Is Empathy Overblown and Exaggerated?

American media makes a big deal of the human trait of empathy. We are reminded at every turn to always step in the shoes of our fellow people and look at the situation from their perspective. In fact, empathy is being kicked around so often in mass media that it runs the risk of being rendered meaningless. The more people repeat it, the more clueless people are about what it really means. It really is quite sad because empathy is necessary for emotional intelligence. 

 

There are no two ways about it, this is an inescapable fact. If you want to become a more effective emotional person, and be in touch with your emotional intelligence and make it work for you, you have to know what empathy is and how to use it. Empathy means being able to look at any situation from the perspective of people in reacting with that situation. You may not necessarily like these people, they may not have anything in common with you, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are able to step out of the crushing gravitational pull of your own ego and pride to step into their shoes.

 

As you can imagine, this requires a tremendous amount of reprograming because that’s not how people wire themselves. Most of us look at the world in selfish terms. We think the world revolves around us. In fact, too many of us think that once we die, the world dies with us because we’re no longer there to witness what’s going on. You know that that’s a lie. You don’t have to be a philosophy major in college to understand the concept of absolute truth. 

 

The world existed before you, it exists now and will continue to exist long after you’re gone. That’s reality. How does this play out it terms of logic? Well, if you see a cat, it doesn’t really matter if it has stripes or spots, or has many colors or only one. Once you understand the form of a cat, you know that cats exist. 

 

The same goes with the world. If you can understand the concept of reality, then you know that reality exists whether you’re there to observe it or not. 

 

The problem is a lot of people assume that they are the center of their universe. This is why empathy merely gets lip service. It’s very hard for us to stay away from the gravitational pull of our pride and egos. You would rather imagine that everything turns around us. 

 

This is why it’s really important to master the art of empathy. Ironically enough, to become a more empathetic person, you must first become more emotionally self-aware. In other words, to be selfless, you must first become selfish and self-absorbed. 

 

Examine yourself. Are the emotions that you’re feeling what you think they are? Are you able to effectively communicate these emotions in an objectively clear way? Once you have answered these and other fundamental questions, can you make serious progress when it comes to empathy?

 

Make no mistake, if you want to become a better leader, more sexually attractive to members of the opposite sex, become a persuasive person all around and otherwise live a more fulfilling and effective life, empathy is part of the picture. 

 

The good news is you only need to click here to get the information you need to maximize your emotional intelligence.

 

Effectively Cope with Toxic Emotions with This One Simple Change

Does this happen to you? 

 

You think about a memory and all of a sudden you just feel like you’re about to cry? You can’t help it. It just happens automatically. 

 

Do you sometimes think about somebody who said a mean thing to you when you were in the past or did mention badly to you and you can’t help but fill up with rage? 

 

In fact, it can get so bad that you’re just shaking in anger. 

 

You find yourself in social situations where people look at you a certain way and you can’t help but want to smack them across the face. 

 

Welcome to the world of toxic emotions. 

 

Most people are able to deal with these toxic emotions and not take actions that they will come to regret later on. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s like falling on a grenade. Eventually, the grenade will blow up and it definitely burns deep down inside. 

 

Is that a better way to deal with toxic emotions? Well, please understand that this is not absolutely necessary. When you think about your ex-girlfriend who cheated with your best friend behind your back and told everybody about it, you don’t necessarily have to feel a sense of shame, embarrassment and the overall aching need to exact revenge. You don’t have to do that. That doesn’t necessarily have to flow from that memory. Just because you think about certain things in your life doesn’t mean they have to consume you or trigger negative emotions.

 

Did you know that toxic emotions can be controlled with one simple change? Before I get to that simple solution, let me explain to you how you develop toxic emotions in the first place. 

 

Of all the things that you can remember about your ex-girlfriend, ex-wife, whatever, you pick certain memories. You can choose to pick other things. Of those things that you remember, you choose certain interpretations. All of this is obvious, you can choose interpret or analyze those memories a certain way. It doesnt have to lead to you filling up with anger, feeling hopeless, embarrassed and humiliated. You don’t have to go through the normal range of reactions that you’ve grown accustomed to. You can choose a different path. But understand that it’s all choice and that’s where I’d like you to focus on. 

