Publicerat: 2019-10-24
How high is your EQ? And what the hell is EQ anyway?
We go to school to boost our IQ. Intelligence quotient, that is. To equip us for the real, adult world. Math, grammar, writing, reading, science, economics, music, geography, history, languages, chemistry, biology. These things matter in our world. When it comes to feelings, school falls flat. Learning to liking ourselves? Building up self-esteem and self-confidence, or creating trust and security with ourselves and others? Learning how to practice empathy or express gratitude? We’re left to sort that out on our own.
Ignoring and misunderstanding your feelings, my feelings, his feelings, their feelings is the status quo. That’s just how things have been done. Our textbooks are filled with facts on WWII, not the reasons why the war happened in the first place, how fear was a driving factor. Seriously, though, this whole EQ thing – which happens to stand for Emotional Intelligence Quotient – is super new. First coined in the 1990s, the body of work is still being built, the books being written, the know-how being collected. How could we have learned something we knew little to nothing about? It’s like asking your French teacher to teach biochemistry, or your algebra professor to teach Latin. There really is no one to blame. We’re all victims. Until now.
Imagine learning to channel your emotions – everything from anger to joy – in a healthy way. Being taught how to identify your needs, to express them and fulfill them for real. Think what it’d be like to be tested on your ability to set and keep your own personal boundaries, to create a sense of self-integrity. How about practicing opening up, mastering the benefits of being vulnerable. Instead of acting in certain ways to protect us from our feelings, how to build up walls between ourselves and others by first of all leaving our feelings in the dark.
With all that behind us, we know this much is true: NOW is the power point. It’s time for some serious emotional muscle building. Our generation and those to follow are the ones who are making EQ an essential aspect of all learning. We begin with ourselves. First. Then we teach our children.
“Why must we hide all these feelings inside?Lions and lambs shall abideMaybe one day we’ll be strong enoughTo build it back againBuild the peaceable kingdom.” – Patti Smith
What makes high EQ, and what about low? How can I measure mine, and eventually start boosting it?
Picture a gym. Easy enough. Treadmills, stairmasters, weights. Now imagine a mental gym. Same concept. Only difference is that you enter this mental gym to strengthen your inner, invisible muscles, to detox yourself of the negative patterns standing between you and the real, raw, unfiltered, emotionally empowered you. You’ll turn your notion of how your thoughts and feelings work on their head, shaking up your definition of truth. Your world will expand. And life will get weird, cool, and straight-up incredible. If you put in the work, you’ll leave with the muscle. The emotional kind.
Welcome to The EQ GYM. A public, digital space to work out, train, expand, boost, and build up your emotional intelligence quotient. When you show up here, you show up for yourself. We offer a set of techniques – a lot like signing up for a class at the gym – that train specific muscles.
Muscles to build
0. Self-care1. Self-awareness 2. Self-perspective 3. Self-acceptance 4. Self-esteem5. Self-power 6. Self-worth 7. Self-support 8. Self-love9. Self-confidence
This is a guest post. The opinions expressed are the writer’s own.