One of the meta skills of the twentieth century is Emotional Intelligence, there has been a plethora of literature that has established the importance of being emotionally intelligent. For the uninitiated in the literature of leadership development, Emotional Intelligence when simplified and watered down to its basic meaning, starts from the first step of self awareness of one’s own emotions then second is to have the capability of regulating these emotions, third internally motivating oneself, fourth develop empathy and finally fifth thereby the social skills for networking with people galore. However some interesting research that has come to the fore in recent times is emotional intelligence also plays a huge part in building resilience in people. Given the times when world over economies face recession, and Geo- political turmoil further increases fears of losing jobs and there is an overall lack of opportunities, a close look at the study and some ways to increase our own skills in regulating emotions to increase emotional intelligence and thereby resilience is warranted. A recent study by (Hertel & Schütz, 2009) was one of the first attempts to examine the relationship between emotional abilities, assessed with performance measures, and mental disorder. The latest round of research in psychology pretty much proves what we knew all along or would have generalized in our conversations. The overall effect of our emotions on our whole well being is far more than what we could have imagined or bargained for, there is a clear cut relationship between how we regulate our emotions and thereby respond to stress and ensure our overall mental and physical well being
The year 2020 can go down in living memory of most millennial and probably baby boomers as a year that brought in unprecedented levels of change and every time there is a change there are periods of transition, when the frequency of change is high the time devoted to transition probably simply decreases from months to weeks to days and maybe even hours. This further stresses out the capability to adapt to a given adverse situation. The brain’s way of coping up with adverse scenarios is make meaning of the present and find ways and means to transmit the message to different parts of our physical brain to get the body to take action. The sensory organs send electrical impulses to neurons in the brain. These neurons when firing up with the electrical impulses pass messages to the next neuron through neurotransmitters. Many a times when faced with situations that demands agility, adaptability at high frequencies our neurotransmitters may ebb, wax and wane based on factors like the environment around us, nutrition, stimulants like alcohol and probably release the concoction of these neurotransmitters in not so right proportions. The final result being the message in our brain that passes as electrical impulses from one neuron to the other gets faulty and either we feel elated or distressed, joyous or probably simply meh. Neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine epinephrine and norepinephrine along with others play a large role in affecting our moods. It has been now found from research in psychology that the levels of neurotransmitters in our brains correlate directly to the levels of stress.
In simple layman terms you miss an important deadline or you haven’t completed that important presentation, there is always the game of catching up at work. Or you are expecting that your boss would humiliate you or even be judgmental/form an adverse opinion of you, your heart beat is rising or your anxiety is increasing imaging the situation, What is happening psychologically speaking is your emotions are painting a pretty grim picture and physiologically your neurotransmitters are all over the place. You dread the 9 o clock Monday morning meeting and probably right from Sunday afternoon this stress is making your brain to recreate the scenario with increased dopamine and epinephrine thereby kicking in your body’s response to fight stress, the blood vessels gets constricted pumping more blood the blood pressure is slightly increased to pump more oxygen the vision is getting narrower and focused but its probably not the best response. The eventual result is your brain and your body with its cardiovascular system is getting sensitive to the stress, the level of sensitivity then depends on how frequently your body is being subjected to stress, if its too often the sensitivity to stress increases meaning seemingly harmless things that otherwise wouldn’t have elicited a stress response like waiting in a line, or someone making an unwanted comment for instance would now make you feel angry or irritated thereby further compounding the sensitivity to stress and activating your body’s stress response and kicking or accelerating the downward cycle.
Therefore by now the vicious cycle of thoughts/emotions leading to stress leading to neurotransmitters disarray leading to stress response and the overall affect on our mood has been established. Salovey & Mayer in their research of 2004 established that Emotional Intelligence is a set of interrelated abilities that actually have four dimensions 1) Perceiving emotions in own and others 2)Using emotions to facilitate thoughts 3) Understanding emotional information 4) Regulating Emotions. In controlled group experiments and detailed studies they found out that one of the discerning traits between healthy individuals and others suffering from Unipolar depression, bipolar personality disorder and substance abuse disorder is their ability to regulate emotions. When compared to healthy individuals these individuals were less skilled at understanding emotional information, it was established as a fact that they experienced a variety of emotions simultaneously and have problems in identifying and separating these emotions simultaneously. It can be assumed that poor understanding of the meaning of emotions handicaps a person in regulating mood (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). The study however also suggests that emotional intelligence is antecedent to resilience. More the capability of regulating one’s own emotions, more is the capability of exhibiting resilience and thinking of options which hitherto seemed unavailable. Regulating emotions and building resilience changes the rewiring and therefore the perspective that all is not lost and options are hammered out. So as simple as it sounds learn to regulate your emotions and develop resilience.
Adding to the humongous list of ” How to” series are some easy steps to practice and increase Emotional Intelligence (EI) and thereby build resilience in today’s times
- Watch out for negative emotions, identify the moment they creep into your system and detach yourself from the situation, the ability to detach and look into oneself as an observer goes a long way into developing EI. Take a deep breath, pause, ask questions on why are you feeling rattled ask the big “WHY” before jumping into a reaction once you have asked the why now ask yourself “WHAT” should you do about it. Practice the sequence deliberately, its not easy when reacting is far simpler and it is not going to come naturally but deliberate and consistent practise can certainly make you a pro. Don’t get discouraged by failure if you are unable to do it, pick yourself up and give a go at it again.
- Splash some cold water on your face whenever you are about to react, may seem too simple and childish but it is very effective, if in spite of the ‘why’ and ‘what’ questions you still feel agitated remove yourself from the situation find the nearest source of water and splash yourself with it. Look at ways and means by which you can express your emotions in a controlled and constructive way rather than the hot revenge or cold quiet fury you had initially intended.
- The most important and effective yet the most boring especially for people who are too agitated their minds racing too fast will find is Mindful Meditation. Don’t worry about whether you are doing it the right way, heck the pursuit of perfection may lead to stress again. So sit down comfortably, early mornings is a good time but you can practise anytime. Just close your eyes and calm yourself down by inhaling and exhaling deep breaths. However over here the caveat is practise for one or two day will make no difference try it out for a minimum of a month deliberately consistently without breaks. Do it for just 5 mins if you don’t have 30 minutes to do it. The calmness and awareness in the body creates defense barriers to hyper responding of stress. Just as physical exercise is necessary to keep you in great shape similarly mindfulness is required to keep you great mentally
Three tips that will increase your resilience, re-frame your mental perspective and the benefits are first an foremost help you get a sense of taking back control of your own life, not letting situations dictate but rather your decisions dictate the outcomes. Lower rates of mood instability, depression and feeling of meh, in fact during the day the moment you feel anxious, agitated or rattled instead of a smoking break take a meditation break. Wherever you are sitting, be comfortable and take in deep breaths, I am sure you will certainly feel calmer its proven in studies and you can try it out too practically, for all you know it can bring in the optimism you have been craving for so long.
The most important things in life are actually and many a times the most simple, our search for complex things that baffle us and thereby lead to the conclusion that it may be effective because it is complicated may not be true. The most elegant things in nature are the simplest to comprehend but has everlasting effects. Hence try out the simple tips the next time you feel overwhelmed or the feeling of anxiety, boredom and insipidness takes hold of you. Maybe you will even start identifying the root cause of the emotion and address and build the resilience nerve.