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The Myth of “making” other people feel upset, happy or anything else

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Emotional States – What They Are and How to Manage Them

A stare is the set of specific values in a person’s physiology, neurology and biochemistry that gives rise to their behavioural expression and their subjective experience of themselves and the world in any given moment. Some states recur in each culture with sufficient frequency to have acquired labels in the appropriate language. Examples include joy, depression, happiness, angst, and joie de vivre. Naming states implies a commonality of experience, which is not necessarily the case. Naming states does not describe the differences in individual subjective experience which actually exist within any particular named state: I.e. one person’s generation and experience of elation, misery or anxiety will be different from someone else’s and two people deliberately generating the same conditions within their bodies may call the resulting state by different names (See NLP glossary definition here)

State is a subject beset by cultural myth. This begins in childhood, when a child is told; “Don’t do (or say) that, you will upset ____”. Fill in the blank with a friend, acquaintance or relative of your choice. The point is that we learned early on that we would be held responsible for other people’s responses, emotions and states. We learned not to make personal remarks and to curb our comments for fear of offending others. In short, we learned to treat other people as if they were fragile and could be destabilised by a comment or question, all in the name of politeness.

As a result, we learned to believe that we ‘make’ other people upset, angry, or happy by our presence and actions. Equally, we learned to believe that others can make us feel emotions. For most people, these beliefs have become deeply held unconscious presuppositions. The evidence for this proposal is found in language and law. People say things like; ‘You make me so happy/angry/disappointed’, or even; ‘You made me spill my coffee’, when you are on the other side of the room.

Can You Have Control Over Other People’s States?

In recent times in the west, this presupposition about agency over other people’s emotions has been taken to extremes. The dictates about appropriate behaviour and comments both in the home and in the workplace are now subject to legal constraint, yet not subject to the normal rules of evidence. A person is deemed to have been harassed solely on the basis of their word. This used to be enough to have the matter investigated, not simply accepted. Now complainants are not required to offer a sensory description of the perpetrator’s exact comments, voice tones, posture, gestures, facial expression and points of contact if touched. While it is common for alleged offenders to deny intent to harass, the lack of requirement for proof still places all of us at risk of accusation.

(Note: If you would like to learn more about the New Code of NLP you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

The myth of agency over other people’s states is closely related to another prevalent western cultural myth about state: that decent people do not have agency over their own states. In other words, states happen to us. Many people suspect those who can and do choose their states of being shifty, dishonest, shallow and untrustworthy or at worst, psychopathic. It is well known, for example, that people involved in a crisis that attracts law enforcement or the press get a better reception if their behaviour is demonstrably emotional.

Despite the assumed lack of agency over our states, emotional behaviour in public is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the first half of the 20th century, when people kept a ‘Stiff upper lip’ in times of crisis, it was deemed to be a commendable effort on their part. The underlying assumption was still that they were behaving decently by not showing the emotion that had to be present and that it took some fortitude to do so. Children were expected not to make a fuss when they were upset, though it was expected that they were putting a Brave Face on their emotion. Anyone, adult or child in that situation who genuinely chose and adopted a different state would have been presumed to be morally bankrupt.

Actors have a frame that permits them to learn to embody different states for work without compromising cultural norms. Yet as a profession, in Victorian times they were considered not quite respectable, due to the perceived untrustworthy potential of a person who can act. As a culture, westerners like the idea that what you see is what you get, so long as it is in keeping with the beholder’s eye view of the context.

So the frame for proposing that anyone can learn to choose and change their state at will, is that it is both possible and doable while remaining a novel idea in the context of the culture. It is also extremely useful. The capacity to choose our states enables us to create tailor made states with the most helpful qualities for performing specific tasks. It also enables us to unload pointless, dismal states that have no function other than to indicate that an old pattern is repeating itself.

“The capacity to choose our states enables us to create tailor made states with helpful qualities.”

Learning to manage one’s states is an ongoing process. Initially it feels decidedly clunky while we find out how we put our states together and what we can alter to change them. It is simplest to conduct this exploration in a low stress environment where there is no pressure to succeed. You can learn processes to alter components of your state or simply pick one or more states from your repertoire and re access them to create a custom blend. When you engage your unconscious resources, you can create a custom state and progress quite quickly to choosing resourceful and enjoyable states for specific contexts. To begin with, it is possible to prepare your state ahead of time and then step into it as you enter the context. Later, when your skills are well developed, you can dispense with any ritual and simply ask your unconscious mind to deliver a suitable set of states for a context as you approach it.

