Award-winning coach, author and professional speaker Doug Gordon suggests taking a look inward to help us deliver results.
Having interviewed more than 300 successful New York Times bestsellers, film stars, sport stars and multinational CEOs to understand what makes people successful, my conclusion is that it comes down to an inner self confidence or self-love. Since love is an emotion, if you can improve your emotional intelligence, you will improve your chances of success in life, work and in relationships.
You might ask what is the definition of emotional intelligence? Maybe it’s easier to understand by considering what the overall heading includes: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, conscious communication and being able to motivate yourself and people around you. Emotional intelligence shapes how you deal with all situations, especially stressful ones.
“Emotional intelligence shapes how you deal with all situations, especially stressful ones”
Improving awareness is one of the most important factors. Self-awareness, for example, is almost like doing a SWOT analysis of yourself in terms of understanding your strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are something we can often pick up on but sometimes we do not see our own weaknesses such as ego or not actively listening, this can trigger harmful reactions that can damage relationships both in business and in our personal lives. It’s worth evaluating these more negative characteristics, because if we can’t see the problem, we can’t tackle it.
This links into business and understanding team awareness and knowing that there are lots of different characters with different personalities and ways of perceiving things. It’s useful to add to this organisational awareness and the understanding that different departments within a firm will have different agendas. It can also be applied to client awareness, in terms of understanding what the client wants and matching your response to the client’s needs.
The important thing is that once you have awareness it creates WIN-WIN interactions in life. Think before you speak, put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand their perspective by asking the right questions rather than just bulldozing your own opinions. This is where empathy comes in. We are all a product of our parents, our teachers and our past experiences so we all see things and communicate in different ways. Understand other people’s ways of understanding and thinking and you will improve your relationships very quickly. With better teamwork and leadership skills you will get more done in less time with less stress.
“Think before you speak, put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand their perspective by asking the right questions rather than just bulldozing your own opinions”
Imprint and seed the subconscious brain with positive language voicing for example “I am grateful for sunshine and blue sky” rather than “I hope it doesn’t rain today”. To paraphrase Lao Tzu your thoughts lead to words, words lead to actions, actions lead to habits and habits lead to destiny, so start with a positive thought and you will end with a positive destiny.
“With better teamwork and leadership skills you will get more done in less time with less stress”
Finally, improve the way you motivate yourself, every day turn up as your best self. I always say motivation comes from the word motive, which is a reason, which is outside of you. Whereas inspiration comes from the words “In Spirit” which comes from inside of you and a place of love. So if you can find what you truly love doing every day you will love what you do, love the people around you and love the people you serve if in business. LOVE in my opinion is also an acronym for LOTS OF VIBRANT ENERGY. If you optimise your energy you are going to optimise your performance in life, in work and in your relationships.
Doug Gordon, is a 5X award winning speaker, coach, trainer, radio presenter and author of the upcoming book out later this month called “Charge yourself up for success – Energizing your life, work and relationships” the book has testimonials from 3 NY TIMES bestsellers, a Hollywood Star Wars Actress and many more. Doug works with some of the top C-level execs in the world, with film stars, sports stars and is rated as one of the top inspirational speakers in the world.
