Emotional intelligence – your navigation tool or not

Many are familiar with the term emotional intelligence, and we have some formalization or concept of what that means. 

In the past in the corporate world and without trying to sound too stereotyped, within the male segments of the market there seemed to be this lack of emotional intelligence, this inability to understand or express emotions and there has been this process within the corporate segment to build emotional intelligence within the workplace. So that people can interrelate in more holistic ways. 

Today, I wanted to step into emotional intelligence through a human design or a BG5 (which is basically human design for business) lens. 

We are not all the same when it comes to emotional intelligence. Knowing your emotionally definition is important for life and relationships.

How do we talk about emotional intelligence when we are thinking about human design?

There are two key aspects here. When we are talking about your unique design, you have the possibility of having emotional intelligence as your authority as your inner intelligence as the wisdom that sees the greater picture of life and is designed to help you navigate through this life. When you have emotional intelligence defined in your human design, ultimately, this is your authority. This is the way that you are designed to navigate through this life.

If you do not have it defined, then it is not your authority. It is not how you are designed to navigate through this life. It has the potential to be a place of great wisdom for you, but it can also be one of your deepest shadows.

When we are talking about emotional intelligence, from a human design perspective, it’s really important to understand whether you have the emotional function, or the emotional centre defined or not.

Defined Emotional Function

I am going to start with the first option of having it defined. When your emotional intelligence is defined in human design, this is your authority. This is the way that you make decisions in life. This is the place you go to that will really give you the most correct in the healthiest decisions as you navigate through your life. And there are really three ways that this can work for you. It is either through touch, through need or through passion. And so, there’s different ways and qualities of how this emotional intelligence will operate for you if it is defined in your design.

Now, whether it’s defined or not, we’re always going to have healthy and unhealthy expressions of that. And because we’re talking about emotional intelligence as a navigational tool in this life, when it’s operating in a very functional and a very healthy way.

When your emotional intelligence operates in a healthy way:

• You’ve built these amazing strategies into your life where you give yourself the space and you give yourself the time to find clarity, because making decisions from an emotional place is not an in the moment way of making decisions because emotions fluctuate, they move from highs to lows.
• You have this beautiful chemical process in your body where you may feel like you’re on a very low of the wave and a very high of the wave. You can go from excitement and passion and need and touch. And you can even be in this place of melancholy. And when you understand this process of moving through this emotional wave, you get to watch these highs and lows. You get to enjoy every aspect of them. You get to see them as a way of perceiving life, a different slice a different perspective and how you see this see life.
• You learn to embrace and dive into the richness of this emotional depth in your life.
• You don’t blame others for your feelings and moods.
• You don’t attach reasons to the emotions you’re feeling. And you just allow yourself the time to make decisions and you cultivate this patience to be able to wait.

If you are emotionally defined, emotions are the way that you navigate. It’s your decision process.

When your emotional intelligence operates in an unhealthy way:

• If it is functioning in an unhealthy way, what you will find is that you don’t wait. You do not wait for clarity.
• You are extremely impatient; you make spontaneous decisions. And therefore, you cannot tap into the richness of those emotions of that emotional process. Instead, you get very fixated on a particular part of your wave. This might be you love being in the high of the wave and you only want to make decisions when you are feeling in the high. Or the opposite, you only make decisions when you are in the low of your wave.
• You just avoid the fact that emotions are part of your inner chemistry, and you are constantly blaming and making up reasons for these feelings.
• You chase your highs, and you avoid your lows or the other way around.

Undefined Emotional Function

When we shift into emotional intelligence from the perspective of somebody who has their emotional function or the emotional centre undefined, then this is not the place that you are here to make decisions from. It can be the biggest place of conditioning and your biggest shadow in life, or you can transcend into a place of deep wisdom here. But it will never be the place that you make decisions from. It is never going to be that inner intelligence for you. Yes, you do have emotions. Yes, you do have feelings, but they are not what you are here to use to navigate your life with. For most people, when they enter human design, they’re really living through the not self or the shadow aspects of emotions, which is avoiding confrontation and truth. 