(Note: If you would like to learn more about the New Code of NLP you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE Pty Ltd.

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Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

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Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7th April 2015)

Today we are considering the last, of Goleman’s recommendations for effective leadership in business. Along with self awareness, self management and empathy (without joining others in lack of resources), there are:

Relationship Skills:

  1. “Compelling communication: You put your points in persuasive, clear, ways so that people are motivated as well as clear about expectations.
  2. Team playing: People feel relaxed working with you. One sign: They laugh, easily around you” Goleman (2015).

Relationship skills is a shorthand name for the skills that facilitate useful initial interactions and enable them to develop into freely chosen, functional, mutually satisfying ongoing relationships. Just because you are assigned to work with someone does not preclude the possibility of choosing their company and vice versa.

If you are going to develop a relationship with someone in any context, first you have to make their acquaintance and engage and hold their unconscious attention. This is called establishing rapport with someone. Rapport is not just for first time encounters. Each time you interact with someone, including loved ones, friends and long time colleagues, you need to engage and hold their unconscious attention, preferably willingly on their part.

“To engage and hold someone’s, unconscious attention. This is called establishing rapport.”

Rapport, like empathy, is subject to widespread misunderstanding. It is defined in the previous paragraph, yet many people think rapport is liking and being liked by someone, getting on well with someone, reducing perceptible differences between people, being like (similar to) someone and sharing similar views on important subjects.,  These experiences may follow from engaging and holding someone’s unconscious attention, but not necessarily.

You can observe rapport in action if you watch people when they are engaged with each other. You will see entrainment of the parties’ rhythms with each other. These include movement, posture, gestures, breathing, voice patterns, rate of speech and sometimes rate of blinking. Certainly, rapport is often taught at this level, but this makes it harder work to learn than necessary and too specific to keep enough attention free for the matter under discussion. Does this sound familiar?

The common feature when people are engaged with each other is interest. This can be interest in the individual, interest in the conversation and/or interest in the topic of conversation. The greater the interest, the quicker and smoother the development of rapport., Thus one person can initiate rapport with someone by showing interest and engagement in their behaviour. Most of the time it will be reciprocated. Demonstration of interest is worth learning. The result may not be instant, but perseverance for a few minutes should free up the interaction making it more comfortable for both parties so interest becomes more natural.

You can create a frame for yourself to facilitate interest for the sake of developing rapport. If you are discussing a boring topic, for example, make a point of discovering your intention for having the conversation. When you find an intention frame that you find worthwhile, that can spark a genuine interest.

A bright but bored medical student started earning unacceptable grades one year. He was told to shape up or be sent down from university. He wanted to join a particular speciality in medicine, but found the course content irrelevant. He loved history and anthropology, so he created a frame for 20th century medical training that said: This is what they used to believe, now. With awareness of his intention and a frame that invited interest in the work, his grades improved markedly. In the fullness of time he became a specialist in his chosen field where he made radical and far reaching contributions.

When you establish rapport with topics and subjects as well as individual people and groups, learning flows with less effort and greater retention. Work becomes more interesting and less of a chore and colleagues can be friends. This is quality of life at work. Rapport enhances the quality of your attention and the quality of your attention enhances rapport.

In the longer term as interactions develop into relationships, rapport continues to be necessary and with application, becomes habitual. This is the underpinning relationship skill. If you go back and review Goleman’s evidence for relationship skills, you will find that he is describing evidence of rapport.

Emotional Intelligence And The Quality Of your Life

To close the series, here is another frame on rapport and by extension, on self awareness, self management and empathy. All of these qualities, skills and attributes, when practiced and in use can contribute to our own sense of wellbeing. When we feel welcome with the people in our lives, we have a better experience with them than if we are on guard or expect unhelpful consequences. This does not detract from our varying needs for time alone, be it five minutes or most of life. When we deal with people, if they are well disposed towards us, we tend to have a better time. This is my frame for agreeing with Goleman’s recommendations. It is not a homily about what should be done. It is a recommendation for increasing your own quality of life.

At my own happiest workplace as an employee, I stayed longer than in any other job I have had because of the people. I started as a casual and had amazingly welcoming experiences on my first two days. By the end of three weeks I had a permanent position, expedited by my manager. I continued to feel welcome and appreciated for the whole time I was there. I only left because Inspiritive was granted RTO status and needed more of my attention.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about Emotional Intelligence and NLP you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

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Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

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Empathy, Goleman’s 4th Component for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7th April 2015)

In the previous articles in this series, we have considered the first two of Goleman’s recommendations for applying elements of emotional intelligence in business and possibly in other contexts. Initially, I proposed that however worthy the frames and assumptions surrounding any recommendations might be, it is still useful to identify them and choose for yourself which, if any, fit for you. The following two articles discussed self awareness, and self management.

