Life and the world are a little bit more complex than most of us presume it to be. Our human nature is quite diverse requiring anyone who wishes long-term personal success and respect in the marketplace to walk the extra mile. Simply put, the world is full of people of all calibers that we have to interact with both at official, social, and family levels.
A beautiful day can easily turn ugly and chaotic in a single twist of a moment. None of us can control what others think or choose to do. But each one of us has absolute control over how to respond to what the world out there throws onto our faces. It is within your control to choose between peace or war; joy or anger; forgiveness or resentment; love or hate; working on the positives or the negatives; justice or injustice; truth or lies; and the long path of success or shortcuts, among others.
The power to guide these choices resides within us – it becomes a personal responsibility and duty to nature this force. People have made nasty choices that cost not only cost their own destinies but also made life miserable for themselves. It requires a lot of personal will and character to nurture and grow your emotional intelligence and find emotional balance in your daily life.
There is enough evidence that people with better emotional intelligence and balance, not IQ tend to succeed in the long term; and lead healthier and quality life. For heaven’s sake, unless you are looking for a job that requires your certificates, no one cares how many certificates you have; nor how well you have chewed books. Our daily interaction boils down to simple life principles that are universal to all of us, but that we use differently.
There are immense benefits therefore to work on your personal character development. Here I share five tips on how to improve and work on your emotional balance:
- Read and read some more – in books we find time-honored wisdom immortalized by those who lived before us. The lessons and experiences documented in books cannot be accessed any other way other than by reading the deeply held thoughts of the authors. There is no knowledge that can ever go to waste. Any knowledge acquired works on your inner being in the most mysterious ways, without even you knowing. Try reading diverse genres of books, even if for no other reason other than just the reading;
- Physical exercise – regular and sustained physical exercise is infinitely intertwined with your mental state and emotions. Robin Sharma refers to this connection as an axis of Physical sets – Mind sets – Heart sets and Health sets. In other words, physical exercise works not only on your physical body frame but also on your mind, feelings/emotions, and health;
- Invest in quality relationships – purpose to walk along with people who bring positive energy into your life, and not those who drain your energy. There is nothing worse than surrounding yourself with toxic people. Life is too short to be wasted in unhealthy relationships;
- Learn to stand your ground – emotional intelligence does not mean being weak or letting people trample down on you. Even when people cross your paths there are always a million ways of sharing your thoughts and asserting your authority and presence without lighting unending fires. This is what distinguishes the emotionally intelligent from those who are not; and
- Have clear goals in life – there is nothing that gives more emotional balance than having something that is worth living for, and if need be dying for. Greatness is earned from small achievements of daily targets that eventually build into a flood of momentum. Having clear and specific goals will keep you focused, help identify unnecessary distractions, and more fundamentally bring clarity in choosing what battles to fight and which ones are not worthy of fighting.
#As we start the new month of June, it is the final month of the second quarter of 2023. Have you kept your targets on sight for the year?