.

Aristotle had this to say about it: “For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases or preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues… This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.”

And the idea of having a full scope of emotional capacity reminds me of this passage from The Power of Full Engagement (see Notes): “To be fully engaged emotionally requires celebrating what the Stoic philosophers calledanacoluthia—the mutual entailment of the virtues. By this notion, no virtue is a virtue by itself. Rather, all virtues are entailed. Honesty without compassion, for example, becomes cruelty.”

How are you looking on this front? :)

Love it.

Malcolm Gladwell goes off on this phenomena in his great book Outliers where he tells a bunch of fascinating stories about extraordinary people—including one about how Bill Gates was lucky to be in a community with one of the computers in the world when he was a kid. AND he happened to be the kind of kid who’d SNEAK OUT OF BED at 2am and head to the computer lab where he could log in programming hours before sneaking back INTO bed before his mom caught him—wondering why he was always so tired.

Then, when the computers became affordable for mainstream use, guess who had logged his 10,000 hours and was in a position to capitalize on it? :)

Fascinating stuff.

On a related note, Michael Gelb, the author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (see Notes), talks about the research done on chess grandmasters, chess masters, and chess experts in his tape Creative Genius. It’s amazing.

First, a little background: A chess master is so good that he can beat a room full of 25 chess experts—at one time!! A chess grandmaster is so good that he can beat a room full of 25 chess masters at one time?

The researchers wanted to know what made chess grandmasters grand masters. Was it superior IQ? Better memory? Better logic?

What they discovered was that the chess masters and grandmasters were, in fact, significantly more intelligent with significantly better memories, etc. than the chess experts. However, there was no significant difference between the grandmaster and the chess masters. They were, in essence, equally brilliant.

What then, distinguished the grandmasters and allowed them to so handily beat the masters if they had essentially the same intellectual capacity?

Passion.

The grandmasters were more passionate about chess. They loved it so much that they were always thinking about it—they lived, breathed, and ate chess—leading to a level of excellence that was far superior to any other players in the world.

So…

What are you most passionate about? Of what could you become a grandmaster?

My guess: The two are probably the same thing.

Genius.

THIS is why emotional intelligence is a far better predictor of success in life than IQ. If you’ve got a super high IQ and super low control of your emotions, you simply WILL NOT manifest your highest potential. Period.

Love that image.

Can you imagine being that four-year-old choosing between one marshmallow you can get RIGHT NOW and the two marshmallows you’d have to wait for?!? :)

That’s called impulse control, and, according to Goleman, it’s big. In fact, he says this about it: “There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.”

What’s fascinating is that how a child performed on this test of delaying gratification was “twice as powerful a predictor of what their SAT scores will be as is IQ at age four; IQ becomes a stronger predictor of SAT only after children learn to read.”

That’s amazing.

And begs the question: Why is that? Because we NEED to be able to regulate our impulses if we’re going to perform well at anything that requires sustained attention—whether it’s studying for a test, building a business, or cultivating our relationships.

The good news is that even if we couldn’t delay our gratification as a four-year-old, we can LEARN to develop emotional intelligence. (And, that’s pretty much what these PhilosophersNotes are all about!! :)

So, what’s the #1 emotional intelligence skill you’re ready to rock in your life? And, as always, is NOW a good time to develop the skill? :)

Well, that pretty much sums it up, eh?

Key take-away: Let’s reduce our worry and apply that energy to the challenge at hand. :)

Gay Hendricks says this about worry in his great book The Big Leap (see Notes): “Worrying is usually a sign that we’re Upper-Limiting. It is usually not a sign that we’re thinking about something useful. The crucial sign that we’re worrying unnecessarily is when we’re worrying about something we have no control over. Worrying is useful only if it concerns a topic we can actually do something about, and if it leads to our taking positive action right away. All other worry is just Upper Limit noise, designed by our unconscious to keep us safely within our Zone of Excellence or Zone of Competence.”

Brilliant.

This: “believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals, whatever they may be” sounds a lot like Nathaniel Branden’s description of self-esteem in his classic, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (see Notes). I love this line for his great book: “Self-esteem contemplates what needs to be done and says, ‘I can.’ Pride contemplates what has been accomplished and says, ‘I did.’”