Seminal thinkers throughout history, including Socrates, Plato, Newton, Einstein and Hawkins, have elevated intellect to the highest of human qualities. History has also always valued professional endeavors deemed to require high intellect, including attorneys, doctors and executives. While there is no doubt that a high IQ increases one’s potential of success, it is not a guarantee. On the contrary, research has found that a high emotional intellect is more predictive of success and happiness than high IQ. And unlike IQ, your emotional intelligence can be changed. In other words, barring any magic pill, e.g., Bradley Cooper in Limitless, your IQ is mainly static, though slight increases have been found commensurate with education level.
Emotional intelligence is based on four cornerstones: (1) the ability to understand what we are feeling; (2) the ability to manage what we are feeling to achieve our goals; (3) the ability to interpret what others are feeling; and (4) the ability to utilize what they are feeling to further help us achieve our goals. As a psychotherapist for attorneys, I leverage that final cornerstone to encourage clients to work towards creating win-win situations in a wide variety of professional contexts.
As an example, retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady demonstrated heights of emotional intelligence on the field, especially in those last two minutes when he was not only able to focus his emotions into a productive force but was often able to recognize in opposing players opportunities to use their emotions against. Operationalizing these strategies often resulted in opposing players committing unforced errors in crucial moments. The same can be said for the high school, college, or professional basketball player who has a chance to tie or win the game on a foul shot. Are they able to stay focused or does the pressure of the moment result in fatal paralysis?
Sports are an obvious place where emotional intelligence is crucial as it can be the difference when it comes to separating athletes of comparable skill level In reality, however, emotional intelligence can impact every aspect of our lives. The student with low emotional intelligence gets a “C” on an exam and thinks “that’s the best I can do”; the student with high emotional intelligence gets a “C” on an exam and says “I need to study harder.” The person with low emotional intelligence is always a victim in their relationships and resorts to minimizing their role in relationship conflicts and instead blame their partner; the individual with high emotional intelligence recognizes that there are two individual people in the relationship both with individual personalities and that neither one is 100% right or 100% wrong. This person actively looks for win-win solutions to relationship issues with their partner instead of playing the victim.
The paramount benefit of high emotional intelligence is something that is available to everyone. That is the ability to eventually find happiness, despite whatever challenges or setbacks one is facing. This does not mean that the emotionally intelligent individual sweeps problems under the rug or evades suffering from losses and disappointments. It merely means that they do not remain stuck in those places, forever. Instead they are eventually able to move back towards the light and find gratitude in the silver linings.
Despite emotional intelligence being one of the most beneficial skills we could ever develop, it is rarely taught. On the contrary, people are often taught the opposite – to minimize the value and importance of emotional experience. Most people, including attorneys, can readily tell themselves and others when they are happy, angry and sad, but often deny that they feel scared, anxious, insecure, inadequate, etc. These feelings are often interpreted as being signs of weakness and are therefore suppressed.
The suppression of such feelings, however, does not make the feelings vanish. Instead, the feelings often manifest through unintended, subconscious channels. The emotionally intelligent individual, however, is able to use all these feelings as their superpower. Fear is interpreted in adaptive ways – as a sign that there is some potential danger, physical or emotional surfacing in one’s immediate experience. We are able to regulate our nervous systems in the face of the perceived danger in ways that are conducive to scanning the landscape for optimal responses versus becoming overcome by a primitive fight or flight response. Imposter syndrome does not mean that we are objectively inadequate, it merely means serves as a prompt that part of us is seeking to insulate us from potential embarrassment. Truly understanding deep down that embarrassment is about a particular moment and not about our worth as a person helps us to overcome imposter syndrome with calculated risks that help us build our confidence.
So how do we build emotional intelligence? Ironically, it is much easier than people think. Two of the most beneficial skills in developing emotional intelligence are mindfulness and practicing gratitude. For mindfulness I encourage people to set an alarm on their phone, the same time every day and to take two or three minutes to do a mindfulness activity. Google “mindfulness activities” and one will find thousands of helpful suggestions. One that I like is to step outside, close my eyes and for 60 seconds listen as intently as possible. The idea is to hear as many different things as you can hear around you. Eventually, you can also focus on the temperature, the feel of any breeze on your skin and any smells you notice. Finally open your eyes and try to notice details about what you see. Even if you are in a familiar place look for things that you have not noticed before. This short 2 to 3 minute exercise causes us to be present in this very moment.
Ironically, we are not present in this moment very often, but instead are usually distracted or thinking about the future or the past. Attorneys are especially apt to gravitate toward intellectual analysis or problem-solving. While these abilities are of significant value in certain practical applications in life, undue reliance on these tendencies can serve to deprive one of meaningful felt connection to present-moment experience. Such disconnect is an antecedent of unhappiness and potential depression.
It is only by being in this moment that we can start to become aware of what we are actually feeling.
The second skill is to practice gratitude daily. Meaningful gratitude practice transcends merely saying one is grateful for A, B and C and takes the form of selecting two or three things each day and to detail ways in which one is grateful for those things. It is the WHY that imprints on our hearts and minds. If you are grateful for your family, tell yourself in as much detail as possible why. For example, I would say I am grateful for the unconditional love and acceptance that my family gives me and that I have a true sense of being at home when I am with them, wherever that may be. Start with easy aspects of your life for which you are grateful, gradually introducing more complex aspects of your experience. For example, one might say I am grateful for the challenges I am having at work because they are helping me create new skills and they are helping me recognize what’s truly important in my life and that work is just part of who I am not who I am. I call this the silver lining.
When we can begin to find silver linings, even in our daily challenges, we will truly have become glass half-full people. Try the gratitude experiment for three weeks on a daily basis and see what happens.
Larry Blackwell, LCSW, LICSW, AADC
https://www.larryblackwellcounseling.com/
