Aging Can Help Your EQ
Posted by drbrickey on October 18, 2007
Action to take
If you know more, have more savvy, and are more effective
than you were years ago, give yourself credit for having a higher EQ.
Why
Pat Nicolino, a corporate consultant friend, was catching me up on
what had happened since I saw her in September. In short, she is having
great success at turning around yet another company and has
never felt better or enjoyed herself more.
“I’m 56 now and I have 20 more EQ points than when I was 36,”
she said with exuberance. “At 36 I would have been clueless
about how to accomplish things that I now do with ease.”
Everyone knows what IQ is. EQ, she explained, is knowing how
to get things done and doing them.
I love it. As you get older your experiences and new learning build on each other.
Do you have more confidence than you did twenty years ago? Do you
know more about how organizations work and how to work with people?
Have you learned a lot of new skills in the last twenty years?
If so, give yourself credit for a higher EQ (Experience Quotient).
I would suggest that at 18 the average IQ and EQ is 100. If you are
continually learning and growing, give yourself credit for an additional
EQ point each year since age 18. If you have gone back to school,
learned a new career, or have had other intense learning experiences,
give yourself extra credit.
After the insight, I realized there is a lot of overlap between experience quotient
and Dr. Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence and his eventual use of
EQ for emotional intelligence. The broad skills he describes for emotional
intelligence have a lot of overlap with experience quotient. The difference is
an emphasis on having social intelligence vs. those skills getting better with experience.
Why is considering your EQ important? Psychology and medicine
have painted a negative picture of declining skills as we age.
Your EQ reminds you that you have grown, and are getting sharper with age.
No disrespect to my teenage children, but would you really want to go back
to the mind you had at 18? Neither would I. So what’s your EQ?
Quotes
Many people think you have to be very intelligent to be successful in life.
Exhaustive research shows that many self-made millionaires have only average intelligence.
~Brian Tracy
Continuous effort–not strength or intelligence–is the key to unlocking our potential.
~Winston Churchill
Humor
America is the only country where it takes more brains to
fill out the tax forms than it does to make the money.
Anti-Aging Psychologist Dr. Michael Brickey is keynote speaker and author of the Oprah-featured book, Defy Aging and 52 baby steps to Grow Young. The books and his Reverse Aging anti-aging hypnosis CDs comprise his anti-aging system.
