What if you could let go of the past and create a new future? What if you could find peace within the pain so that it does not hold you back or hinder the progress of your life? What does it mean to tend your inner garden?
It can be challenging to let go of the life we planned to create the life that is meant for us. Nurturing our emotional intelligence (EQ) is one way to spark that inner capacity for growth. By honing our EQ skills, we find inroads that help us to let go, find peace within, and create the positive changes we seek. By tending to our inner garden, we develop the capacity to realize an optimal state of development by practicing ways of letting go.
Self-Awareness
To grow, we need to have a certain level of self-awareness. Emotional intelligence enables us to understand our needs, wants, and desires. By setting goals to manifest these building blocks of life, the capacity for success arises through actionable steps that can make those goals a reality. While taking those steps can often create unease, as Lao Tsu once said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Self-Awareness is the foundation for success. To achieve it, we must realize the nature of our emotions, the building blocks of our feelings, and learn ways to direct them towards successful outcomes. However, an attitude of success is not easy to create, especially if we do not have a long list of successes behind our belts. The key for optimal Self-Awareness, create the means by which small victories can create movement towards more remarkable achievements by breaking significant goals into smaller and more manageable pieces. You need success to create success, and by taking this small step, you assure yourself a fighting chance to realize that goal.
Self-Awareness and Empathy
Creating an environment where you feel completely comfortable expressing yourself is also essential for self-awareness. Emotional intelligence allows us to be in tune with our feeling state. This allows us to connect with others through empathy. Empathy creates a deeper level of understanding for one another. The compassion that arises from this level of knowledge enables us to observe how someone reacts and understand their actions and reactions based on the emotions from our personal past experiences.
Empathic connection helps build stronger relationships. An emotionally intelligent person can listen better because they understand where the speaker comes from and may feel what they feel. Empathy allows us to listen in ways that create better understanding versus arguing to prove a point.
Self-Management
Emotional Intelligence is about learning ways to identify our emotional state before it adversely affects our lives. By knowing what is happening, we can effectively navigate those emotional currents to create more significant outcomes. Having a high EQ means cultivating calm and peaceful feelings from within, even if it seems that everything else may be falling apart around us. While we cannot control our external reality, we can control our reactions to those events. At the end of the day, these events will be most affected by how we react to them versus the event itself. Why not find a way to remain calm and find peace within. Regardless, the event happened; would you instead navigate it towards a healthy growth opportunity or have it derail your personal course.
While the capacity to rationally think is a significant lens to view emotions, we all know that feelings can take over at times. Emotions often times get us into trouble. This happens more than you think and usually involves tense conversations with family, friends, or colleagues. Having self-management skills enables us to control impulses before doing something we may later regret.
What can you do? Determine if you can see both sides of a story. Allow open discussion about what you need and want while allowing for the same on the other end. Emotionally intelligent people understand that communication is critical. Through practice, they engage in conversations while keeping their emotions separate. Instead of taking it personally, they look for opportunities where win, win scenarios can take place.
Emotionally Intelligent People Tend To:
- Be patient with themselves before expecting patience from others.
- Expect and actively work towards personal change and progress
- Be more collaborative than competitive when helping others
- Take a step back to think before acting or speaking,
- Observe so they can better understand how others might be feeling through their social cues.
- Be in better control of their impulses because they know what makes them happy and what can potentially hurt others.
Conclusion
If you are holding onto something that is no longer serving you, or if there are people in your life who have hurt you and caused emotional damage, it’s time to let go. Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting what has happened; instead, letting go means learning from the past so that you can create a better future.
Don’t be afraid of change- embrace it as an opportunity to grow into the person God created you to be! Tell yourself, this year, I will work on releasing expectations. Learn to be more self-aware and self-loving. Above all, make a means by which you find actionable goals to break into bite-sized pieces so that you may foster an inner sense of wellbeing in the direction you undertake. It’s essential for your mental health and well-being.
As always, namaste, my friends. May blessings find you along your journey towards emotional intelligence and the cultivation of your dreams.
