Emotional Intelligence

Chapter 9Drive it: Being motivated and reaching our full potential

There is very little doubt that humans have some fantastic ideas! Our mind can go into overdrive thinking of all the possible ‘what if’ moments: ‘What if we did it this way instead?’ ‘What if we redesigned the product to make it better?’ ‘What if we renovated the house?’ The actual ideas are not generally where the problem lies. Moving them from ideas to the implementation stage — now that's a completely different story.

We tend to set out with the very best of intentions only to find ‘blockers’ in our way. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough energy — it's all too hard and overwhelming. While fear, self‐doubt and procrastination can get in the way of many great ideas, the make‐up of our brain and our human behavioural needs and responses also play a big role in this process.

Rewiring our brain to achieve targets

There is still much confusion around research on whether our brain can determine the difference between imagination and reality. While some researchers believe the subconscious mind cannot identify the difference between imagination and reality, others say the brain processes the two different areas in completely different ways.

We know that the subconscious mind holds our emotional response, along with our long‐term memory, and we know that everything we do is for an emotional outcome or driver. We can picture how we will feel based on each outcome thanks to our memory, values, beliefs and ...