emotional intelligence – HELEN MARTIN BLOG

Could the things your parents once told you be standing in your way of success today?

If you can’t find your voice during meetings, find it difficult to delegate, or give feedback, your discomfort may be rooted in your upbringing and the things your parents once told you.

By changing and reframing your inner narrative, you can achieve a different result.

‘Respect your elders’ and ‘Only speak when you are spoken to’, may be standing in your way of sharing your opinions.
** Reframe this narrative: You have been invited to that meeting for a reason and your advice is valued! Could withholding your opinion do more harm than good?

‘If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it at all’, may stand in your way of giving feedback.
** Reframe this narrative: Giving constructive feedback is like giving a gift of knowledge and development.

‘Don’t be selfish’, and ‘Think of others before yourself’ may stop you delegating because everyone is so busy.
** Reframe this narrative: By delegating you are giving someone the opportunity to grow and stretch and you can focus on the activities that will add more value for your organisation.

The next time you are in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable, you may wish to consider if your past is getting in the way of your here and now and what you can change?

There’s a reason why we say ‘old habits die hard’; we don’t really want to change…..Well we do, but our brain doesn’t!

Change is uncomfortable and it slows down your brain’s response rate, and since your brain is built for speed, it will resist any form of change.

My analogy to describe change is that your natural responses (neurones) are like sports cars, travelling at 200 miles an hour on an empty 10-lane highway in your brain. Any change, is like seeing a deer, jump onto the highway in front of your beautiful car. You need to brake and avoid crashing into the deer, and take your sports car off the highway, onto rough terrain, which is bumpy and very uncomfortable.

Each time you recognise yourself falling into old habits or response patterns, you will see that deer on the highway and you will need to slow down and veer off-road. The bumpy, grassy, path eventually does become smoother, the more you drive on it, but it will never be as smooth as driving on the highway.

Without change, you stay stuck in old patterns and you will get the same result, but how willing are you to embrace change.

Learn to slow down and reflect, so that you can understand where your natural responses take you. Ask yourself ‘what happened’ in a situation and ‘what you could have done differently’? Get in touch with your feelings. How did the situation make you feel? Does a specific person ‘bring out the worst in you’?

You may find it really interesting to understand where your ‘programmed responses’ stem from and how you can take a more emotionally intelligent stance to your next encounter.

Good luck and let me know if I can support you!

Category: emotional intelligence

How might your past affect your future?

What got you here, won’t get you there!