Book Bite: Go Suck a Lemon: Strategies for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence by Michael Cornwall teaches you to change the way you think about situations so that you have less knee jerk responses. Become emotionally self-reliant so you move away from emotional helplessness.
I had the brilliant idea of listening to the Go Suck a Lemon audio book while reading the e-book. I read a few years ago that when you do that, you’ll read the book faster. And I thought it was an excellent idea. What do they say about the best intentions? Well the audio book was very different from e-book.
The chapters didn’t line up. Most of the time I couldn’t figure out where to find the information in the e-book that I was listening to in the audio book. Talk about a disaster in the making. Since the book is about emotional intelligence, I had to check my emotions and how I was responding to the situation. It wasn’t the author’s fault now, was it? Would he have expected anyone to have both the e-book and audio book and to use both at the same time?
What is Go Suck a Lemon by Michael Cornwall About?
Definition of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions.
“It’s a subset of social intelligence. You monitor your feelings and emotions and that of others and evaluate them to guide your thinking.”
Go Suck a Lemon gives readers strategies to improve their emotional intelligence. The book has a lot of useful information, but it wasn’t a book that I loved or enjoyed. Perhaps my feelings stem from the frustration I experienced listening to the audio book while reading the e-book. Anyway here’s the information I extracted from it.
Your happiness is up to you — no one else. Therefore you must take control of your emotions. That’s also important so you can think clearly. What you need to understand is that emotions aren’t fixed. You will experience emotional hardships, so prepare for them. Work on improving your emotional intelligence. Emotion is the language of the mind. Look at the way you view disapproval, do you let it affect your emotions?
The book advises you to adopt a no-nonsense style of emotional problem solving. It’s level headed decision making that’s efficient, flexible, and open-minded when looking at emotional problems. A good way to start improving your emotional intelligence is to improve your self-talk. The self-talk language you communicate with yourself you repeat them all the time. So be aware of what you say to yourself. Going through the process of acquiring a new language of emotion will cause you angst.
Your emotional language determines your interpretation of situations. Change the way you communicate with self because you’re responsible for how you feel at all time. What do you tell yourself when things happen? Do you tell yourself that you shouldn’t be treated that way? How are you viewing events? Reject the messages you repeat to yourself all the time. Look at the expectations you have of yourself and of others. Your self-talk is an expression of your beliefs.
Look at how you process events and look at the source of your emotions. What would it take for you to give up certain beliefs. Flexible beliefs improve emotional intelligence. Flexibility in your belief system may help you to achieve higher emotional competency. Replace a belief that doesn’t serve you well with a better belief. That means you replace harmful, irrational beliefs with better ones. People have a tendency to hold on to what they know.
Realize that you can ask for the things you want, but you don’t have the right to receive them. Others cannot really push your buttons. You push your own buttons. A better thing to do is to get rid of the notion of buttons. Replace them with new emotional language. You only have your thoughts, so manage your thoughts. Change the way you perceive a situation. Your happiness should not be on the condition of anything.
People make poor emotional choices and you don’t have to respond to them. Start practicing fact-based thinking. Emotionally intelligent people take responsibility and don’t believe in perfectionism. Move toward internal locus of control where you become self-reliant and take responsibility for outcomes.
On the other hand, when you have external locus of control, you tend to be more negative about others and don’t take responsibility for the things that happen to you. You have the innate power to achieve your human potential. Emotional intelligence proposes that there are two dominant human emotional potentials – fear and attachment to regain, maintain and restore physical and psychological balance.
- Fear: Sadness, depression, and dread
- Attachment: Joy, elation, contentedness, and love
According to emotional intelligence theory, the expression of fear and attachment are natural, human emotional potential.
Emotional wellness is described as a self-determined appraisal of one’s own psychological well-being. Aim for self acceptance. You aren’t perfect and never will be. You succeed and fail. You’re not a success or a failure. Perfection is a potential that no one can achieve. Be in touch with your emotions. You can’t hold others to your standard of behaviour.
Final Thoughts: Go Suck a Lemon: Strategies for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence by Michael Cornwall
You have to think and perceive to feel emotion. Change your thinking by changing your perception and self-talk. When you change your self-talk, your inner emotional language will likely change how you emotionally respond to things. To improve your emotional intelligence, you have to change the way you communicate with yourself about yourself and your relationships with others.
Take responsibility for and master your emotions. Monitor how you talk to yourself and make sure that what you are saying is fact-based. Emotionally intelligent people do not seek to be perfect. They work at becoming better. If you want to be more emotionally intelligence, Go Suck a Lemon by Michael Cornwall is worth the read.
Have you read?
Confident Career Woman Book 1: Read 30 Books in 30 Days Reading Challenge
Why Not You Book 2: Read 30 Books in 30 Days Reading Challenge
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You’re Unstoppable: Learn How to Be a No-Limit Person
Start Taking Steps Now to Crush It Post Isolation
Go Suck a Lemon Reading List
The Language of Emotional Intelligence
Working with Emotional Intelligence
Next Steps
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