Now that we’ve completed the essential preparatory steps, it’s time to name and discuss the essential tools we need to control runaway emotions.  We’ve prepared by gaining knowledge of our temperament and examining what some of the other temperaments look like, as well as how they struggle with runaway emotions.  Now, let’s pick up the tools we need and learn how to use them to our greatest advantage.  Our goal is intelligent emotions (a high EQ) that will serve us well throughout our lives.  Let’s begin with Essential Tool #1:  Breathing.

Breathing to Calm the Emotions

Sighs are therapeutic.  And nothing gives such immediate relief that we can feel like the inbuilt, relaxing, calming effect of a breathing exercise. Here (in a modified form) is an exercise that Herbert Benson, M.D. suggests in his book The Relaxation Response. Although he is offering a method to relax, it also calms the emotions as the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.

1. Breathe in calmly and deeply using the diaphragm. Do not gulp in a lot of air, as an excess of oxygen can stimulate the body into action. Just remember, slow and quiet.
2. Expel that breath, making it feel like a relaxing sigh. As you exhale, sense the calming effect of activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
3. Continue breathing in this way and focus on feeling the effect of this breathing process on your body. Your focus on the physical feelings it produces helps distract from the emotion.
4. For maximum effect, exhale for a slightly longer time than you inhale.

When teaching this to a child, persist with kind insistence until they breathe with you. When they learn the technique, they will use it to calm themselves, and you will know you have taught them a valuable lesson.

Next tool (in the next article):  Putting on the Brakes

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 demonstrate how understanding the patterns of emotion in our temperament enables 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.  Learn how to effectively engage your children in discovering 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 prefer to be more independent and want to cut to the chase, you don’t need to wait for a callback. 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 insurgency of crooked thinking in our culture and in the 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 achieve this by recognizing the source of our value as humans. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln

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In addition (to knowing our tools), we must learn how to use our tools for building intelligent emotions (emotional intelligence)?  It would be laborious to show you all the ways you can use the tools that build emotional intelligence.  For example, each person will meditate in different ways.  Some meditate as they drive, some in a regular quiet time, some in bed before they rise, some with the use of an activity like yoga or running, and others as they read.  Therefore, what you need are suggestions, principles, and your own creativity.  Then anywhere, anytime you will be able to master your inner emotional world. We will begin by reviewing the tools we listed in our previous article.  From there, we will proceed to those suggestions and principles that will aid our creativity in managing our emotions.

Ten Tools for Building Emotional Intelligence

1. The learning path:  Knowledge, understanding, wisdom
2. The diagnostic path:  The right questions
3. The attention path:  Focus and its precursor, awareness
4. The motivation path:  Desires and passions
5. The fundamental path:  Beliefs and faith
6. The action path:  Right physical actions, including right speech
7. The determination path:  Mental force or willpower
8. The consistency path:  Memory for repeated success
9. The path inside the virtual mind:  Visualization, a form of vivid imagination
10. The actualizing path:  Meditation

Outlining the Process for Managing Our Emotions

1. Build knowledge and understanding constantly.  Aristotle famously said, “Know thyself.”  Furthermore, the wise man of Jewish fame said, “As a man thinks, so is he.”  This leads to wisdom.  
2. Ask the right question to direct your thoughts to an understanding of the problem and find the solution.
3. Focus on a positive emotion or action.  The positive one should be the opposite of the troublesome, negative one.  Examples abound.  For instance, the opposite of hate is love; the opposite of fear is trust.  In the case of guilt, it is removed by either remedying the situation (if you are truly guilty, apologize; make restitution) or if in making a more honest assessment of your guilt you find you are having guilt feelings but are not truly guilty, replace the self condemnation with positive beliefs.  Hurt is healed by love.  For the person who hurt you, to give them the benefit of the doubt and forgive them in your heart is the start of love.  Think of these opposite feelings and focus on them if you want to be truly healthy.  Awareness of your mental activity is a prerequisite to focus.  
4. Create a desire to change.  Run the benefits through your mind of a positive, opposite emotion and what it can result in doing for you or others.  Also, visualize how you will feel and how it will practically reward you.  Following up!  Dream of being the person you long to be.  
5. Believe totally to achieve the greatest motivation.  Faith is inner power.  
6. If you haven’t already done so, change your actions and your speech to fall in line with the opposite emotion’s typical behavior.  
7. Use plain, brute willpower, which is also called determination.  Make a firm decision to succeed and then make it happen.  Don’t hope it will happen; make it happen!  Making it happen sometimes requires a plan, a step-by-step staircase to success.  So, think it through and take action NOW.  
8. Replay your successes (as small as they may be) as each step is achieved to create a memory track that will become your habitual way of controlling your inner emotions.  As a result, the repeated replays will create a new landscape of mental intelligence in your mind.  
9. Visualize (imagine), again and again, your goal and the steps to it.  Visualization is not creating a dream but consistently rehearsing a dream in detail.  For the NF, bring the positive possibilities vividly to life in your imagination and replay them often.  In fact, possibilities light up the NF mind.  The goal is to let the pleasure of them fuel your desires to create a confident self-esteem.  Always fashion everything in your virtual world before you release your actions into the real world.  
10. Meditate often in the manner that best relaxes your mind and your inner tensions.  Meditation can also produce deeper understanding and initiate creativity.  