When it operates in an unhealthy way:

• They feel emotionally intimidated.
• They will do anything tiptoe on eggshells, really afraid to rock the boat that amplifies the ocean emotions of the people around them.
• They identify with the emotions, seeking reasons to go “Well if I’m feeling this then this must be me.” So, there must be a reason and you attach a story.
• You can either become overly emotional or ice cold and you are constantly avoiding this confrontation and truth with others.
• You become extremely overwhelmed by the emotions you are amplifying from the people around you. And you can waste so much time and energy trying to solve those emotional problems.
• You can get so caught up in these highs and lows that you can also start chasing after the high of the wave and you only want to be around people when they are on the high.
• You find yourself being driven by these emotions of other people. And you start making decisions from an emotional place.
• When you feel emotions so intensely what can happen is you start avoiding people and relationships all together because you want to avoid the feelings and emotions of others.

When it operates in a healthy way:

When you work through deconditioning and you start let go of the shadow aspects of an open emotional function, you start to be able to tap into the healthy aspect of that. And when you get there, what happens is you:

• Start being able to sift through the emotions and you recognize this is mine or this is not mine. And you no longer take on or hold on to stuff that comes from the outside. That comes from other people.
• You start noticing that when you are not around the people, you are actually extremely emotionally neutral and in a calm state. So, you are not an emotionally charged person. The highs and lows of emotions is something that you amplify and from the outside it is not something that is inherently within you.
• You get to this place where you are willing to confront others, you’re willing to approach the truth between you and others and in relationships.
• You learn how to ride this emotional wave that is constantly being amplified around you, but you don’t identify with it anymore and you no longer get trapped into making decisions from a place of emotions.
• You start to notice all this emotional conditioning that’s around you, but you are not attached to it and you’re also not identified with it.

Human Design vs traditional approaches to Emotional Intelligence

When we look at emotional intelligence through a human design lens, it comes from a very different place to the traditional approach of emotional intelligence, which assumes that everybody is coming from the same place when it comes to emotions. And this is not true, or it does not hold weight when you really start to pay attention to your design. You start to experiment for yourself, you start to watch, and you start to see how emotions are either your navigation tool or they are not. 

It doesn’t mean you don’t feel emotions, but it’s either the place that you default to, to navigate this life to make decisions from or it’s not. And when it’s not, it can be a great source of pain and suffering for you. Because you can constantly be moved around through the tidal wave or tsunami of emotions in people around you who are not consciously aware of their own emotional process and who do not take responsibility for the emotional wave that they are sending out generating, putting a frequency out into the world from the defined emotional function.

I would highly encourage anyone who’s interested in a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence related to this specific human design to really look into whether their function of emotional intelligence is defined or not. And based on that you can then start noticing and watching. 

For example, I am emotionally not defined yet because of that amplification of the emotions of the world around me. For most of my younger years, I thought I was very deeply emotional. And I was constantly looking for reasons to explain why I felt all the emotions, and this pushed me into a very dark phase in my life where I was constantly in this reason seeking, story making place which the mind uses as a tool against you and keeps you in a place of suffering. But once I recognized that emotions, mostly overall was something I was amplifying from the people in my life. It really gave me the space to have awareness of what is mine and what is not and when I can identify what is not mine. I can instantly let it go and be free of needing to do anything with it. It can just move through me like a when you walk through a cloud or some mist how the mist just kind of moves through you or past you around you. But it does not have to settle within you. You do not need to identify or attached to it and kind of feels as if you need to integrate it or solve a problem around it. Which ultimately is what leads to the suffering. 

Knowing if you are emotional defined or not helps you to see how the dynamics between you and other people work. It gives each of you the space to be who you are and to either navigate life through the richness of your emotions or not.

Human Design and BG5 (Human Design for Business) both bring awareness into your life. They help you sift through what you are holding onto - your shadow - and enable you to let go.

With the letting go comes the ability to embrace the truth of who you are with wide open arms.

As a guide I can help you on this journey. I can guide you to know and trust yourself.

If you are would like to explore whether Human Design or BG5 are for you, then please book in a strategy session and we can invesitage how to move you from where you are to living aligned with success.

Aliging you to success.

BG5 Business & Career, Cycles and OC16 Consultant & Human Design Guide

EMPOWERING YOU TO LIVE YOUR UNIQUE DESIGN