Difficult People: Understanding WHY, not WHAT

Written by Susan Dunn, MA, EQ & Life Coach


by Susan Dunn, MA, EQ and Life Coach

What makes another person difficult? When we don’t understand where they’re coming from. They yell at us in an argument when we want to quietly reason; or they disengage when we want to talk it out. They say they want a vacation and then plan a full agenda while you it was sitting on a beach veging that you wanted. People don’t make sense. That makes them difficult.

The success of relationships depends how you deal withrepparttar other person’s “difficultness.” You can learn some action-points (when X does Y, do Z), in which case you’re basically book-bound, or you can learn how to figure out what’s going on at a deeper level, so that you can apply your knowledge torepparttar 126070 myriad of situations you’ll be confronted with in real life that will never fit what you learned inrepparttar 126071 book or seminar, withrepparttar 126072 host of people you encounter, all of whom are difficult unless you have an identical twin.

I’ll admit I have an edge here. Not only because I study and teach emotional intelligence, but because I have an identical twin sister. Identical twins haverepparttar 126073 same genes. We tend to think of genes in terms of physical things, and IQ, but they relate to EQ as well.

We’re aware that genes determine that X can be a great basketball player. He’s over 6’ tall and athletic. Genes also allow Y to be a physicist. She’s got an IQ over 150, conceptual ability and a knack for numbers.

However, in perhapsrepparttar 126074 more important aspects of life, your personality and temperament, we’re talking aboutrepparttar 126075 emotional workings ofrepparttar 126076 brain, orrepparttar 126077 emotional brain. The neocortex is where we think, analyze and reason, and our IQ is largely determined at birth. The limbic brain isrepparttar 126078 seat ofrepparttar 126079 emotions, and if people’s IQs vary, so does their EQ – how they work emotionally. But our EQs are not set at birth; we can always develop our emotional intelligence.

Our understanding ofrepparttar 126080 functioning ofrepparttar 126081 brain has escalated tremendously inrepparttar 126082 past few years withrepparttar 126083 new research tools. We can’t peer intorepparttar 126084 brain and see cognitive intelligence, but we can see what happens when emotion happens inrepparttar 126085 brain. For instance, brain scans show thatrepparttar 126086 emotional parts of a neglected orphan’s brain work differently than a “normal” baby’s, i.e., one that’s been well care for and had its emotional needs met.

That having been said, you aren’t likely to find someone who functions emotionallyrepparttar 126087 same way you do. Close with an identical twin, but even then there are fluctuating hormones and individual past experiences (“nurture”) which influence our emotional makeup. And it’s emotion that motivates all our behavior.

So accepting that no one else works quiterepparttar 126088 way you do isrepparttar 126089 beginning. The unhappiest people I know – and I’m a coach who works with people around EQ – are those who thinkrepparttar 126090 world should be a certain way,repparttar 126091 way they think is right, and that they can’t be happy until everyone does it that way, their way. It’s almost easier to be with someone insensitive and not tuned in, thanrepparttar 126092 intense individual convinced they have a message for you, and you’d better listen up, right?

So what’srepparttar 126093 same about everyone, and what’s different? We all want pleasure, and to avoid pain. The catch is, we all use different means for getting pleasure and avoiding pain, and we each definerepparttar 126094 concepts differently. That’s way to “relax,” Alison plays two sets of tennis, and Sharon goes torepparttar 126095 day spa.

If you want to figure someone else out, then, you need to move torepparttar 126096 meta level. We can understand “meta” better by examples than definitions. It comes fromrepparttar 126097 Greek “with, after, or among.” You can seerepparttar 126098 problem already. It can also mean “change or transformation,” as in “metamorphosis,” changing shape, likerepparttar 126099 caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. It also means “more comprehensive, or transcending,” and that’s what we’re after. (And in physics it means something else.)

Now in emotional intelligence, we work on applications: Learningrepparttar 126100 facts or theory, andrepparttar 126101 applying it to situations in your life non of which will ever have been covered inrepparttar 126102 lesson in class, if you know what I mean. For instance, let’s take “people want pleasure and not pain”. Why, then, does Emily spend 14 hours a day at work and then pursue a graduate school program at night and onrepparttar 126103 weekends? This would be your definition of “pain”. Emily has a different definition of “pleasure.” The plot thickens.

Simple Ways To Combat Stress

Written by John Hilbert


We live in a fast paced society which seems to be becoming more hectic byrepparttar day. Every day we run into people who lose control and flip out. We, ourselves, do it on occasion. There's no way to changerepparttar 126069 world around us so we have to try to control our inner world. We have to take care of our own mind, body and soul.

Here's a few very simple things that can make a big difference:

-take a walk every day- -limit caffeine and alcohol intake- -instead of watching television, read a book- -at dinner time, turn offrepparttar 126070 TV, radio, and phone- -when it's sunny out, get outside as much as possible- -avoid negative people as much as possible without being rude- -try different things once in a while(stay out of ruts)-

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