Cultivating Emotional Intelligence: The Power of a Positive Outlook
“A positive mindset can free a person from self-focused negative thoughts, allowing him to pay more attention to the needs and perspectives of others.”
Emotional intelligence is a delicate balance of our ability to practice self-awareness, self-management, relational awareness, and relational management. The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is mastering the understanding and management of the self. How does a positive outlook on life impact this? Well, if we are constantly letting the world and people in it control us (our thoughts, mood, and behavior are deeply impacted by external factors), we are not truly understanding nor managing ourselves. We could argue here that the negativity of our mindset communicates the degree to which we allow external forces to control us.
Would you agree when I say, “a positive mindset is a reflection of our inner stability, peace, safety, and sense of identity”? It’s true! When these aspects of the self are low or fighting for life, it is easy to fall into the trap of anything other than a positive outlook on life. In this scenario, we lose the battle for our self-management because we start comparing, criticizing, and complaining. Other people and situations are now at the foundation of our identity, and they quickly begin to take control over our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Timothy Keller writes, in his book "The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness," “The way the normal human ego tries to fill its emptiness and deal with discomfort is by comparing itself to other people. All the time.” When we are lacking, we are looking—for people worse off than us, for confirmation of our false beliefs, for accolades to fill us up, for anything to make us feel better about ourselves. This looking turns us dangerously inward, distracting us from the beauty around us, from others around us, and from the ability to build a firm and secure identity rooted in reality.
“The way the normal human ego tries to fill its emptiness and deal with its discomfort is by comparing itself to other people. All the time.”
Building a positive outlook then means taking the focus off ourselves and what we lack and simply enjoying the beauty of the world outside and inside ourselves. It also means coming to terms with the areas in our life where we are lacking, seeing these areas as room for growth rather than areas of emptiness. This mindset does not erase the areas of pain or emptiness in our life but has the ability to make them feel less significant, helping us fight them and fill them more effectively.
A positive outlook on life is ultimately brought forth in the reality of the here and now. It is in this place of presence, both in the world and in ourselves, where we can truly be. It is here where wee can stop analyzing the past, stop fretting over the future, and honestly explore the reality of our experience and our present world.
Thomas Merton writes, “there is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality.” When we are in relationship with reality, we take people, places, and situations as they truly are. Reality helps us hold them lightly and let them go. When we are immersed in reality, especially the reality of the world around us, we don’t have to analyze or fret; instead, we can safely and simply be.
“There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality.”
Allowing ourselves space to practice both self-management and self-awareness through the lens of a positive outlook on life leads to a higher level of relational satisfaction, thus helping us develop a higher level of emotional intelligence.
