12. They listen to hear, not respond.
While listening to other people speak, they focus on what is being said, not how they are going to respond. This is also known as the meta practice of “holding space.”
13. They do not post anything online they would be embarrassed to show to a parent, explain to a child, or have an employer find.
Aside from the fact that at some point or another, one if not all of those things will come to pass, posting anything that you are not confident to support means you are not being genuine to yourself (you are behaving on behalf of the part of you that wants other people to validate it).
14. They do not consider themselves a judge of what’s true.
They don’t say, “you’re wrong”; they say, “I think you are wrong.”
15. They don’t “poison the well” or fall for ad hominem fallacy to disprove a point.
“Poisoning the well” is when someone attacks the character of a person so as to shift the attention away from the (possibly very valid) point being made. For example, if a person who eats three candy bars a day says: “I don’t think kids it’s healthy for children to eat too much candy each day,” a socially intelligent person wouldn’t respond, “Who are you to say?”; they would be able to see the statement objective from the person who is saying it. Usually, it is people who are most inflicted with an issue that are able to speak out on the importance of it (even if it seems hypocritical on the surface).
16. Their primary relationship is to themselves, and they work on it tirelessly.
The main thing socially intelligent people understand is that your relationship to everyone else is an extension of your relationship to
yourself.
6
UNCOMFORTABLE
FEELINGS
that actually
INDICATE
you’re onthe
RIGHT PATH
Discomfort is what happens when we are on the precipice of change.
Unfortunately, we often confuse it for unhappiness and cope with the latter while running from the former. It usually takes a bit of discomfort to break through to a new understanding, to release a limiting belief, to motivate ourselves to create real change. Discomfort is a signal, one that is often very helpful. Here are a few (less than desirable) feelings that may indicate you’re on the right path after all:
01. Feeling as though you are reliving your childhood struggles.
You find that you’re seeing issues you struggled with as a kid reappear in your adult life, and while on the surface this may seem like a matter of not having overcome them, it really means you are becoming conscious of why you think and feel so you can change it.
02. Feeling “lost” or directionless.
Feeling lost is actually a sign you’re becoming more present in your life—you’re living less within the narratives and ideas that you premeditated and more in the moment at hand. Until you’re used to this, it will feel as though you’re off-track (you aren’t).
03. “Left brain” fogginess.
When you’re utilizing the right hemisphere more often (you’re becoming more intuitive, you’re dealing with emotions, you’re creating) sometimes it can seem as though “left brain” functions leave you feeling fuzzy. Things such as focusing, organizing, and remembering small details suddenly become difficult.
04. Having random influxes of irrational anger or sadness that intensify until you can’t ignore them anymore.
When emotions erupt it’s usually because they’re “coming up” to be recognized, and our job is to learn to stop grappling with them or resisting them and to simply become fully conscious of them (after that, we control them, not the opposite way around).
05. Experiencing unpredictable and scattered sleeping patterns.
You’ll need to sleep a lot more or a lot less, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night because you can’t stop thinking about something, you find yourself full of energy or completely exhausted, and with little in between.
06. A life-changing event is taking place or just has.
You suddenly having to move, getting divorced, losing a job, having a car break down, etc.
07. Having an intense need to be alone.
You’re suddenly disenchanted with the idea of spending every weekend out socializing, and other people’s problems are draining you more than they are intriguing you. This means you’re recalibrating.
08. Intense, vivid dreaming that you almost always remember in detail.
If dreams are how your subconscious mind communicates with you (or projects an image of your experience), then your mind is definitely trying to say something. You’re having dreams at an intensity that you’ve never experienced before.
09. Downsizing your friend group; feeling more and more uncomfortable around negative people.
The thing about negative people is that they rarely realize they are negative, and because you feel uncomfortable saying anything (and you’re even more uncomfortable keeping that in your life), you’re ghosting a bit on old friends.
10. Feeling like the dreams you had for your life are collapsing.
What you do not realize at this moment is that it is making way for a reality better than you could have thought of, one that’s more aligned with who you are, not who you thought you would be.