 

You can choose your memories you can also choose how to interpret them and respond to them. Know that’s very hard at first, it’s like trying to stop a roller-coaster after it has reached the peak of the tracks and starts to fall at full speed. But the more you do it, the better you get at it, let put it this way, the more you try, the less toxic your emotional states become. Eventually you reach a tipping point where you no longer have to feel bad about other people, yourself, and life, in general. 

 

Learn the intricacies of emotional intelligence and how they can help you cope with toxic emotions so you can perform better in all areas of your life.

 

Are Your Emotional Coping Skills Preventing You from Being a Happy Person?

Let’s get one thing clear. The concept of happiness is kind of exaggerated. It really is overrated. It seems that everybody in this dog is hell-bent on becoming happy. Now there’s nothing ultimately wrong with that but the problem involves definition. 

 

Let’s get on thing straight. In the United States and in the western worlds, general happiness is usually defined in externalist terms. Happiness is something that you get from the outside. It doesn’t come from within. It’s an emotional state that you feel from within, but ultimately is triggered by factors people and things outside of you. You have to wake up at the right side of the bed, people have to be kind to you, things have to work in a certain way, a lot of the things that you are expecting to happen have to happen a certain way, and then and only then would you feel happy. 

 

This really is too bad because if you define happiness along this similar line, you probably are not going to be happy all that often. Even if you reach that emotional state, it’s not going to last long. How come? These definitions don’t really position you for long lasting and truly intense happy moments. They don’t, because you’re not in control. Happiness either happens from time to time or it doesn’t. It tends to happen at a role of the dice or when things line up. That’s how way to live your life. It’s much better to look at happiness as a product of your emotional coping skills.

 

When you focus on skills, you focus on a series of actions that you can control. By being aware of what you’re doing at a specific time and place, you will put yourself in a position of becoming aware of the consequences of these actions and feelings. By doing so, you’ll be able to choose how you feel. 

 

You’ll be able to choose how you respond and what to remember what to focus on and this can lead to a more sustainable level of happiness. This leads to control. Compare this with a person who just basically waits to see if people are going to be nice to him or her. He or she waits if certain things will line up. Maybe they’re waiting for a new job or a new position to open, maybe they’re looking for a raise or a scholarship or looking to get good grades at a test. 

 

The problem is when you put yourself in a position where you waiting for somebody else to get their act together to deliver happiness in your life, you’re playing a losing game. You’re not in the driver's seat of your life and as you probably already know life is what happens when you’re making other plans. 

 

Assume more control over your life by assuming more control over you emotions coping skills across a wide variety if situations that happen in life. 

 

Get a clear understanding of how this works and to establish a blue print of increased emotional control. 

 

Emotional intelligence is crucial to life's success. It’s high time that you make your emotions work for you instead of against you.

 

Are Your Emotional Coping Skills Preventing You from Achieving Career Success?

Do you think that you’re the smartest person in the room at work? Are you able to do work that you know your coworkers cannot match in terms of volume as well as quality? Is it obvious to you that you are more qualified than anybody on your team? Is it also true that you’re not getting the kind of raises and promotions you feel you deserve? If any of this resonates with you, you might want to look at your emotional coping skills.

 

Understand that the modern American workplace doesn’t just turn on intelligence. It would be so simple if all it takes to be promoted and to get a raise is to be smarter than the next guy. 

 

If you’ve worked a day in corporate America, you know that this isn’t the case. It’s not unusual for people who are obviously less intellectually-gifted than you to get promoted not just once, twice, but all the way to the top. What’s going on? Well, a lot of success may turn on intelligence scores. In fact, in study after study, IQs have been correlated to life success. IQ tests are almost universally accepted as a good indicator of overall life success. But this begs the question, “how come people with high IQs don’t always become successful?” In fact, if we’re talking about really spectacular levels of success, I’m talking about corner office CEO type of success, when factoring an IQ, it’s a wash.

 

Now there are other factors. Maybe you’re related to the old boss, maybe you are a part of the right group or you came into the picture with all sorts of advantages. But if we were to account for all of that, there is one other factor that shines forth. It cannot be ignored. This is called emotional intelligence.

