Google's 'Jolly Good Fellow' On The Power Of Emotional Intelligence 09-30

Google's 'Jolly Good Fellow' On The Power Of Emotional Intelligence

When Google engineer-turned-mindfulness expert Chade-Meng Tan gives a talk in front of a group of Silicon Valley developers and executives, he often starts with a simple exercise.

“Imagine two human beings. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, just wish for those two human beings to be happy. That’s all.”

During one recent talk, he gave the group a homework assignment: Perform the exercise the next day at work, spending 10 seconds each hour randomly choosing two people and silently wishing for them to be happy. The following morning, Tan received an email from an employee who attended the workshop that read, “I hate my job. I hate coming to work every day. But yesterday I tried your suggestion and it was my happiest day in seven years.”

It’s not the first time that Tan -- who Wired recently dubbed   an "Enlightenment engineer" -- has seen emotional intelligence exercises transform an employee’s work and life. As Google’s resident “Jolly Good Fellow  ,” Tan developed Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training program. Tan's philosophy is that cultivating emotional intelligence through mindfulness training and meditation can help an individual reach a state of inner peace, the essential foundation of happiness, success and compassion.

More than 1,000 Google employees have gone through the SIY curriculum,according to Wired  , the principles of which are outlined in Tan's New York Times bestseller, “Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path To Achieving Success, Happiness (And World Peace)"  . The program focuses on building up the five emotional intelligence domains of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills, primarily through meditation and mindfulness training, which aims to improve one's focus and attention on the present moment.

The benefits of emotional intelligence   in the workplace are well-documented, from career success to improved relationships to better leadership -- and Tan says getting Silicon Valley interested in a meditation program to train employees in emotional intelligence wasn't difficult.

"Everybody already knows, emotional intelligence is good for my career, it's good for my team, it's good for my profits," Tan tells the Huffington Post. "It comes pre-marketed, so all I had to do is create a curriculum for emotional intelligence that helps people succeed, with goodness and world-peace as the unavoidable side-effects."

Here are five ways that you can cultivate emotional intelligence -- and revolutionize your work, relationships and happiness.

Meditate.

Tan outlines three major steps to developing emotional intelligence: Training attention ("the ability to bring the mind to a state that's calm and clear, and to do it on demand," he explains), self-awareness, and social intelligence. The first step is building an individual's powers of attention through meditation.

Tan is convinced that much like improving physical fitness, improving "mental fitness" through meditation and mindfulness practices can improve nearly every aspect of your life, from work to family life to physical health.

"There are some things in life where if you improve one thing, everything else in life is improved... If you improve physical fitness, it improves your home life, success, wellness, everything," says Tan. "The same is true for meditation, because meditation is in fact mental and emotional fitness. If you are fit mentally and emotionally, every aspect of your life improves."

Research has confimed that mindfulness contributes to emotional well-being, in addition to improving memory and attention  . A 2013 University of Utah studyfound that individuals with mindful personality traits (such as self-awareness and attentiveness) exhibited more stable emotional patterns and reported feeling more in control of their moods and actions. Brown University research also found that mindfulness meditation could improve an individual's control over brain processing of pain and emotions.

Cultivate compassion.

Meditation is also the primary vehicle for cultivating compassion: A recent Harvard University study found that individuals who underwent eight weeks of meditation training were significantly more likely to help others in need than those who hadn't gone through the meditation training.

Neuroscientists have even seen that meditating on compassion can create an empathetic state in the brain. When Tibetan Buddhist monks were asked to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion" in a 2006 study, the researchers measured brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated with positive emotions, that was 30 times stronger than the activity among a control group of college students who didn't meditate, Wired reported  . The researchers theorized that empathy may be something one can cultivated by "exercising" the brain through loving-kindness meditation.

Tan explains that mindfulness training helps to boost self-compassion first and foremost, which then expands to compassion for others. "[After the program], people say, 'I see myself with kindness.'"

But the benefits of cultivating compassion go beyond greater kindness towards oneself and others: In addition to improving happiness, compassion can also boost a business's creative output and bottom line, according to Tan -- a sentiment that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, a leading proponent of compassionate management  , would agree with.

"The one thing [that all companies should be doing] is promoting the awareness that compassion can and will be good for success and profits," says Tan.

Practice mindful observance of the mind and body.

Mindful awareness of what's going on in the mind and body -- thoughts, feelings, emotions, physical sensations and disease -- is an important step in cultivating inner joy, says Tan.

"If you start from mindfulness, the first thing you get is inner peace," Tan explains. "Then you add on other practices like observing wellness in the body, you also get inner joy. Take that inner joy and add on other practices, and you will get kindness and compassion."

Make mindfulness a habit.

You may not think of inner peace as something that you can develop through creating good habits, but Tan explains that happiness is a habit that you can create through a daily mindfulness practice.

"To create sustainable compassion, you have to be strong in inner joy,” says Tan. “Inner joy comes from inner peace -- otherwise it's not sustainable. And inner peace is highly trainable."

The way that inner peace is trained is through regular meditation -- which isn't strictly limited to sitting quietly in lotus position. A meditation habit can be a quiet daily walk around your block, a yoga practice, or any of these non-om forms of meditation. The important thing is that you create a habit by doing it regularly and turn mindfulness into a part of your daily life.

"Habits are highly trainable," explains Tan. "And habits become character."