Gill Hasson

Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook: Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life

Gill is a teacher, trainer and author, with over 20 years’ of experience running personal development courses. Her published work includes the bestselling Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence. She also works as a career coach.

Her book, Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook: Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life, outlines over fifty situations, where understanding and applying our emotional intelligence (EQ) can be beneficial. For each one she offers practical exercises, tips and techniques designed to help the reader.

It’s divided into four sections:

Understanding emotions:

- Dives into what emotions are, where they come from and why we have them.

Managing emotions:

- Looks at ways we can express and regulate emotions to help construct positive outcomes.

Developing your emotional intelligence:

- Considers situations where it’s important - and in our interest - to focus on our individual emotions.

Developing your social intelligence:

- Considers situations where we it’s important - and in our interest - to focus on other peoples emotions.

Here’s our favourite idea from each section.

Understanding the aspects of emotions

Emotions can be difficult things to get a clear perspective on. So when you experience an emotion, it’s useful to look at in terms of three separate factors: thoughts, physical feelings and behaviour. There’s no specific order running order, but each factor can set in another one in motion.

Here’s Gill’s example of how this might, play out when your central heating has broken down….(let’s say for the second or third time!)

• First you feel a physical response; tense muscles and increased heart rate. This triggers a behavioural response - you thump the nearest table - followed immediately by the thought,“Oh no! Not again. I’ve had enough of this!”.

Or.

• You thump the table first, which triggers tense muscles and increases your heart rate, and you immediately think ‘Not again’ .

Or.

• You think ‘Not again’ , your muscles tense and your heart rate increases, before you finally thump the table.

When we experience a distressing emotion, we may fail to acknowledge that it’s playing out in a particular sequence. Recognising the start of the sequence may help us regulate our responses and actions.

Imagine when you’re about to give an important presentation at work. What emotion does this immediately provoke for you? Consider the thoughts, physical feelings and behaviours that you attach to this emotion. How are the factors defining and shaping the overall experience for you?

Alternatively, next time a situation provokes a strong emotion - such as joy, fear, surprise or anxiety - observe your thoughts, physical feelings and behaviours. Keep doing this. Are the same sequences occurring when you experience the emotion, regardless of the situation?

By acknowledging the three different factors that comprise an emotion, we can increase our awareness of how these emotions might play out in any given situation and take back control of what is happening.

Managing disappointment

Experiencing disappointment is inevitable. We’re all familiar with the feeling that comes with missing out or when we’re unable to meet our own expectations. When things don’t materialise the way you hoped they would, it’s likely we’ll have to endure some form of discomfort.

Gill astutely states that: 

“Any person who has succeeded or achieved something has [had to] overcome disappointments”.

In fact, it is often the lessons learnt from disappointment, that create the change needed for people to reach their goals. An emotionally intelligent approach encourages you to recognise that disappointment has a positive purpose - which is to help you to uncover valuable insight on yourself, others and the situation. It prompts you to reflect on what has gone on, adjust your expectations and move forward with heightened awareness.

Start by acknowledging your disappointment. As an emotion that’s rooted in sadness you need to sit with it for a bit. Ignoring or suppressing it only serves to delay and magnify its impact.

Once you’ve sat with the disappointment it for a bit - ask yourself some questions. Here are mine:.

• How does this compare to previous disappointment?

• How did I deal with disappointment then?

• What did I learn about myself from that experience?

• What can have I learn about myself this time?

Personally, I find talking through these questions with a coach or peer the most effective way of reinforcing these insights.

Finally - move on. Easier said than done, right? But once you’ve sat with the disappointment for a bit - learnt a thing or two from it - make a decision that you are going to be future-focused.

Try changing your language. Switch phrases like “I should/shouldn’t have…” into “Next time I’ll/Now I’m going to…”.

Acting ‘as if’

This builds on Idea #1 and the concept of an emotions having three different factors: thoughts, physical feelings and behaviour. It suggests that by recognising that each factor triggers another, you can act ‘as if’, and create a stepping stone for invoking a productive emotion - such as confidence, happiness, compassion etc. For example, your thoughts can influence your behaviour what you do which in turn can influence your physical feelings.

Gill talks about a guy called Chen, a freelance illustrator, who says that when it comes to work ‘feeling like it’ rarely comes before actually ‘doing it’.

I’ll wager this is a familiar experience for many of us.

And although he doesn’t feel like it to start with, Chen pushes through that mindset, starts drawing and quickly becomes absorbed in his work. By acting ‘as if’, Chen knows that if makes a decision (thoughts) to begin drawing (behaviour) he will soon feel captivated by his work (physical feelings).

Make a start on something. Just one thing. It’s likely that you’ve already decided it’s a worthwhile thing to do, so don’t give your mind anymore time to resist. Once you’ve taken initial action, like Isaac Newton says, it’s easier to keep things in motion.

Need to have a difficult conversation with someone? Decide on your opening lines and jump right in. Only by engaging in the activity will you get clarity on the situation.

To help invoke a positive emotion, dedicate a few minutes to exploring the three different factors that constitute that emotion. Draw on your experience and spend a bit of time reflecting on the thoughts, behaviour and physical feelings that align you with that particular emotion.

Imagine you are bored a during work meeting. Consider what you would be doing if you were more engaged. Taking notes? Asking questions? Asking for other peoples’ opinions? Maybe start to act ‘as if’ with a thought, or behaviour, that aligns you to a more positive feeling.

Shutting someone up. Nicely.

I imagine it won’t take you long to recall the last time you were stuck with someone that likes talking, but seems to hate listening. The especially bad ones are always repeating themselves, are constantly complaining, or just never…stop…talking!

We all know the sort, right?

Whilst this is a common experience, we rarely do that much about it.  Instead, we normally just get bored and perhaps stop listening all together. Or worse - end up getting so irritated that we’ll snap with an overly harsh reaction, which means that we instead focus all our energy trying to keep calm. Either way, doing nothing and allowing the other person’s behaviour to eat into our valuable time is clearly not a good strategy. Fortunately, there are ways we can bring things to a conclusion conversation without appearing rude. We can shut someone up. Nicely.

Gill suggests we should start by boosting our own listening. If we want to finish the conversation, we should look for an entry point where it’s possible to take the subject briefly in a new direction. Make eye contact and consider using another physical gesture, such as casually raising your hand or standing up if you’re already sitting down. Then add some experience of your own that will confirm you’ve listened to what’s been said.

For example, “Well  your Italian holiday sounds great…’ and immediately continue by deflecting the topic, “I’ve not been to Italy, but it’ sounds like a place I need to check out”. Then wrap things up with a compliment, “Right, I’ve got to crack on now. It was great to hear about that experience . Speak to you later”. The person will always feel happier to let you go if you say something positive.

Your thoughts:

Have you read Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook: Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life, already?

Do you think these ideas are useful?

Feel free to leave a comment below.