Our Commitment to this Process Will Change Our Lives

It is worth our full commitment to develop these tools because they will change our lives.  So put your heart, mind, soul, and strength into it, and value the time it takes.  

How we develop toward the intelligence that best indicates our degree of success in life will depend on how successfully we live in the protective environment of our strengths (which we learned in the last chapter) and how we wield with skill the tools for diagnosing emotions (which we will discuss in the next article).  Let’s commit to the process and succeed in managing our emotions.

One Last Comment

I will refer mainly to negative emotions when talking about tools because they are the ones that most frequently are involved with our emotionally unintelligent behavior.  

The post Help for Creatively Managing Our Emotions appeared first on RayWLincoln.com.

Perhaps we can best answer that for our purposes by saying that feelings are our conscious experience of emotions. We feel our emotions and that’s the way we recognize them most of the time. When teaching ourselves or others intelligent emotions, first we must feel and recognize the emotion. We can easily achieve this by asking, “What are you feeling?” “Describe your feelings to me, please.”

Feelings Bring Self-Awareness

Of course, this is a practical answer more than a theoretical one. There is little agreement about the difference between emotion and feelings in the various schools of thought. Feelings bring a degree of self-awareness with them, but sometimes feelings require the effort of a trained awareness to register their presence.

“Identifying” the Feeling Is the Key

When asked “how do you feel?“ many people answer, “I don’t know.” Confusion over naming or identifying the feeling is the issue rather than an absence of knowing that a feeling is present. Therefore, identification, not just acknowledging that a feeling is present, becomes the major issue.

Emotions Always Produce “Feelings”

We can be thankful that we have the conscious experience of our emotions even if their appearance frustrates us at times. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have emotions and not have feelings, somewhat like driving down the road without a sense of movement.

My hope is that this book will lead you, as its content has led many others, to be intelligently emotional. If it helps you to develop the intelligent use of your emotions and a rewarding lifestyle, my labor will not have been in vain.  You can access it HERE.  If you are subscribed to our weekly updates, our next issue will provide a link to purchase it with a 15% discount and free shipping.

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 and Happiness, is a great resource.

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. If you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back because you can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.

The post Are “Feelings” the Same as Emotions? appeared first on RayWLincoln.com.

The Stoics thought that apatheia (apathy or the absence of feeling to the Stoics) was the aim of all goodness. Therefore, they believed we must constantly struggle to rid ourselves of all feeling and emotion. Consequently, for them, emotion was the cause of all sin and failure. Without emotion we are true and better creatures — or so they thought. Incidentally, some parents of emotionally sensitive children might agree passionately. And some readers may harbor that belief even today. However, the Stoics failed to understand that an emotional void is an unbearable hole in the heart.  They failed to understand the benefits of intelligent emotions.

Consider this List of Benefits of Intelligent Emotions

Emotional intelligence will not make me into a non-feeler.  But it will make me into a more sensitive, responsive person. It will offer me:

• Control of my emotions
• Enjoyment of my emotions
• The freedom to use emotional power wisely
• Better relationships
• Insightful, sensitive, and purpose-driven leadership
• The advantage of emotionally sensitive decision-making
• A meaningful view of my world
• A better understanding of others
• Maximization of my temperament’s drives
• An inner comfort and heightened confidence
• And more, much more

There Are Benefits to Emotional Intelligence in My Child, Too

It’s a parent’s prayer. “Tell me how to teach my child emotional intelligence,” a wise parent asks. So, what will the understanding of emotions teach a parent to enable them to better train their child?

There Must Be Intelligent Emotions in the Parent Before They Can Benefit the Child

First, Awareness

We must learn to recognize and become aware of our emotions and the impact they are having on his world. Therefore, understanding of ourselves is the first step to managing ourselves.

