UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING

Have you ever known about something? Like REALLY known about it? So much so that you don’t even think about whatever it is you know about? Maybe you’re a wiz at wrapping presents or playing a certain video game. Your skills are so ingrained that you feel like you use little energy or brain power to complete the task. These are examples of emotional understanding. Your skill set has reached a level where you have so much confidence, self-assurance and self-trust in your skills that you do not pause for thought on how to do the task. While intellectual understanding may seem similar the difference is that when it comes time to apply the skill to daily living, we tend to become more clumsy and less self-assured. We may start out confident, but as time goes by and we attempt to apply the skills we’ve learned, we realize that we do not know as much as we thought we knew.

Here’s a test you can take to determine whether you have an intellectual understanding on a topic or an emotional understanding. Take the test as many times as you want on different topics to get to know yourself better: (some topics to consider: relationship management, self-awareness, money management)

INTELLECTUAL UNDERSTANDING TEST

1. Are you good at rote memorizing the topic of interest? If you read or watch enough content on this subject, do you find yourself able to recall the knowledge and engage in confident conversation on the topic? Are you able to easily pull facts that you remember on the subject?
2. Are you able to teach the subject from an intellectual perspective meaning you can share the facts you learned with another so that they can intellectually understand it?
3. Are you able to use the knowledge and facts to create your own content on the subject with little reference back to the material?

EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING TEST

1. Are you easily able to apply the knowledge toward your own relationships, money management, wellness, etc. and get the results you seek on a long term basis?
2. Are you able to see positive results in your life after applying the knowledge, techniques, etc. to your own life? Are you able to be consistent with this application?
3. Are you able to trouble shoot solutions pertaining to this topic using the information you’ve acquired or do you end up getting confused or unable to conclude a solution? (In other words, would you have to watch a ton more videos to find the answer to the solution?). Emotional understanding would simply KNOW the answer with little effort.

When we emotionally understanding a topic, we can apply the knowledge to our daily living consistently. In essence, we transfer what we’ve learned to our lifestyle and live the principles daily. Since we understand the material so well, we simply KNOW what to do as problems arise. When we only intellectually understand a topic, we can recall and share about the topic, but when it comes time to apply it to daily living consistently, we have to refer back to the material, spend many hours reflecting before we know what to do, and have a lot more failed outcomes.

HOW DO YOU GAIN EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING?

Once we’ve acquired all that we can on a particular topic to the point that we can confidently share facts, teach on the subject and create content, we have enough understanding to begin to transfer this knowledge to our daily living. As we practice applying the information to our daily living we will begin to gain new knowledge and understanding from life’s feedback. When we apply techniques learned and they do not yield the results we seek, we can note the mistakes and failures so that we can reflect on what we think went wrong and what a better solution would be for next time. As we attempt this trial and error approach, engaging our higher order thinking skills, we will develop greater understanding and with this understanding we will build confidence with the material. Over time, we will deepen our understanding on the particular topic until we can transition from intellectual understanding to emotional understanding. Emotional understanding is only possible AFTER we’ve engaged this process for an extensive period of time. Think of intellectual understanding as your medical school training and residency and emotional understanding as your medical career. Until you apply what you’ve learned in medical school, you cannot really say whether or not you grasp the material. It’s not until we apply what we’ve intellectually learned that we determine how much we actually know.

THE HARD TOPICS

For many, it’s easy to go to medical school and do a residency. It’s easy to begin our career as a doctor, but not as easy to deal with the challenges that arise like not having answers for a patient or not being able to save a patient. It is these challenges that lead to us seeking greater knowledge and understanding to begin with. Usually, it is only after we reach a wall that we seek after true understanding. In fact, it is not until we reach a wall that we realize that we don’t possess true understanding or emotional understanding. It is from the hard topics that we begin to get a true picture of our current understanding.

3 EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING SKILLS TO SEE IF YOU HAVE:

1. Emotional Identification: Are you able to feel and sense your emotions on the topic? Can you identify any fears or doubts related to the topic?
2. Emotional management: Are you able to access healthy emotional regulation, coping and stress management skills when you get triggered on the topic? Or do you just fly off the handle or shut down?
3. Emotional processing: Are you able to stay present in whatever emotion is triggered and allow the emotion to flow through you so that you can release it or do you resist this process and seek coping mechanisms to shut down the experience?

When we emotionally understand we are able to engage these three steps above with ease. We experience emotional freedom 24/7 and utilize this formula in our personal and professional lives without even really thinking about it which results in a joyful and peaceful experience.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

There is no greater return on investment than emotional learning. Einstein once said that we can only understand something when we rise to the next level of consciousness. If we are unable to answer yes to all three of the emotional understanding questions in the topics of interest to us, then we lack the skills and tools we need to achieve our goals. When we make emotional understanding our priority we will begin to see the same level of return on investment as we do with retirement.

