Grandmother, What Big Eyes You Have
By Susan Dunn, Thu Dec 8th

“Grandmother, What Big Eyes You Have: An EQ Tale,” by SusanDunn, The EQ Coach

Well, you know how the fairytale goes … Little Red Riding Hoodheads out into the woods to see her grandmother. First she failsto notice the wolf when he approaches her in the woods, but goesgaily on her way.

Then, when she arrives at her Grandmother’s house things looksuspicious and she sticks around to comment – “Grandmother, whatbig eyes you have!” ending with the familiar line “Grandmother,what a big mouth you have!” followed by “The better to eat youwith my dear.”

Fairytales were designed to teach us life lessons. The lesson inthis fairytale is one of the key points in emotionalintelligence – learning to pay attention to your emotions, yourinstincts.

Emotional intelligence means understanding and managing your ownemotions and those of others. Our emotions predate our abilityto “think” as human beings, and are strong cues to us for onereason: survival.

Part of emotional intelligence is learning to hear how youremotions and your intuition talk to you, to pay attention to themessage, trust it and act accordingly.

When I ask people in workshops how they know when it’sintuition, they say “because I’m absolutely sure.” Intuition isan EQ competency that can be developed and it can help you makebetter decisions, use better judgment, and maybe even save yourlife.

This is a child’s tale, but how do we teach children to be safe?By teaching them to trust their instincts. Now we say, “Ifsomething feels funny, run away.” Some children tend to be tootrusting of people, animals, heights, swimming pools, and carsand this can put them in jeopardy. If you feel scared, payattention.

Little Red Riding would have had all sorts of cues thatsomething was amiss – a strange smell, things arrangeddifferently, maybe the hair stood up on the back of her neck, ofa chill ran down her spine. Feelings such as these are there tohelp us; they keep us alive. They’re strong, because they’redesigned to over-ride “thinking” and impel immediate action.Little Red Riding did exactly what she shouldn’t have in apossibly dangerous situation – she started asking questions.

As adults, we receive the same cues and need to learn to heedthem. If something “smells fishy” it probably is, no matter whatyou’ve been told or led to believe. If you “get the creeps”getting out of your car in a dark, empty parking lot, payattention to this signal. If someone is promising you somethingand it doesn’t “feel” right, you’re getting

a message for areason.

Intuition is an emotional intelligence competency we’re all bornwith, but we can learn to pump up the volume, invite it into ourlife for the guide it can be, and heed its messages. It’simportant all the time, but if you have a dangerous occupation(such as nuclear engineering), it’s especially important.

Don’t get caught staring into a mouth of wolflike teeth andstarting to count the molars!

About the author:Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, helps clients get organized andsucceed with the Don't Die at 50 Weekly Organizational Calendar,Good Accountability System, Internet courses. www.susandunn.ccand mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc.