Using Emotional Intelligence to Increase Motivation

by Christine Mockler Casper

As you prepare for 2014, it is an appropriate time to reflect and plan for discovering your uniqueness, strengthening your resolve, revealing and using your untapped potential, forging new relationships and designing dreams that you can turn into realities.

An understanding of Emotional Intelligence, (EI), will enable you to ignite your passion so you can use your ingenuity to create opportunities and take advantage of them. Understanding EI will also help you deal with challenges. Heightened EI will translate into insight, which you can turn into productive actions. These, in turn, will have a positive impact on those around you.

Now is the time for you to achieve breakthrough behaviors that demonstrate the greatness within you.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

EI is the ability to understand, manage and apply the information and creative power of your emotions as your greatest source of energy, influence, connection and motivation.

People with high EI behave authentically, compassionately, decisively and with clarity of intent, while bringing meaning into every event in their lives. They resist the urge to respond impulsively or without being aware of the information available from both their emotions and intellect.

How can your EI help you?

Emotion is natural. We feel emotions instinctively. But emotion also provides information, and it is this information that drives Emotional Intelligence. Individuals who process the information that their emotions are providing are more capable of thinking logically to move quickly from endings to new beginnings.

They can gain passion and personal control by defining "the mountain" and designing an ascent plan. Peaceful and disciplined, they are aware of their purpose, and thus move deliberately, with passion, power, and perspective.

Rather than suppressing emotions, they accept, address and then express them appropriately. They consistently prove that the impossible is possible. They know that something can be done and can focus their unique ingenuity on restoring wind to deflated sails.

People with high EI unite a sincere heart and a clear mind. The result is the freedom to be yourself and to use your potential to create a masterpiece. It is your emotions that give you your humanity.

How can you increase your EI – your ability to make conscious, reasoned and wise decisions?

1. Listen to yourself. Be in touch with your physical sensations, which alert you to emotions. Practice listening to your body and not suppressing the information that comes along with emotion. This information needs to get to your rational brain. It is proven that there is a mind-, body-, and emotional connection and you want all three to be in harmony. If they are not, that is a cue that you have something to work on.
2. If in doubt, check it out. Every time you feel an emotion, it is information. Emotions are not good or bad. They are valuable sources of data. (Your responses to your emotions may be good or bad.)
3. Always think: "Am I proud of my behavior now? Does it reflect who I am? Does it reflect my intentions? Is it aligned with my value system?"

4. Be careful how you frame things inside your head. Your self-talk is extremely powerful. Once you say: "I can't," you can't. We sabotage ourselves. And when you are not using your potential and self-confidence, you will not be able to pick up on signals being sent by others. You will not be able to use your IQ as well as you might.
5. Speak up. If you do not speak up, people will operate only from their own frame of reference with limited information. They are not mind readers. Provide them with information so they can make informed choices.
6. Have time alone to get to know yourself.

"We cannot leave the trap until we know we are in it." Mary Ferguson.

Life is about knowing what makes you unique in a positive and powerful way, and then living that reality and that potential.

7. Capture your feelings in words. Journal. Documenting what you care about will give you insights into who you really are and perspective about your life journey and destiny.
8. Practice using your intuition. A small bit of intuition can relieve you of the exhausting task of rationalizing. (Note: Logic makes you think. Emotions make you act.)
9. Generate emotions to motivate yourself. Nothing great in this world, no work of art, no relationship, no career success, has ever been accomplished without the power of emotions behind it. How? Go to an art museum and try to imagine what the artist was feeling as she created her work. Then determine what emotions she was trying to evoke in you.

Visualize. Have you ever gone to a scary movie and gotten scared? Why? Because the actors, directors and producers made the experience so vivid that your imagination took over and it became reality. Well you can do the same for yourself by visualizing clearly that which you desire.

10. Embrace the rule of three. Every day do three things - little, big or even tiny - to move you closer to your written goals, every day!

Increasing your Emotional Intelligence impacts every aspect of your life in a positive way. Affirm for yourself: "From Now On With Passion".

Available at:
http://cm-minc.com/bookinfo.html

Communication, Motivation
& Management, Inc.

TRAINING
EXECUTIVE COACHING
WORKSHOPS
KEYNOTES

www.CM-MInc.com

Christine Mockler Casper is an author, facilitator and an award-winning lecturer and keynote. She has spent the past twenty-five years assisting organizations to move forward to breakthrough results. She is a sought after international public speaker who enthusiastically conveys information while simultaneously modeling leadership principles necessary for success in today's dynamic economy. She is the Founder of Communication, Motivation & Management, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in leadership, communication, executive coaching and Emotional Intelligence. She is one of a select group to have received her certification in Emotional Intelligence.

Christine is frequently interviewed by the media and has been featured on numerous network shows including NBC10, Fox News, NBC Daytime, Good Day New York and NPR. She has produced and hosted an award winning television show.

Christine is credited with helping clients create a culture of trust, innovative services, exceptional customer loyalty, and outstanding leadership practices while fostering honest and open communication.

She has held a series of leadership positions within a Fortune 500 company and received her MBA from Northeastern University. She has a passion for providing insights and tools to assist in personal, professional and organizational transformation based upon strategies, techniques and thoroughly researched models for excellence. Her goal is to assist in the creation of sustainable skill sets and guidelines for continuous learning and enhanced performance.

Her book, From Now On With Passion – A Guide to Emotional Intelligence has received numerous Book of the Year Awards

Christine's website is www.CM-MInc.com. She may be reached at chriscasper@comcast.net