Posts tagged Emotional Intelligence
How To Recover From Your Mistakes
Jan 17th
I was playing in a Texas Hold-em poker tournament recently and won the final table… largely because I was able to put my opponent “On Tilt.”
That’s a poker term for when a player loses his emotional balance. They get angry or lose their confidence and start making poor decisions.
When it was down to me and another player, he had twice as many chips as I did. I wasn’t happy about that, but what could I do, but do my best with what I had? So, I determined to do that.
At one critical point, I bluffed by going all in when I had a poor hand.
When the other player folded, I did something that I rarely do; I turned over my cards to show what I had folded.
Why?
To shake his confidence.
And it worked.
He told me what hand he had folded, and it was clearly the better hand.
From that point on, I slowly began to take more and more of his chips. He’s a very good player and he started against me with great confidence. Then he lost it to some degree and never regained it.
Why?
Because he had made one mistake.
Well, that’s not really the reason.
The real reason was he made a mistake and wouldn’t let it go. He kept thinking about it, regretting it… and beating himself up for it.
So, he lost focus and he lost confidence in his abilities.
That experience reminded me of how important it is to recover from our mistakes as quickly as possible.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Sometimes we make big mistakes.
Maybe you haven’t, but I have, more times than I can remember.
When we blow it in some way, it’s good to remind ourselves that “there’s always another hand” to be played. We can get back in the game and move forward.
But to do that successfully requires a clear head and self-confidence.
Both are needed to enjoy playing the game of life or business. Emotional self-control, emotional intelligence, requires perspective
.We can put our mistakes or losses in perspective, stay calm and perform at the top of our game.
When we do that, our losses don’t hit us as hard and our success won’t lead to overconfidence.
So, the next time you make a mistake, don’t go “on tilt.”
Learn from the mistake, gain perspective and move on.
Exercise Your Mind
Oct 2nd
Yet history shows us that the people who develop artwork or discover a great scientific breakthrough are highly creative. They don’t allow themselves to think for hours but trust their institution instead. So perhaps we should spend more time developing our emotional intelligence and get these creative juices flowing. According to Chinese medicine those of us who spend too much time thinking have problems with our spleen and stomach. They are not functioning correctly and are unbalanced. I guess we all know people who overanalyze a situation and suffer from bad digestion and associated problems. Stress leads to stomach ulcers. How many physiatrists end up as patients?
But isn’t thinking just a learned response? A learned process if you like. We remember our reactions to all our various experiences. We know how we should respond when the situation arises again.
Despite the fact that we are thought to think and use our minds, scientist reckon we only use between 3 and 5% of our brains. What is the rest of it doing? Nobody knows for sure apart from it has something to do with our subconscious. This is sometimes called by some people our intuition.
When we have to make a quick decision, we use our intuitive abilities. We actually ignore our intuition and in the process become less creative if we have a long time to consider our thoughts. We make decisions based on past memories, knowledge and understanding as we are in fact simply regurgitating old memories.
People who develop artwork or discover a great scientific breakthrough are highly creative, as history has shown us. They trust their institution instead of allowing themselves to think for hours. So perhaps we should get these creative juices flowing by spend more time developing our emotional intelligence. Those of us who spend too much time thinking have problems with our spleen and stomach, according to Chinese medicine. They are unbalanced and are not functioning correctly. I guess we all know people who overanalyze a situation and suffer from bad digestion and associated problems. Stress leads to stomach ulcers. Psychiatrists end up as patients, how many, we can only imagine?
Our thought patterns can be negative, limiting and upsetting. Some people compare over thinking something to a crutch similar to smoking. Thinking too hard saves us from having to make a decision.
If we concentrated more on our intuitive responses and less on conditioned memory we would be more creative and less stressed. We would have more health and positivity. When you are healthy your energy flows. Fantastic new ideas and inventions would come to us. Why not try it for yourself and see where your intuition leads you?
