How To Change Your Mindset To Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

As a person who has struggled for years with anxiety I find stewarding my mindset and taking every thought captive a serious task.

That’s the reason the article, People Who Embrace the ‘Z-Y-X Rule' Have Very High Emotional Intelligence, was so eye-catching to me. The author, Bill Murphey Jr., explains that “this is a simple trick that will help you communicate better and achieve the things you want in life.”

This trick is a reverse engineer of how Google instructs job applicants to land the job they want. Since Google gets thousands upon thousands of applications, the best way to stand out in the crowd is to communicate every line on a résumé with the following structure: “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]”.

Reversing that would be “by doing [Z] because of [Y] I will accomplish [X].

So what does this have to do with emotional intelligence? Well, Murphy explains that the crux of emotional intelligence involves removing unhelpful emotional reactions from your interactions while simultaneously emphasizing helpful reactions and improving the clarity of your thinking.

A lot of times in business and in our personal lives we get focused on the Z (what we did) but we really should be focused on the X (what we accomplished).

There is more than one way to accomplish your goal, and just because one path doesn’t work doesn’t mean X is invalid. It just means we need to try another path.

I recently spoke with a friend of mine who talked about a time of respite she experienced. She knew her overall goal was to spend time with her family (that’s her x) so she gave them a choice (so 2 different z’s). Her kids were able to choose to go to bed early and go to the zoo the next morning OR stay up late and do a fire pit and s'mores. Either way she was able to achieve quality family time.

Think about this from a business perspective. If you know you want to sell a product, what are the different avenues you can market your product? By coming up with different methods to achieve your overarching goal you raise the likelihood of achieving the goal.

But what about the Y? The Y is your why. Why is this important to you? Why is it important to market your product? Why is it important to spend time with your family? Why is it important to steward your mindset? If you don’t know the answers to those questions we’d love the opportunity to coach you and help you achieve your goals.

Send me a message…