Sound More Emotionally Intelligent

Exhibiting emotional intelligence is more important than ever in the workplace. We are in the midst of the Great Resignation, and people are increasingly less likely to stick with jobs where they do not feel seen, heard, or valued. 

Employees want to work with and for people who exhibit high degrees of emotional intelligence—teammates and managers who project leadership along with self-awareness, empathy, and humility.

The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, evaluate, interpret, and manage emotions—both your own and those of others—and use those insights to drive positive action. 

This sensibility can improve everything from communication and personal relationships to effectiveness and job satisfaction. Here are some key phrases that are used by emotionally intelligent leaders.

“I’m listening” / “I hear you”

Never underestimate the power of telling someone you’re listening. We’ve all been on the receiving end of barely-made eye contact or lukewarm nodding while we’re mid-sentence with another person. 

How much more validated and valued would we feel if they confirmed we have their undivided attention with some eye contact and a simple “I’m listening”?  READ MORE...

Resonance Theory

Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium?

These questions are all aspects of the ancient “mind-body problem,” which asks, essentially: What is the relationship between mind and matter? It’s resisted a generally satisfying conclusion for thousands of years.

The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the last two decades. Now it’s generally known as the “hard problem” of consciousness, after philosopher David Chalmers coined this term in a now classic paper and further explored it in his 1996 book, “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.”

Chalmers thought the mind-body problem should be called “hard” in comparison to what, with tongue in cheek, he called the “easy” problems of neuroscience: How do neurons and the brain work at the physical level? Of course, they’re not actually easy at all. But his point was that they’re relatively easy compared to the truly difficult problem of explaining how consciousness relates to matter.

Over the last decade, my colleague, University of California, Santa Barbara psychology professor Jonathan Schooler and I have developed what we call a “resonance theory of consciousness.” We suggest that resonance – another word for synchronized vibrations – is at the heart of not only human consciousness but also animal consciousness and of physical reality more generally. It sounds like something the hippies might have dreamed up – it’s all vibrations, man! – but stick with me.  READ MORE...

Without Sense of Self

In the context of meditation practice, meditators can experience a state of “pure awareness” or “pure consciousness”, in which they perceive consciousness itself. This state can be experienced in various ways, but evidently incorporates specific sensations as well as non-specific accompanying perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.

These are just some of the findings of the most extensive survey of meditators ever conducted on the experience of pure consciousness.

The findings of the survey recently have been published in PLOS ONE. The study was conducted by Professor Thomas Metzinger from the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Dr. Alex Gamma from the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Zurich.

They designed an online questionnaire comprising more than a hundred questions and asked thousands of meditators worldwide to answer it.

“The goal of our research was not to learn more about meditation. We are interested in human consciousness,” said Metzinger. “Our working hypothesis was that pure consciousness is the simplest form of conscious experience. And our goal was to develop a minimal model explanation of human consciousness experience on the basis of this hypothesis.”  READ MORE

What Is Consciousness?

Consciousness, at its simplest, is "sentience or awareness of internal or external existence."  Despite millennia of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being "at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."  Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists.  

Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness. Sometimes, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life," the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition.  

Today, it often includes some kind of experience, cognition, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness.  There might be different levels or orders of consciousness, or different kinds of consciousness, or just one kind with different features.  

Other questions include whether only humans are conscious, all animals, or even the whole universe. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises doubts about whether the right questions are being asked.

Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: simple wakefulness, one's sense of selfhood or soul explored by "looking within"; being a metaphorical "stream" of contents, or being a mental state, mental event or mental process of the brain; having phanera or qualia and subjectivity; being the 'something that it is like' to 'have' or 'be' it; being the "inner theatre" or the executive control system of the mind.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

HOWEVER, the fact remains that whatever the CONSCIOUSNESS is...  we all have one and we all use our consciousness in different ways at different times based upon the external stimuli that is impacting or influencing or trying to impact and influence our behavior.  

Consciousness means simply that we are aware that we are aware (self-awareness) and because we have that awareness about ourselves, we are unique creatures...  and perception makes us even more unique...

Animals have instinct and intuition based upon previous experiences that has been imprinted upon them at birth...  but, human beings develop their own instinct and intuition as they develop and grow and experience...  nothing has been imprinted on humans except the free will to survive...  and, it is quite possibly that free will to survive that has caused our consciousness to develop.

Life Is Life

There is one undeniable certainty about life and that fact is IT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US ONCE WE ARE BORN INTO IT...

1. Whites have life
2. Blacks have life
3. Latinos & Hispanics have life
4. Asians have life
5. Alaskans, Hawaiians, & Native Americans

note:  list in rank order as their percentage of the population

AND...  while that life is hardly ever EQUAL in all aspects of EQUALITY, it is nonetheless life that can only be taken away by the hands of death knowing that those hands of death could be manipulated by a "live" person.

WHOEVER gave us LIFE, did not promise nor did they guarantee WEALTHY, STATUS, POWER, CONTROL, or HATRED...  we got these items on our own of course they are could have been inherited as well.

BUT...  natural talents, natural skills, natural abilities ARE NOT GIVEN to everyone...  and, the ones that receive that extra little gift get it through their DNA...

Government can never be held responsible nor can it be tasked with the authority to regulate the DNA or human beings in an effort to make us all equal.

The life we are given whether rich or poor or somewhere in between is precious even though some of us will NEVER EXPERIENCE what so many others take for granted...  and in that notion is the GREAT FLAW of the HUMAN BEING EXPERIMENT...  even in God's eyes we will never be completely equal because HE gave us DNA...  and, it is this DNA that gives us some of our unique characteristics and differences.

But, in LIFE as in DEATH we are equal in that we are all born and we all die...  and this happens regardless of our DNA.

What is it about life that makes it SO SPECIAL in that people either want to keep it or take it away from others?

• We eat, sleep, defecate, feel, smell, procreate, protect, and survive...
• We earn money, build houses, have children, and thrive...
• We worship or not, giving back to our community or not as well...
• AND...  in many ways what we do is a celebration of the life we have been given

LIFE GIVEN...  is the correct word to use here...  and while life comes from the seeds of our parents, the first set of parents had to be given this gift from somewhere otherwise we would be walking around like animals with no concept of being alive...  

That spark of AWARENESS is given...  it does not evolve...

With LIFE comes the desire to SURVIVE and with the desire to survive comes the need to CONTROL so that survival can happen.  Power shifts from one people to another and then back again.  Sometimes, we are on the top, sometimes we are on the bottom.  But, regardless of the outcomes, one group WILL ALWAYS CONTROL until resentment from the other group(s) grows...

AND...  the interesting thing about control is that the group under control is ALWAYS LARGER than the group doing the CONTROLLING...