Today’s topic is called, Empathy

  1. “Cognitive and emotional empathy: Because you understand other perspectives, you can put things in ways colleagues comprehend. And you welcome their questions, just to be sure. Cognitive empathy, along with reading another person’s feelings accurately, makes for effective communication.
  2. Good listening: You pay full attention to the other person and take time to understand what they are saying, without talking over them or hijacking the agenda”.,  Goleman 2015

Goleman has answered the question; “How would you know if you are demonstrating empathy?” As before, the demonstrable acts are too specific to use for learning to do it comfortably, but they provide a clear idea of how empathy is supposed to operate. This description is different from the way many people, including some coaches and therapists, understand empathy. In my opinion, Goleman’s frame is much more robust as it is predicated on observation, listening, information gathering and external attention rather than interpretation of someone else’s behaviour.

The trap for new therapists is an understanding of empathy as ‘A Therapeutic Activity’ predicated on joining the client in their (unresourceful) experience so you can ‘share the pain’ and understand their predicament. This is not useful. If you join someone in their unresourceful state for more than 30 seconds without shaking it off cleanly and then returning to your own self, the chances are your state will become similarly limited. Then you will lose access to the resources you had in your working state. Now you have two people who cannot solve problems instead of one leading the other to a functional state.

“Joining the client in their (unresourceful) experience is not useful.”

Yet the skills for enabling the behaviour Goleman recommends are very similar, with important distinctions that ensure you stay resourceful and you only bring information back to your own state; not residue of other people’s states.

Consider three different points of view or perceptual positions:

One position is me in my own skin, aware of myself, my values, my outcomes and intentions, my posture and breathing and how I am using my attention.

Another position is me as observer. In the observer position I take my attention out of my skin, to somewhere I can observe an actor who looks like me in conversation with one or more other people. My brief is to gather information about the quality of the interaction between the parties and whether the actor who looks like me is engaging the attention of the other people. I notice if there is anything my actor could do differently to facilitate the outcome of the conversation.

From the observer position, I can move my attention to step into the shoes of the other person in the conversation. I match their posture, movement and breathing and after a few seconds, I begin to experience the conversation from their perspective. As soon as I have enough exposure to their take on the matter, I leave the other and return to the observer, with my information.

The observer is not engaged in the conversation, but is interested in each party’s take on it. The observer also acts as a way station or a metaphoric shower to remove all residue of the other person before returning to my own skin. In my own skin I only want myself and information I gathered when in the other positions. The only exception to this is when the other person has skills I want to experience for myself. Then I can take relevant elements of my experience in their shoes into my own position, but this is rare and requires special framing to preserve my integrity.

Use Your Imagination

The act of shifting perceptual positions uses the imagination. When I teach it, I do not expect students to be able to do it seamlessly in a live conversation until they have had some practice. There are exercises for learning the skills by replaying recent memories of conversations as if they were happening in real time. This way the skill is learned off line and can then be applied in real life without compromising the quality of your attention and without anyone else being the wiser.

It is important only to go to another person’s shoes via the observer. If you go straight from self to other, it is too easy to operate for an extended period partly from their position. If you do this you will probably become less resourceful and less clear about your own outcomes in the short term and you may experience burn out if you do it habitually. Many people think empathy is a self to other direct step. Goleman’s description, on the other hand, reflects the evidence you can experience only if you keep self and other cleanly separated by moving between them via the observer. The observer is valuable in its own right as a source of a different quality of information.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about the New Code of NLP you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

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Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes

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Daniel Goleman’s, Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7th April 2015)

Self management is the second of Goleman’s four recommendations for applying emotional intelligence in the workplace. To recap, he has identified self awareness, self management, empathy and relationship skills as qualities of leadership and attributes that lead to advancement in the workplace.

In the previous article, we considered the development of greater self-awareness and evidence to determine that or when it is present. Today, the topic is self management:

Goleman’s Synopsis of Self Management.

  1. Resilience: You stay calm under pressure and recover quickly from upsets., You don’t brood or panic. In a crisis, people look to the leader for reassurance; if, the leader is calm, they can be, too.
  2. Emotional balance: You keep any distressful feelings in check instead, of blowing up at people, you let them know what’s wrong and what the solution is.
  3. Self-motivation: You keep moving toward distant goals despite setbacks.

