Early in my counseling my therapist bluntly told me I was an emotional moron.  Wow thanks.  But he followed this with the information that I can change this by learning the skills that I didn’t learning as a child.  I totally did not comprehend how much I missed out on growing up.  I didn’t grow up, I survived.  Any signs of possibly growing up were immediately squashed.  I was squashed over and over.  My therapist pointed out that I needed to go through all the stages I missed.  One thing after another became topics to pick apart and explore how to integrate them into my life.  I described this process similar to changing my car engine while I drove down the freeway.  Recently my daughter posted a link to a site that lists a few of the things to learn about living.

This article starts out defining Emotional Intelligence.  I tried reading a book on it but gave up because I felt so overwhelmed with what I didn’t know.  I may try the book again at a later date.  The main points of emotional intelligence include but are not limited to self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and socialization.  Each one of the these could be an extensive program of study but the article share definitions in a few lines.  Then the article list several different social situations.  I would call this article something to raise awareness that these are skills.  I often felt that some people could do these things and I couldn’t.  My counselor taught me with many homework assignments to do some of these.  I joined Toast Masters to help me over come my fear of talking to people in groups.  That only lasted a few months but really helped.  I continue on my journey of learning and trying new things that were barred to me in childhood.  My inner critic still nags me but I learned that my inner critic was the tape placed there by my abusers and best ignored.  I believe this article is a starting of a To-do list for thriving.  My therapist helped me a bunch.  Now I continue my own journey, learning and growing which by definition is thriving.  I love thriving.