nAn interesting perspective to look at emotional intelligence.Building on a human behavior model, this white paper uses a bank savings account as an analogy of someone's psychological and emotional state of mind.

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5 things you should know about your emotional bank account (ESA).
You may not have ever thought of it this way, but if you consider your emotional state as a savings account,
you will understand the dynamics of your life better and be able to take control of your emotional state.
This idea is based on the human behavior model shown here that
describes your emotional reaction to the world around you:
1. Things happen to you;
2. You react to them in a certain way (often automatically with
learned behaviors), and
3. Your reaction impacts your emotional state and that of people
around you.
When your behavior is inappropriate to the event or
circumstances, there are negative consequences to your actions.
Your mental responses may be conscious and based on logical thinking, or
automatic based on your emotional reaction, possibly with no logical thought
whatsoever. You emotional reaction is based on a combination of the context of
the situation, your current state of mind, your psychological tendencies, and
learned behavior from previous similar situations. These combine in a complex
process which is not automatically controlled, and can be the reason people do
“dumb” things. An example of this process can be found in your home if you live
with or teenagers. If you ask your teenager what they were thinking when they
did something really dumb, it is quite likely that they were not “thinking” at all,
merely reacting in an impulsive or automatic way, with little logical thought of
the consequences This sequence of action/reaction is the basis for the following
discussion of how you can more effectively take control of this process to
improve your life
1. Making deposits and withdrawals from your ESA.
You respond to the world around you every day. When good things happen you
feel good, and make a deposit to you ESA. When bad things happen you feel bad
and make an emotional withdrawal. The balance of your positive and negative
emotions at the end of the day results in the conclusion that we had a “good
day” or a “bad day”. So whether you know it or not, you are constantly
accumulating a net balance of good and bad days that builds up over time. It is
up to you to do a better job of building the balance in your account.
2. A deficit in your ESA risks depression or burn out.
Continually being in stressful or negative situations every day has been proven in
numerous studies to take a toll on your emotional well-being. When this
happens you run a “deficit” in your account, and you steal energy, increase your
Behaviors
How you respond to situations
How people perceive you
(Your reputation)
Who You Are:
 Tendencies
 Values
 Motivation
Situation
Events
“Inappropriate responses
to an event result in
negative consequences.”

2. © B2BPlanner Ltd. 2013 www.OhioBusinessHelp.com
stress, and reduce your feeling of well-being. Running a deficit in your emotional
account creates dangerous situations such as mental depression, self-medication
with alcohol or drugs, and impulsive behavior which will only worsen the
situation. Thinking about the impact of your decisions and being objective in
assessing your abilities helps to place you in situations where you will experience
the least frustration and stress and the most positive results and feelings of
fulfillment.
3. Make deposits to your ESA by controlling your “income”.
You can never eliminate all of the bad things that may happen in your life, but
you can work to attempt to reduce them to a manageable level whenever
possible. Being aware of this, you can work to change your situation to reduce
the negative events that you expose yourself to every day. Modern day practices
such as “multitasking” often create a condition of chronic overload and stress
which creates a withdrawal from your account. By objectively looking at what is
most important to you and prioritizing your time is a critical skill to develop to
reduce stress and provide positive feelings of accomplishment by allowing you to
focus on those actions which help you effectively deal with events.
4. Limit the emotional bills you need to pay
You can reduce your emotional bills by changing how you look at events in a more
productive way. By engaging the higher, logical functions of your brain instead of the
reptilian emotional part, you objectively evaluate the situation and develop “smart”
responses to the event. This is based on the principal that it is much harder to stop a
behavior than it is to change or replace it. By just stopping something you leave a
void, and our mind hates a void. By looking at an event as an opportunity to solve a
problem or improve the situation you create a new behavior that is appropriate to
dealing positively with problems that inevitably come along.
5. Earn interest by making deposits to other people’s account
Focusing on ourselves and our own problems creates a negative mindset resulting in
withdrawals from our account. By focusing on helping others improves our feeling
of having control and power to positively impact our external world, and usually
provides positive feelings from the other person. This creates a deposit to your
account and increases you capital of positive feelings. This becomes an even more
powerful principle when you associate with positive people who are actively engaged
meeting life’s challenges, and will make deposits to your account by helping you deal
with your problems.
To learn more about the human behavior model email art@b2bplanner.com subject “behavior model”.
B2BPlanner Ltd. provides customized business coaching to owners and executives, and career coaching to individuals
“The rapid pace of
today’s world creates
constant stress.”