Yesterday, I wrote to you about how to hack your physical state for optimal performance and energy levels. Today, I will discuss hacking into your emotional state as the second component. While one state is not more important than the other, I like to believe that our emotions play a big part in our daily lives and it has a lot to do with success. Lets dive right in.
A story about John
John is your every day happy-go-lucky type of guy. People often wonder if he was born this way or if this was manufactured in some way by being committed to having a sense of contentment in life. On a day-to-day basis, John has a zest for living and has the ability to laugh and have fun. When times get tough, John has the ability to deal with stress and bounce back from adversity. Throughout his day, John has a sense of purpose and knows where he is headed. When times get tough, he has the flexibility to learn new things and adapt to new environments and change for the better. John is pretty self confident and has a high self-esteem and because of this, he has the ability to build and maintain fulfilling relationships. Overall, John maintains a balance between life, work, play and rest. John is one happy camper!
How did john become this way? Was he born this way or did he work towards this type of emotional state little by little? The truth is – I have no idea! However, my logic only tells me that genetics “may” have something to do with it but may be a very small percentage (I’m no psychologist). However, I do know that everyone has a choice in their attitudes towards life and their emotional state.
Here are a few suggestions to reboot (hack) your emotional states “by choice”
- Meditate early in the morning
- Make a list of every energy vampire you know and spend less time with them.
- Set goals and priorities in life – the more focused you become, the less your emotional state becomes stressed.
- Recover from setbacks, mistakes and failures by “believing” and admitting that in order for success to come our way, we first need to make a few mistakes. Its OK, its not the end of the world. Less stress equals a healthier emotional state.
- Get plenty of physical exercise.
- Practice self-discipline.
- Get out more often – a 10 minute walk will do wonders for your emotional state.
- Limit unhealthy habits such as worrying. Worrying is a repetitive mental habit and worrying fixes nothing.
- Get a Shelby – sorry, my Shelby is not for sale! Adopt a dog, a cat. Caring for a pet makes you feel needed and loved.
- Make leisure time a priority – plan your weekends ahead of time and go do something with your family and friends.
Finally – did you know that there is such a thing as emotional intelligence? Our ability to decipher emotions in others and become self aware is one of six forms of intelligence according to Howard Gardners theory of multiple intelligence’s. I would definitely suggest reading a book called Emotional intelligence 2.0 – the book has helped me a lot and I am sure it will help you as well. The great thing is, in the back of the book, there is a free self-eximation so you can find out your EIQ score via the talentsmart web site.
Since I love psychology, over the years I’ve been learning a lot about the psychology of success and EIQ is very important to learn more about. As an example – if you have a very low EIQ, that also means that your self-awareness and awareness in others is very low as well – how will you have the ability to hack your emotional state and improve it if you lack self-awareness (the ability to self-diagnose)?
I hope you enjoyed part two of this three part series. The next and last part will be about the mental state and how to hack that. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Please click here to read part three.