As with self-awareness, Goleman has provided a synopsis of what to look for as evidence that self management is in place and working. The function of evidence is to provide feedback about the quality of your self management strategy. If you try to learn directly how to do the characteristics of evidence, it will be hard work and take up all your conscious attention. This leaves a shortage of attention available for performing in your chosen context. If you are intending to demonstrate leadership, it will flat if you are trying to manage individual examples of behaviour.

“The state you are in at any time frames the quality of your behaviour, interactions and thinking capacity.”

Your state is the emotional, biochemical, physiological gestalt within which you function and contrary to popular belief, you can learn to change it quickly and smoothly. This is the basis of effective self management.

Self Management In Action

Applying self management strategically requires a modicum of self-awareness. This will give you information about your current state and context as well as direction for choosing what you want instead. When you discover that you can choose and change your state, you can learn to maintain a set of resourceful, responsive states that allow you to set an example, think on your feet and have access to all your competences. This is possible instead of being stuck in a low level state with inadequate resources and no patience with others.

People change their states naturally without necessarily being aware that it is happening. You can harness natural state change processes when you are aware of the way they work. If you could be a fly on the wall at an exercise class at the end of the workday, you would observe participants coming in talking about their day, still in work-related states and thinking about work. By the end of the class, they are more relaxed, animated, spontaneous and looking forward to the rest of their free time. Their bodies are more symmetrical and their movement flows.

Physical activity is one of nature’s state changers. The same thing happens with choristers who practice at the end of the workday. Singing requires a lot of breath and deliberate breathing is another natural state changing activity. If you want to change state by changing your breathing or moving your body with intent, a short, brisk walk around the block will be sufficient for most purposes.

As you review your context, with its people and tasks, your intention of being resourcefully functional and preferably able to enjoy the experience provides framing and search criteria for your unconscious resources to develop options for you. This allows you to engage a set of suitable states which probably include competence, resilience, creative problem solving and relationship skills all at the same time.

The advantage of managing yourself through your state is that a single process provides the capacity to demonstrate a whole collection of resourceful behaviour, naturally and spontaneously. Then your attention is free to concentrate on the matter at hand and your quality of experience will be enhanced.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about the New Code of NLP you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

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Self Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

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Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

If you read the, first article in this series, you may be attending to the assumptions that frame written and spoken communications and beginning to come to your own conclusions about their validity for you.,  In Daniel Goleman’s article in the New Yorker on 7th April, previously introduced, he identifies four qualities which he believes assist people in business.

The first recommended attribute is Self Awareness. Goleman describes the qualities of this as:

  1. “Realistic self-confidence: You understand your own strengths and, limitations; you operate from competence and know when to rely on someone, else on the team.
  2. Emotional insight: You understand your feelings. Being aware of what, makes you angry, for instance, can help you manage that anger”.

Self awareness means different things to different people and so do the associated ideas proposed by Goleman. He describes the results of realistic self-confidence above, but how do you know when you are doing that?

Gathering Information

You can compare your own knowledge and intentions with what is taking place in your environment. Then you can gather additional information and take action to support or change the situation.

Is competence a feeling of knowing what you are doing and if so, is that sufficient? If you are competent at doing something or taking charge of something, there will be evidence in the world that you can see and hear and point out to anyone who asks.

That is one component of self-awareness.

There is another aspect to knowing when you are competent. Are you relying on external validation from other people or the credentials you hold? These have their uses; minimally, they allow you to perform your function with enough latitude to become good at it.

Optimally, if you have the endorsement of a discerning expert in your field, you may be able to incorporate some of their standards in your yardstick for competence.

“The most reliable standard for competence is the product of your own research and experience.”

When you discover what you require of yourself when performing competently, with reference to your own values as well as criteria for competence that you have identified, you can answer fluently and confidently if asked ‘What are you doing that for?’

Clear Values And Self-awareness

To back up further, self-awareness is supported by knowing your own values. Most people run values at the back of their minds and have difficulty articulating what prompted them to take a particular course of action. When you interact with members of different cultures, either through travel or living in a multi-cultural context, different assumptions about proper behaviour bring some of your own assumptions to awareness.

You can identify values you hold by asking yourself what keeps you in your present job/home/car or other ongoing context. This applies whether your initial response is satisfaction or dislike. Another clue is accessible when you think you should do or not do something, but your inclination is the opposite.

If you explore your inclination, there is probably a value supporting it which is more important to you and further from your awareness than the value associated with the should.