Second, Patience

We must understand that emotional intelligence is a long process, never complete. There are no shortcuts. Emotional intelligence will be the hardest lesson in life for any of us to learn. However, we will learn the ways we can manage and develop our emotions and we’ll be able to note the improvement.

Third, Similarities

Know that teaching emotional intelligence to a child is the same as for an adult, except for dealing with a brain that is in the process of development.  This flags us to the need for more incremental learning and patient teaching.

Fourth, Aids to Success

Understanding our own and the child’s temperament and teaching emotional control with an understanding of temperament’s drives is the road to faster learning. We will have a hard or impossible task if we neglect understanding temperament.  The task will be a very frustrating one, too.

Fifth, Areas of Focus

Focusing on developing the strengths of temperament and teaching our children to do the same will rob the unintelligent behaviors of their energy. And it will also give the parent the most effective path to teaching emotional intelligence.

Sixth, A Parent’s Key role

And this is very important: modeling the learning of emotional intelligence for them and showing them what to do when we fail or when we are mentally under the influence of damaging emotions cannot be overemphasized. In other words, children want models.

Now, let’s move from my emotions and me to a more technical question that will hold some important answers: What is Emotion?

My hope is that this book will lead you, as its content has led many others, to be intelligently emotional. If it helps you to develop the intelligent use of your emotions and a rewarding lifestyle, my labor will not have been in vain.  You can access it HERE.  If you are subscribed to our weekly updates, our next issue will provide a link to purchase it with a 15% discount and free shipping.

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 and Happiness, is a great resource.

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. If you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back because you can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.

The post The Benefits of Intelligent Emotions appeared first on RayWLincoln.com.

Travel with me through the intriguing land of our emotions to become familiar with its landscape.  Intelligent emotions are no more and no less than living in the strengths we are given, while expressing care and consideration for others by our intelligent emotional choices. Emotions empower our strengths.  Therefore, we function at our best when we understand ourselves and are aware of how our emotions function.

The Mystery of Emotions

Our limbic system reveals an amazing complexity in the processing of our emotions. Emotions can be convulsive, expressing a volatility that can scare us. We also know our emotions operate mysteriously — without warning at times. They seem to have a will of their own. We live with them and wrestle with them every day, but we don’t really know them. The detailed (though limited) understanding that scientific studies have given us of our emotions is, however, another shot across the bow to remind us of the ability of our emotions to control us. It also reminds us of how we must use them with care and wisely manage their contribution to our lives.

“Wise” emotions

I will use the word “wise” and its derivatives frequently, even though it is not in vogue today. The current street philosophy is “Do your own thing” rather than “Seek wisdom.” The Greeks sought wisdom.  The Chinese (think of Confucius) thought wisdom governed life.  The Hebrew wisdom literature contains some of the greatest philosophical literature of all time.  And Solomon is still the recognized proverbial King of Wisdom.

Wisdom comes from the Greek word sophia. Read this reminder and see if you don’t agree with me that it is still a much needed concept today. It is the opposite of foolish, stupid, and all inappropriate and damaging behavior. Foolish behavior has never benefited our race or advanced such things as science. Therefore, I will define intelligent emotions, in part, as “wise” emotions. Wisdom and emotions are both in the business of making judgments.  And the quality of their judgments surely concern those who seek the best in life.  That is because wise emotions empower our strengths.

Unintelligent (unwise) emotion

Sitting in front of us, as though only his body was present, sat a male in his late teens.  Personifying the “cool” advocate of opposition to all those who were, in his mind, stupid enough to work hard.  He called them “elite bigots of society.”  He had no bank account and choked at the thought. Favoring apathy and long days of laziness, his lifestyle promoted a life of ease for which he had to depend upon the support of others.  A “do-nothingness” and a sour dislike of success under-girded his beliefs and his habits. It was no surprise that he was about to enter a place that matched his lifestyle choice — a place of free board and lodging.

He confessed that his disappointment over the unfortunate turn of events hid a suppressed anger that he did not know how to mange, and it ate at him constantly.

Unintelligent choices followed him into incarceration, and he came out years later, still devoid of an intelligence that acted in even his own best interests. The best in life is often most clearly seen against the backdrop of such dismal and unfortunate emotional disasters.

Our fascination with emotions

Emotions have fascinated all of us. Interest in them dates back to the earliest of Greek philosophers and writers such as Homer, followed notably by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. No one has been able to write without revealing his own emotions or, for that matter, his temperament. All religions are replete with their acknowledgement and use of emotion, from the earliest Bible records about life in the Middle East to the Upanishads of Hinduism and the Analects of Confucius. Philosophers have not avoided the subject either. The interest of Robert C. Solomon (Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas) in his scholarly book, The Passions, testifies to our continued modern philosophic fascination with emotions.

