Ask yourself following questions and write your answers down.

Who am I? What do I want? Where do I want my life to be in 5 years? What type of person would I want to share my life with? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? Is there anything I would change about myself, and why? What are things that I will not tolerate in a relationship?

Take your time answering all of these questions. It is a small price to pay for time you will not be wasting dating wrong kind of people at wrong time for you. In long run it is better to be alone for a while then always lonely.

Love yourself first – others will follow.

Coaches supply “how to” – new things to try, new ways of doing things. We clarify patterns. We listen and ask questions. We draw out client’s inner wisdom. We get them back in touch with their intuition (an EQ competency), our surest guide.

The client must supply misery that motivates. To do this, they need to be reintroduced to how what they’re doing is making them feel. Enter Emotional Intelligence.

WHY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Our emotions are our guides. They tell us what’s working and what isn’t; what feels good and what doesn’t; what we must address and what we can ignore; what we want more of and what we want less of.

In order to learn their message, we must first pay attention to them, in an action-oriented sort of way. Instead of getting stuck in our misery, we use it to catapult out of situation.

Like many people who have strayed off course and are temporarily mired in misery, Dorothy had shut down. In order to function, she had become numb, driving herself onward with “will power” and “determination.”

Not unlike beating dead horse, thinking brain was in charge of program, when emotional brain was also needed. Motivation is not a thinking word, it’s a feeling thing.

As Dorothy learns solution-focused problem-solving instead of emotion-focused problem-solving, she begins to be able to see more clearly how she has arranged her life, and at same time, starts feeling about it again. So there’s discomfort. No pain, no gain.

PERSONAL POWER

Good systemic solutions make symptoms of problem worse at first, and that’s where Dorothy is right now. It’s a transition. In order to make changes, she has to feel discomfort. If she didn’t, where’s motivation? If she didn’t, where’s Personal Power(an EQ competency)? In order to change, we have to believe we can make changes and handle our life. It’s opposite of “victim” stance, which is hopeless and helpless.

If we don’t own our responsibility for where we are, we can’t claim power it will take to change it.

The transitional period is inherently uncomfortable, and cause for celebration. “That’s why,” I tell her, “people don’t want to change. They’re not willing to go through that period of dis-ease.”

NO QUICK FIXES

Quick fixes don’t work in coaching. Systemic solutions do, and that’s where Emotional Intelligence comes in.

Asking client each time how they’re feeling – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually gets them grounded and centered. Even if answer is “terrible” in any category, it is still grounding.

What’s chaotic is not to know. What we don’t “know” has great power over us. Knowing – good or bad – allows us to make changes. And knowing means having words to describe it. Emotional Intelligence supplies this vocabulary.

SKILL SETS

Administering an EQ assessment such as EQ-Map® can identify competencies that need bolstering. Emotional Intelligence is a set of competencies that can be learned.

TAKE HOME POINT

Developing your Emotional Intelligence will take you light years ahead in your ability to make changes you’ll need to be making over and over again in your life. It gives you ultimate tool. How about giving it a try? Take EQ-Map® and find out what’s going on. Then take The EQ Foundation Course© on Internet, and combine it with EQ coaching and putting your new skills into practice. Most clients report immediate positive results in their lives.