AN EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING EXAMPLE

I’ve been a teacher for over 30 years. I’ve taught thousands and thousands of children. I’ve worked with neurotypical and neurodivergent, disabled and non-disabled, every socioeconomic population and everything in between. What this experience has gifted me is the ability to perceive needs on an intuitive level. When I first started teaching, I had a natural ability with kids. Kids tended to like me and gravitate toward me. It wasn’t anything that I was doing or not doing, it was more just a gift or talent that I had. But early on in my career, I lacked emotional understanding on many topics such as life circumstance, special interests, and emotional maturity which affected my ability to fully reach kids in the way that I would years later.

When I was in my early twenties, I had a very old school approach to teaching. I was the one in charge and my students were expected to listen to me and do as I asked. Anytime that I had an “unruly” or “disobedient” child, I would approach my classroom management strategy with the use of consequences. I’d use time out, loss of privilege, etc. and to the untrained eye, I was perceived as an “excellent” teacher who demonstrated “exceptional” classroom management skills. I look back in horror at those early years and would classify myself as someone who was a “terrible” teacher with “poor” classroom management skills. But this is only because I’ve acquired SO much emotional education and understanding that I understand things like consciousness, will and love now and have since shifted my teaching approach to that of authentic love and radical acceptance. I now understand that every child is different with different needs, life circumstances and understanding. As such, every child must be greeted where they are and without judgment. Classroom management is not even something that I reference anymore as classroom management is nothing more than controlling the masses. Now, I create learning spaces where I present a topic to my students and accept that not everyone is going to want to engage in that topic. That means that I need to have other options available for the students who do not want to engage in that topic. Eventually, I will present topics that every student will naturally want to engage in and everyone will “learn” something. But as a teacher, my job is to educate my students and I understand that learning can only happen where organic curiosity and natural motivation are. This is why I create a learning space now where all of my students can be engaged and where there are ample opportunities for them to take breaks, rest, recharge, engage in special interests, drink, eat, play, move, etc. I emotionally understand learning, human behavior and human emotions now and this makes all the difference. While to the lookers on, my classroom continues to be “well managed,” the approach is entirely different to my early years as a teacher. I’ve gained emotional understanding on teaching and learning now. I can apply the knowledge I’ve acquired without thinking about it and yield the results I seek consistently.

AN INVITATION TO GAIN EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING

Are you a manager? A leader of some kind? A teacher? A parent? An influencer of youth in some way? (marketing & promotions is a youth influencer!) Are you an influencer of others in any way? If so, then consider gaining emotional understanding on the topics that are important to you. I can think of no single skill set that can catapult your career more than emotional understanding. When we can lead people with love and kindness instead of force and control, we have the capacity to use inspiration over demand and special interests as a motivator. People tend to respond much better when given choice and the use of autonomy. When we have emotional understanding of leadership, for example, we can see the needs of others, we can feel their emotional states, we can sense their desires and aspirations and we have the capacity to love without conditions. When our employee is not happy, we no longer feel upset when they give us their notice and move on to greener pastures. Instead we root for them and want them to be happy and fulfilled. Furthermore, we no longer pay our staff minimum wage to secure our own financial freedom. Instead, we see the value in our employees and feel genuine gratitude for all they do for us and our business that keeps it thriving and these genuine feelings of gratitude influence our generosity. An emotionally intelligent person is one who is aware of themselves, their emotions and their actions. With the self-insight, they have the ability to intuit others and have the emotional capacity to feel things like empathy, compassion, genuine concern for others well-being, etc. When we increase our emotional understanding of things we enrich our skill set.

WHICH CHAPTER ARE YOU ON?

Strength of character is what all of the fairytales and heroine journey stories strive to teach us. All the great sages, authors and artists of our past and present understand this which is why they are so inspired to create about it. When we become conscious of ourselves and others we come to emotionally understand the why of the heroine journey story. Each of us is a character in our own stories. The people around us are the supporting actors and actresses in our story. Where we are emotionally on our journey determines which chapter from our story we are on. The best way to reach the end of our stories is to acquire understanding in some capacity that changes who we were at the beginning of our story and gives us the skills and tools we need to achieve whatever goal it is we set for ourselves at the beginning of our story. No character ever achieves his goal absent emotional change. All characters have a plot and subplot. The subplot is where the emotional change happens which enables the character to achieve his goal (which is what fuels the plot). When we can see ourselves as the protagonist in our own story, we can no longer feel insignificant. As the hero of your story, what outer goal or plot are you seeking after and what inner achievement or subplot must you achieve to reach your outer goal?

Much Love!!