Here is another part of my happiness series. The seven steps are based on the theories of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra. We already discussed physical intelligence , creative intelligence and mental intelligence.
Is this it?
This is where you have it all already and start to get bored. Is this all? Is this what I want to do with my life? It is time to develop emotional intelligence to learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings and to take responsibility for your feelings.
People who are highly emotionally intelligent do not let feelings rule them or let emotions run out of control. You will learn that boredom and dissatisfaction are just perceptions of ourselves. In this post on boredom we see that we have to learn to just ‘be’ rather than ‘do’ to cure boredom. Emotional intelligent people know how to feel energized and use feelings to set and achieve goals.
You can develop emotional intelligence by looking honestly at yourself and how you interact with people. Put yourself in others place and see things from their perspective. Be open. Examine how your actions affect others and take responsibility of your actions. Try to stay calm and keep your emotions under control. Or I should say in short; grow up!
The hard part of developing emotional intelligence is that you need to open your heart. Do not overwhelm yourself by working, eating, drinking, etc, but learn to live. If you don’t want to feel pain, you can’t feel happiness either. There are things in life that hurt. Accept it and learn from it. You do not need to hide yourself from it.
Deepak Chopra
Then, in order to overcome the ‘It this it?’ phase in our journey to happiness we also need to develop spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence are related, because you need some degree of emotional self-awareness and empathy before you can start on your spiritual growth. But at the same time your emotional skills will improve as your spiritual growth is unfolding.
Spiritual intelligence is the ability to behave with compassion and wisdom, the ability to develop meaningful relationships. Spiritual intelligent people know how to love. We learn to be respectful of differences in values, beliefs, cultural backgrounds and we are able to forgive. Spiritual leaders know how to stay calm and maintain loving behavior even under great pressure. Learn to be like a spiritual leader.
You can’t go through these steps in a single day. Many people need more than a lifetime to get only halfway through these steps. The next step in the series will be about developing social intelligence: I have something to say!
