Life is full of challenging feelings, and they are inevitable. The way you handle those challenging emotions is what defines your emotional intelligence. Adam Grant, a famous psychologist and best-selling author, claims that one answer indicates your EQ is extremely low and can be summed up in just four words. It’s perfectly normal to feel angry when someone at work acts in a selfish, careless, or manipulative manner; in fact, research suggests that rage can even be constructive when well-directed. “Blaming someone else for your rage is unhealthy,” Grant stated in a recent episode of his podcast ReThinking, featuring a physician, Susan David.
This four-word phrase could mean that you have low emotional intelligence
According to Adam Grant, emotional intelligence is characterized by a willingness to relinquish agency over emotions rather than relying on others to make one feel, as opposed to the misattributed line “No one can make me feel anything.” This implies that you may be missing out on a chance to greatly raise your own EQ if you frequently employ the same expression, “You made me feel.”
It’s not that our emotional intelligence isn’t influenced by other individuals. They do, of course. Nobody is claiming that other people’s actions can’t be truly terrible and deserving of our ire, sorrow, or disappointment. Grant also goes to great lengths to stress that his remark shouldn’t be interpreted as absolving real terrible actors of responsibility. The two psychologists emphasize, however, how dehumanizing it is to think that we have little conscious control over our mental and emotional reactions to other people’s ordinary problematic behavior. Between stimulus and response, there is a void. “You are in charge of your behavior, but I get to decide how I respond,” Grant insists.
This is how people should approach emotions for a higher emotional intelligence
The notion that we possess the ability to decide how we react to challenges and setbacks is alluring. However, it also brings up a crucial query. “You made me feel” suggests that others have complete influence over our emotions, which is a warning sign for inadequate emotional intelligence. What is the alternate strategy? What is the precise process for creating and using the gap Grant discusses between stimuli and response?
In the episode, Grant and David exchange some thoughts. For instance, David recommends a small but crucial change in the way you consider your feelings: If we consider the words we use, I am sad when we say, “I am.” I’m upset. They’re undermining me. You are demonstrating a total language union between your feelings and who you are. There isn’t a gap between stimulus and response here where you can choose otherwise. David advises telling yourself, “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad,” as opposed to, “I am sad.”
Moreover, emotions are stories we make ourselves to explain our mental and physical experiences, according to research. You allow yourself room to tell better, different stories when you use language to remind yourself that they are formed in this way. Although Grant previously wrote about this intriguing technique, he recently came across a more useful strategy that converts scholarly theory into straightforward, real-world application. Decades of research support what is known as the Wiser technique. Watch, interpret, choose, engage, and reflect are the words that make up Wiser. Grant’s concept proposes that rather than being overwhelmed by emotions, one should observe and examine them before deciding how to name and respond to them in practice.
This technique allows for the study of unpleasant thoughts while avoiding sensations that are unhelpful. Emotional intelligence can be greatly enhanced by taking a step back and thinking about your thoughts before acting on them. Attempting to suppress or dismiss emotions with pure willpower rarely succeeds.
