STRESS, RESILIENCE & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

We can’t always change our environment, but we can develop mastery in how we respond.

It’s difficult to remember when a world this chaotic touched our lives. Globalization, technology and social-political challenges serve to accelerate our fast-paced, changing environment. Initiatives focused on getting people, processes, and systems working faster and more efficiently have exacerbated the problem, diminishing the hoped-for improvements. To respond and thrive, we need to build resilience and agility to deal with the emotional roller coaster and pressure, to direct more energy into performing effectively, to innovating and creating, and to connecting and collaborating. Succeeding will depend on embracing change and enhancing our leadership skills.

Resilience
Resilience is “the skill and capacity to be robust under conditions of enormous stress and change. More than education, experience, and training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails.1”

A lack of resilience means that you lack the ability to recover quickly and easily from adversity, depression, misfortune, frustration, anger, etc. If you aren’t as resilient as you would like to be, you can develop skills to become more resilient. And those skills can keep you functioning physically and mentally and emotionally.

Stress
Stress is the commonly used term that describes a negative concept that can have an impact on one’s mental and physical well-being. Stress is the result of negative emotions and beliefs that occur when a person feels unable to deal with his or her environment. Let me repeat that — Stress is the result of negative emotions and beliefs that occur when a person feels unable to deal with his or her environment. According to the American Institute of Stress, 75-90% of all doctor visits are for stress-related issues. 2

Stress has been identified as a significant contributing factor to or cause of many health problems, some of which include…

• Headaches, dizziness, ADD/ADHD, anxiety, irritability & anger, panic disorders
• Increased heart rate, strokes, heart disease, hypertension, type I Diabetes, Arrhythmias
• Digestive disorders, upset stomach, abdominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome
• Weight gain and obesity, decreased sex drive
• Insomnia, emotional & behavioral problems, immune system dysfunction, asthma, ulcers, lack of energy, depression, nervousness, paranoia
• Muscle tension, Fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome
• Alcoholism, suicide, drug addiction, tobacco addiction & other harmful behaviors

Emotional Intelligence Skills
Emotional Intelligence is a person’s ability to acquire and apply knowledge from his or her emotions and the emotions of others in order to make good decisions about what to say or do (or not say or do). Emotional Intelligence is not about being soft! It is a different way of being smart — having the skill to use emotions to help make choices in-the-moment and have more effective control over yourself and your impact on others.

Emotional Intelligence is comprised of five basic competencies:

1. Emotional Self-Awareness – knowing what you’re feeling.
2. Emotional Self-Management – managing your feelings, especially distressing feelings.  Being able to choose your emotions or transform out of negative ones.
3. Emotional Self-Motivation – being able to call-up and experience positive emotions.
4. Empathy – the ability to put yourself in some one else’s shoes, feel what they are feeling, and to see the situation from their point-of-view.
5. Nurturing Relationships – The ability to set a positive tone of cooperation even when things are not going well.

The concept of Emotional Intelligence is based on brain research showing that these skills are different from technical and purely cognitive abilities because they involve a different part of the brain — the emotional center, the limbic system, rather than the neocortex (“thinking brain”).

Benefits of Developing Emotional Intelligence Skills
There are a wide variety of benefits that accrue to individuals when they learn and practice techniques to enhance their Emotional Intelligence skills — they are able to…

Control emotional reactiveness Reduce stress and worry Improve mental clarity Increase personal productivity Increase motivation Improve self-confidence Increase personal creativity Increase change flexibility Improve work/life balance

Improve understanding of others Listen more, talk less Manage relationships effectively Influence others effectively Resolve conflicts constructively Improve team morale/motivation Improve teamwork Improve team-to-team cooperation

There are also a wide variety of benefits that the organization can realize. When their people have enhanced Emotional Intelligence skills, organizations can…

Develop leaders Attract talent Improve employee satisfaction & engagement Improve customer satisfaction & loyalty

Increase creativity and innovation Improve culture and climate Improve retention; reduce turnover Improve change implementation Reduce healthcare costs Increase the bottom line

1. Diane L. Coutu, “How Resilience Works,” Harvard Business Review, May 2002.
2. The American Institute of Stress, http://www.stress.org/Stress.htm

Thanks to EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE BLOG (Link)
English: Recommended by Business Doctors: www.Business-doctors.at 
Deutsch: Buch link:
 "Don't Panic: Du bist nicht allein"
http://stress-burnout-dont-panic.blogspot.com/

Wichtiger Hinweis:
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