The Wise Path/Emotionally Competent

—Deliberate and Constructive Emotional Responses

Being There

Emotionally competent people are aware of their emotions and welcome the message each emotion brings. Emotionally competent adults develop the essential social skills to recognize, interpret, and respond constructively to emotions in themselves and others.Understanding and impulse control allows reason to prevail over passion as we regulate and interpret our emotions. With study and practice we can each overcome destructive tendencies toward reactivity and become emotionally competent.

They feel for each other.

Emotionally competent people respond constructively to emotions in themselves and others. Improving your emotional competency can provide important benefits throughout many aspects of your life. It can increase the satisfaction you have with relationships while it increases your gratification and contentment with the many simple events in your life. It can give you greater insight and help you better understand the motives and actions of yourself and others. You can free yourself from anger, hate, resentment, vengeance, and other destructive emotions that cause hurt and pain. This will reduce much of the stress in your life. You can feel relief and enjoy greater peace-of-mind, autonomy, intimacy, dignity, passion, and wisdom as you engage more deeply with others. Increasing your tolerance and compassion can lead to an authentic optimism and a well-founded confidence, based on your better understanding and interpretation of what-is.

Emotional competency is at the conscious competence learning level.

Getting There

Studying these resources and conscientiously practicing the skills they describe will help you move from the reactive stage to the emotionally competent stage.

Recommended Study:

• Follow the Emotional Competency study guide.
• Become trustworthy.
• Always speak with candor and treat others with respect.
• Use Dialogue.

Recommended Reading:

Reading these books will begin to improve your emotional competency:

• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, by Daniel Goleman
• Passion and Reason: Making Sense of Our Emotions, by Richard S. Lazarus, Bernice N. Lazarus

Moving On

Continue to practice your emotional competency skills as you work toward becoming emotionally talented.

Context:

The figure links to the states that neighbor this one. This can help orient you to this state both horizontally, showing the action and cognition states at this level of development, and vertically showing the emotion levels before and after this one.

	Emotionally Talented
Factually Informed	Emotionally Competent	Engagement
	Reactive