Tune up your EQ

In the second of this three part series, I described how Susan used her self awareness to become more aware of her thought processes. In this final post, I describe practical things that Steven can do to become more receptive to feedback from other people.

How Steven struggled with criticism

Peale saw clearly that the negative thinker who wanted to become a positive thinker faced the challenge of adopting new habits. Steven’s case shows of some of the challenges involved. He tends to respond defensively to any criticism that he receives. Steven is a negative thinker.

Try as he might, he automatically rejects constructive feedback that he gets from his friend, Deborah. Deep in his heart, he knows he’d like to respond more positively, because he knows that Deborah cares for him. To successfully change this impulsive habit, Steven will have to exercise greater self-control.
It’s a challenge, but can Steven do it?

There is a growing body of brain based research that shows us practical ways that Steven can use to change himself. For example, he wants to change, but he stays stuck, feeling “this is just the way I am.”

Dr. Ellen Weber shows that Steven is wrong to think that his nature is fixed.

She says:

“interestingly, habits come far less from “human nature” than most realize.”

A centre in Steven’s brain, called the basal ganglia, stores the patterns and routines that shape his habits. As Steven takes a step to doing something differently, he creates new neuron pathways in his brain. Each new step that he takes gradually rewires his basal ganglia with successful skills for changing his habits.

We change our habits one step at a time.

Dr. Weber suggests three things that we can do to getting going:

• Set clear targets.
• Motivate ourselves to follow up.
• Do one concrete strategy.

How positive thinking and self management connect

The second powerful EQ competence, self management will help Steven immensely. In his book, “Working With Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman refers to the self management as the ability to:

“handle our emotions so that they facilitate, rather than hinder the task at hand.”

Today, there is far more information about how our feelings are manifested and how our body reacts to them than Peale ever knew. Steven can use this knowledge to help him to become more open to constructive criticism.

Steven’s self management steps

He can practice counting to 10 (or better still 101), breathing deeply or distracting himself, by thinking about his favourite song whenever he realises that he is about to lose his cool.

If he is determined, practices one or more of these new habits and remains patient with himself, he can learn to respond to other people’s criticism more positively and bring about a lasting positive improvement in his quality of life.

Self management is a critical competency. As he becomes more adept at managing himself, he will be better able to persevere despite any setbacks that he encounters.

It will help Steven to:

• Develop a vision of the changes that he wants to achieve.
• Maintain that vision, for as long as he wishes.

Why EQ would have made Peale more effective

Peale always gave people practical tools and approaches that they could use. EQ would have made his toolbag bulge to overfilling.

He’d have taught his students the self management competency to show them how to “own” the change that they wanted to achieve. He’d show them how to adopt and to sustain the change throughout the rest of their life.

Perhaps Peale would have put himself out of business.

Peale created an approach that showed people what they needed to do have a happier life. His methods resonated with millions of people. Positive thinking was a breakthrough. As a positive thinker, Peale sold himself on the idea that human beings possessed unlimited potential.

On the final page of “Why Some Positive Thinkers Get Powerful Results,” he quoted Thomas Edison:

“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astonish ourselves.”

Why Peale would have been astonished

The EQ competencies of self awareness and self management have provided people with tools that have sharpened and improved Norman Vincent Peale’s positive thinking paradigm. Were he to be here today, even this legendary positive thinker would have been astonished by the power of EQ and the impact he would have had if he had used this master competence.

Do you see yourself as a positive thinker?

Do you think that positive thinking can change our world?

Further resources

There is a lot of information about Norman Vincent Peale. Wikipedia is a good place to start. Many people also criticised his approach, so I encourage you to look at both sides of the story.

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