Children with high optimism can motivate themselves when caught in a difficult situation and make a new path.
BY MUCHA MULINGO
Parenting is the only care-giving “profession” that does not require a degree or training; perhaps that’s why many parents feel unprepared or even inadequate. Most parents say their number one wish is for their children to be happy. They also want them to be safe and successful. Emotional intelligence skills are key to all three. Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is defined simply as ‘being smart with feelings’ and it includes skills such as self-awareness, self-management, delaying gratification, and creating hope. Research shows that students who learn these skills are more successful academically, socially, and participate in less risky behaviours.
How to ‘know yourself’
To provide a practical and simple way to learn and practice emotional intelligence, Six Seconds developed a model, an action plan for using EQ in daily life. The Six Seconds Model has 3 parts: Know Yourself is increasing self-awareness, recognizing patterns and feelings; Choose Yourself is building self-management and self-direction. It focuses on consciously choosing thoughts, feelings, and actions and give yourself is about aligning daily choices with a larger sense of purpose. It comes from using empathy and principled decision-making to increase wisdom.
Self-awareness is not frivolous
Here on the African continent, self-awareness is a term that could easily be dismissed as frivolous, self-absorption. Yet, self-awareness is a core ability that helps children to handle feelings in a healthy way. As children enhance their emotional literacy, learning to recognise & accurately label their emotions, they are empowered to navigate the emotionally choppy waters of growing up successfully. Emotion vocabulary is more than word recognition; it shapes how children actually see the world.
Emotional literacy is about the basic building blocks of emotional communication and meaning. The skills include recognising emotions, being able to name them, understanding what they mean, knowing when different emotions are appropriate, and being able to shift from one emotional state to another,” states Six Seconds.
Just by learning to talk about feelings we get better at managing them. Model emotional literacy by talking about how you feel – sharing that you felt ‘frustrated’ or ‘disappointed’ or ‘overjoyed.’ As you expand your emotional vocabulary, you will grant your children permission to do the same. Emotions are data – data that will help children to make better decisions and craft effective solutions to the “life puzzles” they face each day.
Emotional Intelligence also helps children to make healthier choices, as they develop the ability to think and feel before they act, making more careful, thoughtful choices. Emotions are a driving force in decision making and children can learn how to make better choices as they become more aware of the underlying drivers of their decisions and how to take ownership of their feelings and be more accountable.
Respond, don’t react
Joshua Freedman observes that while there are many ways of responding to each situation, most of us tend to use one reaction over and over. “We know that’s not the best solution, but pretty soon it seems to happen automatically. Of-course it’s not. Behaviour is something we learned in the past and reinforce by practising – by using it over and over until it’s easy and feels automatic. The first step to changing these automatic reactions is to notice.”
As we become more skilled in noticing the automatic, recurring reactions, we open the door to do something more powerful – respond. And the more we are able to respond – rather than react, we teach our children to do the same.
EI impacts an individual’s outlook on life.
Optimism is rooted in the knowledge that we have the power to change, grow, and move forward. Individuals with an optimistic outlook see failure as a transitory obstacle that can be overcome with additional effort. Interestingly, they are right: whilst may people think of optimism as a fixed inborn trait – it isn’t. Extensive research by Dr Martin Seligman found that we can learn to be more optimistic. Optimism is highly influenced by hope, self-efficacy, and expectation. Children with high optimism are able to motivate themselves when caught in a difficult situation and they make a new path.
According to Six Seconds, individuals with an optimistic outlook & those with a pessimistic view apply the same thinking to both success and failure, but in reverse. Those with an optimistic view see success as permanent, pervasive, and a personal effort (I did it), while individuals whose outlook is pessimistic view failure that way. In the case of failure, optimists view it as temporary, isolated, and effort possible.
For some lucky individuals, being optimistic comes naturally. The good news is that, for those who don’t have it naturally, optimism is an attitude that can be learned and practiced. By helping our children to employ the habit of optimism, reminding them that obstacles that come their way are temporary, isolated and can be overcome with effort, we help them to take ownership and they are empowered to generate new options.
The skills of emotional intelligence are learned — and parents are the most important people to teach these life-changing, world-changing skills. To help your child develop greater EQ, start by modelling it first.
Muha Mulingo is an EQ practitioner at Six Seconds.
