1. Emotional resilience: Foundations first
Printer Friendly Written by Rachel Green. Director, The Emotional Intelligence Institute. Author of "How to develop emotional resilience and manage your emotions".
Emotional resilience isn't something that you suddenly need in a crisis. Emotional resilience is not something that you quickly gain when a problem arises. Emotional resilience is a skill that you develop, over time, when you are not in a crisis.
It is developed by behaviours that you engage in, habits that you develop and positive emotions that you foster in yourself. Then, when a problem arises, you already are using the skills you need to stay buoyant and cope with pressure and adversity.
There are of course extra things that you can do, when difficulties arise. These are also important. If the results of these are added to a strong foundation of emotional strengths, positive emotions, and positive self-management they will work even better.
Example of low emotional intelligence
Let me give you an example of what I mean. This example displays a low emotional intelligence and a lack of emotional resilience. One of several methods I use to help build up my own emotional resilience is meditation. I use a particular meditation called loving-kindness meditation. I teach this to others too.
One night in the meditation group I teach in, a man came up to me and told me loving-kindness meditation didn't work, that he'd tried it that week and it had failed. Apparently he'd been down the pub and had got angry at someone. At that point he decided he needed to practise the loving-kindness meditation he'd heard about for the first time the week before. He tried it, stayed angry and ended up thumping the other bloke.
Of course the loving-kindness meditation didn't work. He hadn't practised it prior to the crisis.
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Imagine now that he'd had a daily practice of loving-kindness meditation for a number of months, and that he had developed it as a skill that was easily accessible to him and on call.
Then when he'd met this man he could have used it to stay calm, meaning he would have been emotionally resilient and displaying higher levels of emotional intelligence.
If you want emotional resilience, start by laying down some solid foundations of emotional self-management and positive emotions.
We will discuss the emotional intelligence techniques you can use to do this in future articles.
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The three pillars of emotional resilience: The opening chapter from the emotional resilience DVDs
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