If you are angry, have you lost something? Were you insulted? Did someone challenge you? Do you feel accused or simply worthless? Are you hurt, jealous, envious, revengeful, feeling cheated or just ignored? Name the cause accurately. Don’t just name the feeling, like “I’m angry.” We must determine what caused the feeling.
Why Identify What Caused the Feeling?
The reason for naming the cause is to enable us to deal with the cause rather than some general feeling or the feeling that is the symptom of the cause. If you are angry, deal with what caused your anger and not the angry outburst itself. .
Blame Your Reaction for Your Negative Emotion, Not What Caused the Feeling
Remove the cause, placate the cause, correct the cause until you are happily adjusted to the cause. And do not blame the cause or blame others as the cause of your upset. It was your reaction to the cause that created the negative emotion. So, it is your problem.
Why is it important to understand this? Because you want to be in control so you can do something about it.
Accept Responsibility to Be In Control
- People love to pass the blame. It’s foolish, really. Why pass the ball to the other person and make it their next move when that gives you no control over what they might do or not do with the next move? You have lost control and given control to them. We cannot win in the game of life if we give the next move to someone else.
- Taking responsibility is what emotional intelligence is all about. It is the positive counterpart to assigning blame. Therefore, when I find what the cause of my anger is (being ignored, for instance), instead of blaming the other person for being rude or accusing them of offensive behavior, I take responsibility. Then I see what I should do so that I do not to feel ignored.
A Critical Step — Assigning Responsibility
This question (“What caused the feeling?”) points us to one of the most critical lessons for our growth toward emotional intelligence and one at which we all fail periodically. Accept responsibility — always! Let’s examine this principle some more.
Taking Responsibility Encourages Personal Growth
Passing the blame is passing the responsibility, as I have already argued. If the responsibility lies with another person or thing, I don’t have any changing to do. If I don’t have any changing to do, then let’s be careful not to talk about the other person’s emotional unintelligence because, if we do, we place the focus where we are likely to fall into negativity ourselves and become a judge.
When I am a judge of others, I am not going to grow in emotional intelligence. Furthermore, in all likelihood, the anger I feel toward them is going to eat away at me while I bask in the false comfort of blame. Taking responsibility for our choices always (because our choices are our actions) encourages personal growth. No one made us do it — not even the devil.
Blame Is the Classic Sign of an Emotional Ignoramus
Blaming others is the classic sign of a loser and an emotional ignoramus. When we have no responsibility we have no motivation to change our own emotional behavior. No motivation often means we have to accept our behavior and justify it somehow. Self justification is a tool of emotional unintelligence. We have boarded the wrong bus.
Liberate Yourself from the Power Others Have Over You
Every time I accept responsibility and act appropriately I walk through the doors of freedom and celebrate my liberation from the power of other people over me. I should really hate to be controlled and manipulated, finding I only feel less than others, folding under the power of their self righteousness, cowering in the timid pose of being worthless.
When I insist on looking at the facts of my own inner reactions, l become intelligent for all of the reasons indicated above.
Resources to Help You:
THE WONDERFUL TRUTH ABOUT EMOTION
Are there such things as intelligent emotions? Intelligently Emotional will argue that there are. And they are the ones we must focus on if we want to know success.
Ray W. Lincoln will show us how understanding the patterns of emotion in our temperament will enable us to manage our emotions effectively. If you long to know how to understand your emotions and the immense power of your feelings, Intelligently Emotional will show you the way. The path to real emotional intelligence requires learning to partner with intelligent emotions.
DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE!
Lean into the whole truth. Discover the truth of who YOU are — the “Real You” — and who your children truly are. Discover how to best engage your children in finding the whole truth. INNERKINETICS, Your Blueprint to Excellence will guide you in that
Our team at InnerKinetics is ready to provide that help, too. If you’d like some assistance, you can request a consultation. An InnerKinetics consultant will call you to answer questions and schedule your meeting. Schedule an Initial Consultation. Alternatively, if you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back. You can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.
Our first and most important task in a world-changing mission is to learn how to think straight (and teach straight thinking) and combat the insurgence of crooked thinking in our culture and in our world today. If we become passive victims of this crooked way of thinking, we promote it. Furthermore, if we remain silent, we also give it credence. In Who Am I?, the reader progresses from how we have become “crooked thinkers” to how to break out of this prison of the mind to become instruments of change for a better world. We do this by recognizing from where we derive our value as humans. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln