Beyond IQ: Harnessing Emotional Intelligence for Personal and Professional Growth

 There can be a lot of importance in our society placed on a person’s IQ, or Intelligence Quotient. Your IQ is a measure of what you know and how quickly you can use reason to solve problems. Traditionally, things like getting good grades in school, earning a high salary, and scoring high on job performance have been linked to having a high IQ. But there has long been debate over whether a person’s IQ alone is enough to measure their potential for success. Afterall, there are a lot of smart people out there whose lives are a complete train wreck. There must be more to creating your best life than just having a high IQ score.

Over the last couple of decades, there has been a focus on a new type of measurement called EQ, or Emotional Quotient. EQ measures your ability to recognize and control emotion, and how well you use social awareness to solve problems. The higher your EQ, the more likely you are to identify emotions in yourself and others, empathize with others, resolve conflicts successfully, and communicate effectively. A recent study also suggests that a higher EQ can help you to recover more quickly from acute stress.

So, what if you score low on your IQ and EQ tests? Are you doomed to a life of failure? Most researchers believe your intelligence, or your ability to learn and use reason, is fairly fixed at birth. You can certainly increase your breadth of knowledge through studying and you can sharpen your brain by reading, doing puzzles, and keeping active, but you can’t will your way to becoming a genius. Studies have shown that, even with a ton of hard work, people are able to raise their IQ scores by only a point or two. But EQ? That’s a different story.

At IMS, we’re training EQ. Remember, we all start life as purely emotional beings. It’s only later, with the acquisition of language, that we begin to attach thoughts to our feelings. “I’m feeling sad right now, it must be because of…” or “I’m angry right now, it must be because of…” And often, maybe most of the time, the thoughts we have are not really connected with the emotions we’re feeling at all. Rather we’re using our thoughts to rationalize the way we’re feeling. “I’m angry because that guy cut me off in traffic.” The truth is the patterns of anger were already inside you and the guy cutting you off just woke up that emotional state. If you had been driving along in a love-based state, full of optimism and grace, the guy cutting you off might have startled you, it might have got your heartbeat racing a bit, but it wouldn’t have left you wanting to t-bone the guy with your car and go at him MMA style on the side of the road.

This is what we specialize in. Building understanding around emotions and how they were formed. Building awareness of our emotions and taking ownership of them. Identifying triggers in the external world and using a proven process to dissolve fear-based emotions and train the love-based emotions that will get us where we want to be. One of our Power Series Weekend Intensives is the perfect place to start building your emotional intelligence. Click HERE to learn more and reserve your spot today!