 

One key part of your emotional intelligence is your skill in coping emotionally with certain social situations. This might be holding you back. If you have tough time dealing with completion and you tend to say the wrong things it the wrong people at the wrong time, don’t be surprised if this all blows up in your face when it comes time for a promotion. 

 

If you find yourself always locked into some sort of negative emotional feedback loop with certain types of personalities in your office, don’t be surprised if this has a negative effect on your career trajectory. These situations impact your emotional coping skills. 

 

How exactly do you deal with difficult people? How do you interact with people who seem to oppose you at every turn? How do you manage people who have obviously negative attitudes and corrosive personality? These problems are not going away nor can they be explained away. You can just rely in your high IQ and magically make these difficult people disappear. It doesn’t work that way. 

 

This is where emotional intelligence comes in your emotional coping skills maybe preventing you from going up the corporate ladder as fast as you wish. This takes a lot of honesty because let’s face It nobody likes to be wrong. Most people don’t like to feel that there’s something wrong with them. But if you want to make progress, you need to look at your emotional coping skills with clear eyes. 

 

“Am I handling certain situations in the best way could? Maybe I don’t have to react. Maybe I don’t have to always pull rank. Maybe I don’t have to automatically dismiss people. Maybe there is some sort of win-win situation here. “. Unfortunately, most people are ill-equipped to handle these questions and that’s why we achieve success on a fairly random basis. Sometimes we do well, sometimes we don’t. 

 

Gain a little bit more predictability in managing your day-to-day success by honing your emotional coping skills.

 

How Much Importance Should You Place on Others' Reading of Your Emotions?

It’s very easy to think that since your emotions are your own, that everybody else should butt out. I can’t say I blame you. After all, everybody's entitled to their emotional states. Everybody has this capacity. Everybody has a right to perceive stimuli from the greater world and come up with their own judgement and analysis of those stimulus.

 

Often times, these judgements trigger strong emotions, and I’m talking about a range of emotions. Everybody’s entitled to this because this is how people process their daily waking reality. But there is a problem when people think that this is all unique. 

 

If we just look at our own perception and judgements of what’s going on around us and allow ourselves to emotionally respond to these, we’re putting ourselves in a bad position. Why? We end up expecting other people to basically just accept our emotional state and leave it at that. This is serious problem. Emotions are both subjective an objective. 

 

When you feel a strong emotion, you don’t just hold it in, let it burn and settle deep down inside because it may cause long-lasting harm. Your number one instinct is to communicate it to somebody else. 

 

That’s where the problem comes in. Again, there is no issue with you feeling how you feel. Everybody’s entitled to their own interpretation and analysis. The issue is, are you able to communicate your emotions accurately? Your feeling certain thigs but when you express it to other people, are they on the same page as you? 

 

You may be thinking that this is just a simple matter of self-awareness and honesty. Fundamentally, you’re absolutely correct. But you have to define self-awareness the right way. You have to be aware in the broader context of the people around you.

 

You have to take context into account and unfortunately, if you do not place much importance on their reading of your emotions, you’re going to remain an emotional child. You look at the world in terms of "take it or leave it" process. You play an impossible game on yourself. You tell yourself that this is how you feel and everybody should accept it otherwise they’re wrong and are bad people. You can live your life like some sort of giant tantrum. That is not a winning life strategy. Believe me you’re going to come out on the losing end each and every time. 

 

You have to place importance on how people read your emotions. You have to acknowledge that people maybe reading your emotions in a completely different way from your own internal reading. Be aware of this disconnect. This should trigger red flags to you. If you see this, then it’s time to look at how you express your emotion and how honest you are in perceiving your own emotions. 

 

A little bit of introspection can go a long way when it comes to better emotional communication. This can lead to better relationships. Make no mistake, you have to place a tremendous amount of importance on other people’s readings of your emotions. Understand that there’s a limit to this. You can’t let other people dictate what you can and cannot feel. Instead, you should just look at their perceptions as some sort of gauge as to how well you communicate your own personal emotions. 

