How to Become Emotionally Intelligent

Since I live in Columbus, Ohio, I was interested in finding out the Ohio State Buckeyes won a college football national championship, so I did a bit of research.

Would you like to learn a key foundational principle in the Buckeyes’ success that you can apply to your own life? Let me boil it down for you: E+R=O.

What?

Apparently, the Buckeyes’ success had more to do with that principle than any particular offensive or defensive scheme or special teams play the coaches had developed.

So what does E+R=O mean? E, the events that happen in your life plus R, your response to those events, equals O, the outcome.

You see, unsuccessful teams and unsuccessful people do not believe in the formula. They think that E equals O; the Event equals the Outcome. In other words, if somebody cuts them off in traffic, they automatically get angry. Then don’t even know why, except that they’re “just supposed to.”

So why do we get angry in situations like these? Because in those moments we can feel unappreciated, powerless or out of control. We don’t like feeling that way. So getting angry is our way to feel like we can get our power or control back. But the feeling is only temporary, and we can cause permanent damage when we resort to unchecked anger.

The first step in gaining emotional intelligence is to be aware of your emotions. But do you realize that research has shown that only 36 percent of people are able to identify their emotions as they are occurring? As a result, they simply go from E to O.

We may have no control over the E, the event. The average person will experience around 20,000 disappointments in their life, anywhere from stepping in dog feces to having their spouse die. Not much control.

But we have total control over R, our response, and as a result O, the outcome.

With the pandemic, many of my presentations have been delivered virtually. And on one of the webinars I was delivering, I was receiving no response – except from the dogs downstairs. Apparently my wife forgot to cage them before she left. As they continued to howl and bark, I continued to get more and more upset, thinking, “When my wife gets home, I’m really going to let her have it!”

That was my R, my reaction. But then I thought to myself, what O, or outcome, did I desire? “I want to maintain harmonious relations with my wife,” I responded. Then I said to myself, “Then guess what, Ted, that reaction certainly isn’t going to cut it!”

So when my wife came home, I simply said to her, “You know, while I was delivering that webinar and the dogs were barking downstairs.”

My wife responded, “Oh, I am so sorry! It will never happen again.”

E+R=O

When I taught a class on emotional intelligence recently, one attendee told me that the formula E+R=O was the most important thing she had learned all day.

So next time you encounter an unfamiliar or potentially emotional event, take some time to calculate your proper response to best ensure a successful outcome.