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Awakening Emotional Intelligence

By Susan McNeal Velasquez
By Susan McNeal Velasquez

It is a part of our human nature to fear and avoid change, emotional discomfort, visibility, vulnerability and the unknown.

We want to be right, sure, safe and free from pain. We wish that we could find some way to reap all of life’s benefits and avoid any of the prices. We could call this our survival instinct.

We are alerted with feelings of alarm whenever our physical, mental or emotional safety or security seems at risk.

When we expect perfection from ourselves we become hyper-vigilant and use our instincts to scan our performance for flaws, cracks in our armor or potential problems that could leave us exposed and vulnerable.

We allow our minds to produce a constant stream of judgments about how we are measuring up. Are we good and right or bad and wrong? Are we better than or less than? Are we winning or losing the image game?

Opening to our intuitive message system can only be accomplished when we are willing to shift our focus from over-protectiveness of our established and tested image to a curiosity about who we are today.

The door marked intuition is opened by the enhancement of our emotional intelligence. That is obtained by a willingness to allow our feelings ample room to express themselves without being snuffed out the second they don’t comply with our notions of how we are supposed to feel.

Talking about love and peace when neither love nor peace is in our hearts is a cunning and evasive deception that we cannot access to our earned inner wisdom while using all of our energy to maintain a stoic and impenetrable ego image.

“I should” and “I have to” think and feel in a certain way, stunts our emotional expression and keeps us frozen in a prepackaged life deadened to the unpredictable and juicy aspects of our daily realities.

Why would we want to risk the upset and discomfort that unruly emotions bring to a perfectly modulated life? Truth is we probably won’t want to take that risk unless we have a deep desire to be a person of substance.

The desire to become substantial often forms out of the rubble of the perfect life turned disaster. Those of us who wished, hoped, dreamed and planned to be perfect and have the perfect life, if we are lucky, get gifted with a second chance to build a life that is real rather than perfect. When we become fed up with apologizing for who we are and tired of evading the depth of our pain and discomfort, we start the process of becoming visible to ourselves.

The narrow judgments that we have used to muffle our inner voice and cripple our emotional intelligence begin to melt away. What surfaces is an awakening of our true heritage. We accept that it is our responsibility to create a quality life for ourselves.

We begin to securely anchor our thoughts and feelings to intrinsic core values that serve to motivate us to seek out and affirm life-giving choices.

We give up procrastinating and finally decide to jump into the ring of life willing to be visible, vulnerable, vibrant and fierce with reality.

 

Susan is a local author, seminar facilitator and personal development consultant. Learn more at: beyondintellect.com

 

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Talking about love and peace when neither love or peace is in our hearts is a cunning and evasive deception….Truth! I wish the world was more coherent with the thinking you offer Susan. Great article. Thank you for posting it!

  2. Because of the static in my nervous system, sometimes I have to read your articles 3 times to fully comprehend them. When I do it’s magical!! I hope the other readers like me take the time to fully comprehend the messages you give us. Susan, you are an excellent teacher. Thank you.

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