 

What You Think Your Feelings May Not be Accurate

I know that you may be feeling sad, depressed, angry, upset or any rage of strong emotion. You’re entitled to your feelings. But there’s a problem. Just because you feel something, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is accurate. Now you’re probably scratching you head. You might even be offended and thinking that I am contradicting myself. How can I with one sentence, say that people are entitled to their emotions and take it all away by saying that they’re not exactly feeling what they’re feeling? What’s going on? 

 

Well, here's the problem. You can’t just go with your emotional states. You have to measure them by some standard. Unfortunately, if all your standards are subjective, with totally no regard to how other people perceive your emotions, you’re making things harder on yourself. 

 

You set yourself up for a really sad disconnect between how you feel and how other people perceive what you’re felling. You put yourself in a position where you have these strong emotions but you really cannot communicate them in clear enough terms so as to resolve them. 

 

Do you see how this works? Your feelings, while being completely owned by you, actually has two dimensions. There is the subjective dimension, which is what you are perceiving deep down inside. But there’s also an objective dimension to it. 

 

You’re going to have to express your feelings. Do these expressions line up with what you’re feeling inside? If there is a disconnect, then don’t be surprised if people respond to you in a less optimal way. 

 

Here’s the kicker, it’s not their fault. Whatever negative experiences you have maybe due to the fact that you’re just expressing yourself the wrong way. The good news is emotional expression is a skill. You may not be doing a good job of it now but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to stay emotionally incompetent forever. 

 

You can work with people who care about you to fine tune your emotional expressions, so you can get rid of that disconnect between the strong feelings you have deep down inside and how other people perceive you. This is very important because a lot of people base their decisions on their feelings. 

 

The problem with this is if you’re basing it on something that may not line up with objective reality, you’re going to have a problem in your hands. It’s not unusual for people with this issue to think that they always bring out the worst in people. It’s also not unusual for people who struggle with this problem to automatically assume that people are out to get them so they develop some low-level forms of paranoia. You don’t have to put yourself through that self-abuse. Focus instead on honesty. 

 

Do you think your feelings can you line that up with objective parameters? Can you get somebody who cares about you to work with you so you can clearly see whether you are expressing your emotions the right way? Get help with emotional intelligence issues you need the blueprint for emotional intelligence excellence.

 

Lack of Emotional Clarity Might be Holding You Back for More Fulfilling Relationships

You’ve probably have heard this old saying: if you don’t love yourself, why should you expect others to do what you can’t do for yourself. There’s a lot of truth to that. Let’s put it this way, if you are conflicted or confused about your emotions, there's a high chance you are not sending the right signals to people around you. They want to help, and they care and love you, but they can’t quite seem to reach you. I know it hurts but the truth is, it’s all your fault. 

 

You have to understand that life is not a movie. When you’re watching movies there is a script, there is a footage, and there are actors. But at the end of the day, you’re watching something that is complete. There’s nothing you can do to influence whatever goes on in the movie. All you can do is sit down, watch the movie and let the directors, screenwriters, and actors perform for you. That’s how it works. 

 

I don’t know the exact nature of your relationships but that should not be a one way street. There is give and take. It’s very easy for people to feel frustrated in their relationship because they can’t get what they wanted from it in the first place. They don’t bother to stop and think about their role in the relationship. What are you putting in? How do you influence the flow of the emotional signals that you have with the other person? Is it fair to that other person when you put all the weight on their shoulders? Of course not. You don’t want that done to you, right? This is where lack of emotional clarity comes in.

 

Most people always focus on how they’re being cheated, how they’re being hurt, and how they’re not getting what they feel they have coming to them. Rarely do they look at the other side. People are very shallow about it. This is a serious problem because if you want more fulfilling relationships, you need to develop the emotional intelligence skill of emotional clarity. 

 

A lot of people define this ability in strictly self-serving facts. In their words they say, “I just need to know how I’m feeling and what kind of emotions are going through my mind and heart at any given point of time.” That’s just part of the picture. If you stop there, then it’s no surprise that your relationships are not living up to their fullest potential. What’s the problem here? It’s not just about you that’s a big part of your relationship, but there’s the other side of the equation. You have to also pay attention to the consequences of your emotional signals and most importantly the clarity with which you communicate.

