Heres how you can crush all your goals in 2019

Heres how you can crush all yur goals in 2019Heres how you can crush all your goals in 2019For many of us, 2019 will begin with a promise - a promise that this is the year we will accomplish that which has eluded us. Often its the everyday things that prove fruchtwein difficult - managing your schedule, treating people the way you ought to, and keeping things in perspective when chaos is at hand.The sad truth is that nearly 80% of us will fall off the resolution bandwagon by Super Bowl Sunday and by this time next year, a mere 5% of us will have succeeded in reaching our goals.There are two reasons why were so bad at reaching our goalsThe first is that we bite off more than we can chew. It may seem reasonable to pick up three or four new skills to add to your repertoire, but thats an expectation the mind cant execute. When we try to develop too many new skills at once, they become competing priorities that leave us distracted, discouraged and overwhelmed.The second reason most self -improvement efforts are doomed to fail is that our emotions have a nasty habit of hijacking our behavior. Without a strong ability to recognize and manage our emotions as they occur, old habits are sure to die hard.The good newsThe good news is that you can address both problems and make the changes you desire by resolving this year to develop a single skill- emotional intelligence (EQ).Piles of research over the last two decades has shown that emotional intelligence is likely the single most powerful success factor yet discovered, affecting everything from your performance at work, to your mood and the quality of your personal life.Weve tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other critical skills and found that it subsumes the majority of them. Its no wonder that 90% of top performers are high in EQ and people with high EQs make $28,000 more annually than their low EQ counterparts.But how does emotional intelligence play such a large role in so many important skills? Our brain s are wired such that emotions are the root of all human behavior. Whether were aware of it or not, the motivation behind every action (no matter how small) is inherently emotional.Heres how it worksAll of your primary senses enter at the base of your brain (the light blue shaded area below). Before you can think rationally about what youre experiencing, ansicht signals must travel through the limbic system- the place where emotions are generated. This ensures you have an emotional reaction to events first.Emotional intelligence ensures effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of your brain. As you improve your emotional intelligence, you improve your ability to understand and control the primary motivations for your behavior, which reaps dividends in everything you do every day. Emotional intelligence is powerful and efficient- it allows you to focus your energy on a single skill with tremendous results.What does emotional intelligence look like?Emotional intelligence is the something in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies personal competence and social competence.Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior.Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills social competence is your ability to understand other peoples moods, behavior, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others emotions to manage interactions successfully.While working on your emotional intelligence will improve a lot of different skills, there are five in particular that people tend to set goals around when the year changes. Ill explain how you can improve each of these skills solely by focusing on your emotional intelligence.Managing your timeIn this age of abundance, time is the one thing nobody has enough of. Perhaps thats why Google receives 111 million searches a month for Time Management. Few people recognize how time management depends upon the emotional intelligence skills of self-management and relationship management.Creating a good schedule is a very rational thing, but sticking to tha t schedule is decidedly emotional. Many of us start out every day with the best intentions to manage our time wisely. But then we receive a complicated email from a co-worker, a consuming phone call from a friend, or otherwise get sidetracked until our well-laid plans go up in flames. We spend the rest of the day trying to put out somebody elses fire, or working to resolve issues that werent there in the morning. Before you know it, the day is gone and youre completely off schedule.When the distractions are your own, sticking to a schedule requires self-management. When the needs of others try to impede upon your plans, it takes effective relationship management to finesse the relationship while ensuring that your priorities are still addressed.Embracing changeShow me somebody who claims to love change, and Ill show you a well-intentioned liar. Change is uncomfortable for everyone at times, and for many of us it makes our skin crawl. Those who apply well-honed self-awareness and sel f-management skills tolerate change much more successfully than others. Self-awareness enables you to adjust comfortably to change because it gives you the perspective needed to realize when change is coming and how its affecting you.Self-management keeps you cool in the moment- often with a reminder that even the most stable, trusted facets of your life are not completely under your control. Those most averse to change, who possess great self-awareness and self-management skills, even set aside a small amount of time each week to list possible changes and what actions they can take in response.Mastering conflictEmotional intelligence is commonly mistaken as a synonym for nice. In fact, the most emotionally intelligent response is often one where you openly and directly express yourself. To paraphrase Aristotle, getting angry is easy. Getting angry with the right person, at the right time, and to the right degree requires emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence doesnt allow l ashing out, or making yourself into someone elses doormat. To be assertive, you have to know what youre feeling, read the other party accurately, and express yourself in a way that garners the best result. People with high EQs do this naturally.Making great decisionsIt has taken the world far too long to wake up to the fact that emotions simply cannot- and should not- be ignored when making decisions. Neuroscience shows us that sometimes the most rational thing you can do is trust your emotions when making a decision. But in order to make this work, you have to be aware of the emotions youre feeling, know why youre having them, and see how they factor into the situation at hand. Here, there is no substitute for emotional intelligence.Giving outstanding presentationsFew things strike primal fear in people like standing under the spotlight in a room full of people. Even the most eloquent among us can be reduced to spewing verbal garbage once the sheer anxiety of public speaking takes hold. Thats why a knock-em-dead presenters most inspiring presentation is often the one he delivers to himself. A bit of positive self-talk- reminding himself of all the times he has succeeded and how qualified he is to speak on the topic- enables the effective speaker to use his performance anxiety to sharpen his focus and make him more articulate. If you think thats silly, then you probably havent tried it. Emotional intelligence doesnt just make you aware of your emotions it equips you with strategies for keeping them from unternehmensverbund you back.Bringing it all togetherGive improving your emotional intelligence a real shot in 2019. Youll be surprised where it takes you.This article first appeared on LinkedIn.