In career situation, you can’t count on boss caring about how you feel, or being interested in a personal relationship with you, but you do have a right to be treated with respect. You must be attuned to what you’re feeling and stand up for yourself in a professional manner, or find somewhere else to work if you care about your health. And one of first things I caution someone who comes to me for career coaching because they’re dissatisfied with their job, is to get very mindful. Otherwise, it’s likely you’ll end up getting yourself fired to get yourself out of there. It happens all time and there’s a much more gracious way to make your exit.

Emotional Intelligence is all about being mindful. If we experience our emotions and pay attention to them, they can guide us. If we express our emotions appropriately and accurately, we can address a situation before it becomes an issue. If we ignore our emotions, bury them, or fail to listen to their message, we lose a guide and we also a sense of ourselves. It has been said “we are our emotions” because without emotions we would all be alike and all like machines. There would be no reason for choosing one thing over another, no reason for doing one thing rather than another. If we are our emotions, we are also our choices, and our choices often revolve around emotions.

Studying Emotional Intelligence can greatly enrich your life and should be given at least as much attention as your intellectual and academic education. Unfortunately it has been ignored in our formal educations, and its up to us to close gap. Certified Emotional Intelligence coaches can help you assess your EQ and develop it. The benefits will be all yours.

I shut all these things down and used words like “tired” and “in pain,” but at core, yes, I was afraid. Fear of unknown, and fear of being helpless and dependent.

I was also afraid of fantasized reactions of others, having come from a family of shame and blame. I think nothing will ever “happen” to me that I won’t feel like I caused it and was a ‘bad girl’ because of that. Words from an overwhelmed, shame-and-blame mother who saw everything as simply more work for her. Whatever caused ankle to break, I should’ve known better, I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have been there, and I should never have let it happen – as if I were omniscient and omnipotent. That means all-knowing and in control of everything in world. It was family that taught intellectual words, not feelings. Old childhood fears. In line with, “Whatever it is you fear has already happened.”

And at that particular moment in hospital corridor, well you never know what will turn up on any chest x-ray, no matter why it’s required. Nor had results of EKG come in yet. What if I went in with a broken ankle and came out with a bypass? Or worse yet, out back door on a stretcher. It’s been known to happen.

As J. Powell says in “Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?” emotions are not moral (good or bad). Feeling frustrated, or being annoyed, or experiencing fears and anger do not make one a good or bad person [a weak or strong person.] But this is theory. In our day-to-day lives most of us blame ourselves for our feelings.” And if we judge them to be “bad,” or unacceptable to us in some way, we bury them.

So there I sat in my wheelchair, silent and alone. And there was Abuelita, expressing her fear and getting comforted. It’s an old lesson: People care. If we say we’re afraid we can be comforted. If we don’t, we can’t.

All studies show that people do best who have a strong social support network, and if you don’t say WHO you are and HOW you are, you aren’t getting connection that sustains you. You remain alone in presence of others, which is loneliest you’ll ever be.

And let me close with words of technologist who finally did my x-ray. Dianna was her name. She read name of my company, Emotionally Intelligent Solutions, on chart. “What’s that,” she said, “Is that like I’m to point where I can’t stand any of my co-workers any more and I think they’re dumb and ignorant and feel like I’m about to explode,”

Yes, EQ is about that, too!

The woman works two 16-hour days, physical and demanding (how on earth do you do that?) and has three children at home. I gave her my card. I hope she’ll call me. It may not be her co-workers that are problem.

And that’s power of Emotional Intelligence. If you are problem, you are also solution, and Emotional Intelligence is bridge between two.