Master your emotions by being informed about their powers

Perhaps, you are among those who wonder at the usefulness of emotions or struggle with their power, still trying in the twenty-first century to understand emotions and control them. Why have we not learned in so many millennia of history to master the way we function and to act as though we are informed about our emotions’ vagaries? Our children, at least, will soon convince their parents of the need to understand the basics of emotion’s mysterious powers.

Emotions are the down-to-earth “nitty gritty” of life. They devastate us when not controlled and drain our lives of meaning when not appreciated. Life without them would be unromantic to say the least. And with them… well, who knows?

Science and emotions

As mentioned, neurology has entered the field of emotional understanding.  But its helpful contributions should be viewed with caution, not worshiped. Science is an ever-changing, ongoing field of knowledge. At the moment, no one theory dominates the understanding of emotions and no scientific data fully explains them. They still stand above explanation, controlled and channeled beneficially by wisdom (there’s that word again) alone. Approach them humbly or they will make a fool of you and advertise your immaturity.

Emotions provide a full range of feelings from pleasure to pain. They are involved in ecstasy and depression, dreams and defeat.  And they dash endlessly, it seems, from one end of the spectrum of life to the other. They vary in nature and constantly change their intensity, rising to a crest and falling away again like the waves of the ocean. Our lives will always be molded by their surges and their temporary absences.

Emotions empower our urges and motivations

The strongest urges and motivations in our nature derive their potency from emotion. Our temperament’s drives, with which we are born and which fashion our lives like nothing else, are not without emotional energy. Neither are our plainest thoughts. When I say of the sunset that it is red or crimson, my simple use of a noun harbors a feeling, an emotion.

Emotions work as a team, giving birth to other emotions, educating and empowering each other. Like can be transformed into love.  And love can mate with passion to form another expression of love, while envy and jealousy wait in the wings of love’s theater to change the feelings yet again. Their inter-relatedness is too complex to document or, at times, predict.  Yet emotions come and go with a predictability that belies their complications.

Transcient emotions

Little Shane was needled by his playmates because he was so nice to everyone. Strange how being nice attracts the vultures. He was a very sensitive, introverted NF. His mother said the transformation, on retrospect, was fast. First, he got angry and lashed out verbally against his foes, quickly becoming the opposite of who he really was. His emotions soon morphed into a team of ugly actions driven by feelings too strong for his tender age of seven years to control. Hate and a poisonous revenge took over. He spat, kicked, and fought with an emotionally powered ferocity that frightened his peers and resulted in his violently beating one of his critics. Consequences followed, and so did a self-hatred that quickly changed his emotions yet again.

Depressed and de-motivated, he became persuaded in his bewilderment to be who he was: a loving, tender boy who felt good when he accessed those intelligent emotions that his anger had persuaded him to discard. Again, his emotions changed. Change is one of their properties.  And with each change, they attracted other emotions of like sort. Shane, via his emotions, had emerged as three persons: angry, sad, and happy. Such is the transcience of human life that emotions mysteriously produce. Yes, they are complex.  But without them we would not recognize life.

Let emotions empower your “best” of everthing

When seeking to help a child grow to emotional intelligence, the task may seem overwhelming. However, as profound as emotions are, they often yield to simple measures and reward with unexpected pleasures. Develop the strengths of temperament that they fuel and most of the goals of emotional intelligence will be achieved

Emotions empower the “good life” and the “bad life”

The history of emotions is the history of sex, love, fear, hate, courage, and an unnamed myriad of other feelings. Each emotion can and has stamped its potent effects on our lives and that of our race. As we ponder the mystery of emotions, let’s remember that they give us the “good life” and the “bad life,” but not without the freedom to choose. They have handles (although ethereal and slippery ones) to grasp and a logic of cause and effect to follow. Learning these relationships is what my book Intelligently Emotional will help you master.

My hope is that this book will lead you, as its content has led many others, to be intelligently emotional. If it helps you to develop the intelligent use of your emotions and a rewarding lifestyle, my labor will not have been in vain.  You can access it HERE.  If you are subscribed to our weekly updates, our next issue will provide a link to purchase it with a 15% discount and free shipping.

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 and Happiness, is a great resource.

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. If you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back because you can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.

The post Emotions Empower Our Strengths appeared first on RayWLincoln.com.