And backing up even further, if you become aware of how you are using your attention in the moment, whether it is all or partly on your internal experience or the outside world at any you can alter the direction and quality to facilitate your thinking and interactions. Awareness of how your attention functions, allows you to access your presupposed values via your low level internal responses to others’ actions and your own and others’ expectations.

When you have these resources readily available to you, Goleman’s criteria for self-awareness will be a natural part of your repertoire.

The next article in this series is on Self Management.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about  NLP and Emotional Intelligence you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

If you found this article useful, share it!, 

Becoming emotionally intelligent In business

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Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7th April 2015)

On 7th April 2015 you could have read a short piece about Daniel Goleman’s criteria for emotional intelligence applied to business or the work environment. It gives a list of four recommended attributes for attending and behaving while at work.

In the article, these attributes are described briefly and attributed to those people in leadership positions who are thought to be particularly able. As is often the case with short pieces taken out of context on what you ‘should’ develop to enhance your success in something, there is no clear instruction given, though Goleman’s definitions are sufficiently descriptive to allow you to draw on your own experience to make meaning.

The four attributes are, and I quote:

  1. “Self awareness
  2. Self management
  3. Empathy
  4. Relationship skills”.

“The, four, attributes of Emotional Intelligence: Self awareness, Self management, Empathy, Relationship skills.”

Before we consider what these concepts mean and how to acquire or enhance them, there are questions worth raising.

The original article is based on the assumption that you want to demonstrate qualities associated with leadership, progress, success and by extension, reap social approval. You probably do, but not necessarily, so these are questions to bring you awareness of exercising your choice and agency.

Does the idea of embodying this class of quality appeal to you, personally? Does it fit and enhance your own concept of who you are and who you want to become? Might you have been subscribing to assumed ideas about what is appropriate and useful in society and business without noticing? Would you like to be more aware of frames offered to you by others so you can choose the ones you want, knowingly?

Whatever your answers, you might want to read on in case some of the qualities themselves appeal to you. They could assist your endeavours in contexts outside work, too.

What We Have In Store For You

Over the coming days we shall explore each of the four attributes with reference to the frames and assumptions that promote them. Then, for the ones you choose, you can learn how to acquire, enhance and personalise them in keeping with your own values and preferences. If you find some of them worthwhile, you will derive far more utility from them when you know what you are choosing them for and how you anticipate their functioning in your own life.

Bringing new qualities to life and giving existing but previously unnoticed qualities some discerning attention, provides you with your own frames for applying them in the world and the capacity to notice what frames are being offered to you by others.

We live in a world of frames ranging from That is OK, that is not OK to This is how we behave and think at work to This is how we behave at a weddings to This is how we think about other people to This is how we are supposed to think about other people.

Start to notice what is being assumed in pieces of writing and in familiar contexts and what is being assumed in different places in your world will begin to become more noticeable. How much of it can you influence with your choices when you have that awareness?

In the next article, we shall consider Self Awareness as described by Goleman, what else it could be and how to develop and apply all or parts of it.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about NLP and Emotional Intelligence you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

If you found this article useful, share it!, 

Exceptional People Align These Three Elements

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People who reach high levels of performance and become exceptionally effective in their field show certain patterns of behaviour that many people would not even be aware of.

One of these patterns is the ability to manage their state, or be ‘emotionally intelligent’ as some like to call it.

However, managing your state is only one element of the patterns that people like this engage. There is more to it, and after reading this article you will have a better idea of how you too can manage your state more effectively.

Elements To Consider

When managing your state it can be useful to consider the context that you are in. For example, a state that will be appropriate while at a romantic dinner with your partner, will probably not be your best option while sitting at a family dinner.

Aligning state and context creates functionality of behaviour as illustrated by research published in the article How to Control your feelings – and live happily ever after, By Steve Ayan published in Scientific American Mind magazine.

When describing the findings of the research, the article reads; Tamir and Ford found that people with high emotional intelligence opted for whichever feeling had greatest utility – regardless of whether that emotion was pleasant.

Which brings us to the next point. Your intention for being in that context and communicating with those people.

Your Intentions Matter

Being aware of what you want from or in a specific situation is another important focus of attention. Having a clear intention can be a very useful guide to choosing your state to support you in a given situation.

For example if somebody is at work just with the intention to make some money and go home at the end of the day, they will have a strikingly different state from that of somebody who is at work to engage actively and make progress in their career.

Being aware of these differences and aligning them consistently can help you become exceptionally effective in whatever you choose to do.

Now it’s your turn!

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Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE

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