It won't come as a shock to anyone that I probably score low in emotional intelligence. I haven't actually taken any EQ tests, but I guarantee I would score low if I did take anything that measured my ability to perform well in that particular regard.
One of the aspects I have been working on lately is on "looking away when trying to postpone temporary satisfaction for a greater, later reward." The words, "look away" come to mind often during the day. I am not very good at it. I tend to hammer at a problem until it's fixed. But, that's not always the intelligent choice.
So, practical application = earlier this week, when going through a particularly rough spot, I was trying to "look away" from a temporarily unsolvable problem that needed time and space to solve itself. Crying wasn't helping. "Working through the issues" was just getting me deeper into yuckiness. I don't drink, smoke or do anything else to numb pain, so my options were limited. I needed something mighty powerful to boost, distract, and refocus me on other, happier topics.
I have no idea why this came to mind, but I remembered a bottle of expensive hand lotion my Mom & Dad got me for Christmas, Clinque Happy. I ran and got it, rubbed it on and disappeared into the sensation of the fragrance. There is something so magically deep about the Happy smell. Every time I smell it, I remember springtime on the farm where I grew up. Sometimes, especially in the spring when the smells of the outdoors were sweeter and fresher than any other season, I would go out to the field and lie down in the grass. It was so much taller than me that it would completely engulf me except for a spot of sky. It was a scary sort of sweetness. I could never be fully sure that a goat or cow wouldn't casually wander over and step on me if I dozed off. Even if I was fully alert, it was easy enough for a spider to creep on over and climb right across me, but that was the exact sort of experience I currently was in -- scared about doing something with a certain risk factor, yet embracing the joy to be had in the springtime field. Happy is like that smell of that grassy field plus the smell of a million of your favorite flowers.
EQ raised by at least five points, so my score is at least 5. Woot!
