RULER

The Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University have a process called RULER, an acronym for what they call the five skills of emotional intelligence: Recognising, Understanding, Labelling, Expressing and Regulating. I think it's amazing that Yale are studying emotional intelligence but found the acronym and the words and processes it represents... interesting.

First, the word RULER brought to my mind a need to govern: to be a leader, dictator, potentate or a sovereign who rules over our emotions, like some sort of feudal overlord treating our emotions as our medieval serfs to be controlled, dominated, raped, pillaged and taxed.

The words RULER represents also bothered me. I was good with Recognizing and Understanding but really had trouble with Labelling, Expressing and Regulating. To me it seemed that embedded in this process is a very strong belief that somehow our emotions are forever ours, a that with this sense of ownership is a need to label, express and regulate them.

Undoubtedly ‘our’ emotions can help us learn what ‘our’ problems are and help us overcome them. But what if we developed power and confidence in working with our own mind and emotions. What if we learned to watch our emotions coming and going like clouds across our mind’s sky. What if we learned to relax and let go of ourself, our sense of me and mine, even 'my' emotions?

What if we harnessed the power of our emotions by allowing them to simply be and then to simply dissolve.

What if we followed a new RULER, who recognised, understood, loved, evolved and relaxed.

#yaleuniversity #emotionalintelligence #leader