Emotional Intelligence - Methods of Improving Self-Management

Self-management is attained by being aware of your emotions and habitual responses and understanding them to the degree that you have some control over them. Over time you will increase your ability to pick up on the information being provided to you and further increase your ability to self-manage. The following suggestions might also help.


Choose your attitude

Remember, you always have the choice to act in any way you want to. You are not controlled by your emotions and if you take time out to consider what the rational way of acting is in any given situation, you will become more focused on the positive aspects of your interactions.

Anchor your positive feelings

Think of the periods when you were really in control. Harness those positive feelings and emotions and recall them in times when you feel less positive. This will help you to overcome bad feelings.

Challenge negative ‘self-talk’

Every time you hear your negative ‘inner voice’ telling you that you can’t achieve something or that you will fail, challenge it, ask yourself why you can’t achieve it or why you will fail.

Have a positive mental attitude

When you have a positive mental attitude, you look at how things can be done rather than why they can't be done. You believe that "where there's a will, there's a way." You look at possibilities and opportunities rather than obstacles and problems. This mindset is important for success in any endeavour.

Live life with an abundance mentality

People with an abundance mentality believe there are enough resources available to accomplish their goals. They also believe that their success doesn't mean failure for others. On the contrary, the more successful they are, the more others are affected in a positive way. They can be happy when friends and associates prosper. They can enter every business transaction with a "win/win" attitude.

This is an excerpt from the training manual of our training course material on 'Emotional Intelligence', which you can purchase from our website at www.trainerbubble.com

Self-Management - Living in the Gap

We are consistently making decisions based on values. When they are challenged or we perceive them to be in danger, our emotions will step to their defence and this can sometimes make us become seemingly irrational, particularly in the eyes of others, who may not appreciate or even understand our value system.

Self-management is all about being able to think clearly and remain focused even when you are experiencing strong emotions. Human beings are great story makers and will fill gaps in knowledge by interpreting things according to our own emotions and beliefs.

When something happens we have the true event, the actual facts of the situation. We then take this information and interpret it via our values, beliefs and attitudes. Often this will alter the true event and amounts to, ‘What we made it mean.’

Think back. How many times have you misinterpreted a situation and allowed your emotions to provide conflicting information to the real event? This often occurs because we don’t take time to ‘keep our emotions in check’ and will respond or react immediately.

There is an alternative, which we call, ‘Living in the Gap’. This means taking the time to re-assess the situation and not jump to conclusions based on how we interpret things. This is a demonstration of self-management.

Hold your hand up in front of you now, imagine your left has written on it, 'What happened' and your right has 'What I made it mean', that bit between, is the gap. That's the moment when you have the chance to pause...and not act. The moment you usually miss because you're too hot under the collar to notice. The time when you should have stopped to think.

This method can make a huge difference to your life when used effectively. It can be as basic as not hitting 'enter' on that email that you are sending in response to a seemingly rude one from your boss, or stopping for a breath and a think before you hurl abuse at a colleague who’s said the wrong thing. There’s no difficult process to it and no rules, just a simple method of managing those emotions!

So, next time you feel your temperature rising...stop...and live in the gap.

This article is adapted from an excerpt in the Trainer Bubble training materials on 'Emotional Intelligence at Work'. Visit our site today to view it.