Emotional Intelligence Institute | Reminders To Help You Learn Effectively

Emotional Intelligence Institute

Monday, December 01, 2008

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1 How to Use This EQ Self-Study Program

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1B - Reminders To Help You Learn Effectively

This lesson lists five ways to stimulate a higher level of attention and effort toward learning. Without any one of these ingredients, our learning capability is substantially reduced.

This list of reminders is provided to help readers prepare to learn. The more strategically we can apply our minds toward learning, the better chance we have to learn effectively. How our minds deal with the following learning disciplines also provides insight into how helpful and harmful reactions to emotions can affect our ability to learn.

Without any one of these ingredients, our learning capabilities are substantially reduced. These strategies are a critical part of most any learning formula. They are necessary to effectively build the valuable knowledge and skills emotional intelligence encompasses. When having difficulties learning, check back to be sure you’re following these strategies.

	1.		Encourage a healthy attitude and initiative.
			We participate most willingly when we are passionate about a subject. Yet the most important subjects we’ve ever studied may not have been our favorites—the value, results, and consequences—if we didn’t study, were what counted. Without such healthy regard, it can be difficult to apply the necessary attention to seriously study on our own.
	2.		Practice healthy self-talk and self-honesty.
			Healthy self-talk and self-honesty help us direct our lives in wiser, more emotionally stable ways. Self-honesty helps us recognize subtle ineptitudes that can too easily sabotage the learning process, such as inappropriate justifications, denials, overzealous egos, and uneducated opinions.
	3.		Devote time to the learning process.
			Gaining better understanding and skill require time to study and practice. Not many of us learn and become skilled by osmosis. Some experts say that it takes 30 days of exercising a new task to create a habit. A commitment to this program of at least 30 minutes a day for 30 days can help build quality results. Once we see improvement, we can become more willing to continue our participation.
	4.		Accept healthy challenges.
			When learning, the challenges involved can sometimes require taking charge to help us wait longer than we may want to do fun, easy things, and instead, assertively doing more difficult things sooner than we want to—especially studying and practicing. When trying a new healthy challenge, our first reaction may be irritating, emotionally, but if we stick with it, we can improve our fortitude. With effort, a healthy challenge can get more and more rewarding and pay us high long-term dividends.
	5.		Carefully read and follow quality directions/instructions.
			For text authors or course instructors, defining and structuring high quality lesson plans can often require intensive research and time. Like well thought out road maps, they can provide powerful insight into practical, effective methods and well-defined steps worth applying.

This list, thus, reminds us: We are most willing to go that first or extra mile when we have initiative and a healthy attitude. Our emotional stability relies on self-honesty as much as our credibility with others relies on our honesty with them. Sometimes it’s not really such a difficult and irritating challenge we’re up against; it’s just easier to talk ourselves out of applying any more effort than we usually apply—or maybe we just don’t have enough quality direction in prioritizing and other helpful self-management skills.

As we build EQ knowledge, we gradually continue to improve how we use our minds, similar to how each specific thing we learned about computers helped us use them better, a little at a time.

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