Why emotional intelligence is underrated

Hans Chan -

What I’m Reading

I’ve recommended reading Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio before. I’m personally rereading it to refresh myself with some of the concepts which is helpful in these uncertain times. It’s still my favourite economics book. Even if the idea of reading an economics book sounds boring to you, I want to assure you that it’s very well written for the layman to understand, I looked at world macroeconomics completely differently after reading it.

Resource of the week

There aren’t very many trustworthy sources for UK-centric general advice around personal finance but Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert newsletter and website is definitely one them. Most people would be quite a few £s better off from having a browse and it’s all free! I read the newsletter every week.

Quote

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Marcus Aurelius

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Thoughts

I’ve been looking after a cat for a friend recently and sometimes I look at him and wonder what sort of mood he’s in. He does a lot of unpredictable things, one moment he’s acting cute and another he’ll start biting and kicking my hand. He’s a real menace.

With time I can sort of tell if he’s feeling playful, irritable, or wants to be affectionate and I can behave accordingly. In a similar way, I try to be observant to manage my own emotions. A few years ago I read a book called ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ and the author introduced the concept that our brains are comprised of two ‘systems’ where if I simplified it, one is our feeling selves (System 1) and the other is our thinking self (System 2).

In the evolutionary cycle, System 1 is far more ancient whereas System 2 grew from this much later. So System 1 acts much faster and can even hijack our behaviour. We all have days where we feel really down and unmotivated and no amount of forcing ourselves works. One way I’ve found helpful is detaching and becoming an observer, almost treating System 1 like a pet, referring to it as a third person.

How is he feeling today? Happy, or anxious, or angry? The third-person thing takes any ego out of it, I’m not in denial if I’m feeling sad for instance. I find that simply understanding my own state of emotion is quite an empowering feeling as we are aware and no longer a slave to it and can take steps to address it. For example, if I feel sad, while I might not feel like doing any exercise, I know for a fact that every time I jump on the rowing machine I feel better every single time after, so I just go on autopilot.

It helps me pinpoint things, I was quite bad at understanding my own emotions but doing so then leads me to ask ‘Why am I feeling this way’. So I can add more of the positive things in my life and cut back on unnecessary things, things that are a drain.

We like to think of ourselves as logical creatures, but the fact is our brains aren’t built that way. I used to think IQ was super important but the fact is lots of high IQ people are employed by people less intelligent than them. The book goes on to make the point that most leaders are very emotionally intelligent who are able to influence others. It found that those who understood their own emotions were most adept at reading that of others.  

So next time you’re struggling with procrastination or your diet or just feeling down maybe try not to be so hard on yourself, to find the root cause and reframe.

Hans