 

People with low emotional intelligence suffer from a disconnect between what they feel and how the other people perceive them. They always think that it’s the other person responsibility to perceive them clearly. Maybe you’re just not communicating emotionally clearly enough. Solve this problem now.

 

5 Tips on How to Manage Your Energy Levels

The varying degrees of your energy level can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Sometimes you have to have the energy to complete a task or activity and other times you seem to have the most energy when you’re trying to relax. If you can learn how to manage your energy levels effectively, you can move ahead rather than lag behind.

 

Here are some tips about how to manage your energy levels so that you’re ready for anything – any time.

 

1.  Determine the times you’re most energetic. Some people are more energetic in the mornings and others are night owls. You should be able to determine from past experience which time of day you get more done. Those are the times you should schedule the most harrowing or mind bending of tasks.

2.  Identify what drains you of your energy. Be honest about this assessment. When you know which obstacles and situations keep you from being the best you can be, you can do what it takes to minimize them or eradicate them from your life.

3.  When you do have energy is it negative or positive? If you have lots of energy, but your output is all about negativity, you are likely in a constant reactive mode rather than a positive, active mode. Negative, but energetic people never seem to have enough time to get things done.

4.  Use your energy to make headway, not merely survive. We all have increasing demands on our time. The way that we meet it determines whether we go through life just barely getting by or having the energy to advance. Quit rushing through in survival mode simply to get things done. Choose performance over immediate solutions.

5.  Be consistent in the way you handle situations. When you experience energy highs and lows, you may find yourself reacting to situations according to your energy level. If you’re energetic, you can be positive, but if you’re lethargic you could react in a totally negative manner. Try to be consistent in your reactions and it will help your energy levels to be consistent.

 

Thomas Leonard, a highly successful financial planner and business entrepreneur says that time is an illusion – “There’s no such thing as time management. There’s only activity management in the time we’re given.” How much activity you get done in that allotted time is directly responsible for how energetic you are.

 

Make your activities into priorities according to your energy level. Performing low-energy tasks at times when you’re least energetic and high-energy tasks at times when your energy level is highest can help you meet all the demands and expectations and still have time to relax and enjoy life.

 

Energy Management vs. Time Management

You’ve likely heard the old adage, “Life is a marathon, not a sprint.” If you’re trying to manage your time effectively without paying attention to your energy management, you may end up with sprints rather than finishing the marathon of life.

 

Experts are now saying that productivity and success have more to do with how you manage your energy than it does with time management. As business entrepreneurs, we often try to do everything that gives us more time.

 

Eating healthy, staying fit, spending time with our children and connecting with others all take time and we do have to schedule some of our pursuits. Whether we have the energy for those pursuits is a problem that’s often overlooked.

 

Trying to adhere to certain times to manage everything can leave us all exhausted so that we’re not even able to relax and enjoy ourselves when we’ve “scheduled the time” for it.

 

The alternative to managing your time is to manage your energy effectively. It works by taking time for recovering from those lengthy sprints you take so you can finish the marathon with ease rather than anguish.

 

Here are some tips for managing your energy effectively:

 

·    List how you like to rejuvenate yourself. Make a list of what makes you feel refreshed, more creative and lifts your mood. Writing them down will help to remind you about the benefits of these uplifting activities. For example, watching a great series or show you’re following on television, sipping a cup of tea and listening to music can be very rejuvenating to your energy levels.

·    Double the time you usually take for breaks. Don’t stick to a time table when it comes to reviving your energy level. Take an hour rather than half an hour and have fun with whatever you’re doing.

·    Reward yourself for every goal reached. Do you have lots of projects and it seems you’ll never finish them to be able to relax and enjoy yourself. Break those projects down into parts and reward yourself after you complete each one – rather than waiting until the entire project is finished.

·    Make frequent recovery stops. While you’re on that mile-long sprint, you may feel the need to stop and renew your spirits and your energy. Do it! You’ll feel so much more like completing the marathon and you’ll be happier at the finish line.

 

Managing your energy is a much more effective way to get through life rather than putting time limits and making schedules for everything. Your inner energy thermostat doesn’t pay any attention to the time table you’ve created. Instead, make your energy the most important factor in the long marathon you’re up against.