CONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE^® vs EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE-  What is Conscious Intelligence^®, and how is the Conscious Intelligence^®   emerging as a 21^st century advancement to drive performance, deepen human relational connection, and clear obstacles infringing our path towards our True North?

Both EI and CI tackle skills and characteristics that drive performance, the ability to process information, and use it to navigate our environment, however, their approaches have some stark differences.

The comparison is not an either/or, one is better than the other scenario.  Their applications have different sets of objectives and scopes, and the comparison is more a matter of approach, to a set of given a set of circumstances.

Emotional intelligence specifically relates to the emotional connection between us and/or a circumstance, while

Conscious Intelligence^® has little directly to do with emotions at all in its scope and approach.  CI relates instead to employing perspective responsiveness, that is, our enhanced ability to process our circumstances to respond optimally.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.  It is an aggregated term involving the employment of empathic listening, processing, discerning, and labeling of emotional information so that one can guide thinking and behavior and adapt to a social environment to achieve goals.

It is important to note that in the stimulus/response, action/reaction paradigms, emotions are results- they are reactions located downstream in the process.

Conscious Intelligence® is driven by perspective responsiveness, not emotion, and is cognizant that circumstances can be clouded by emotions.  Perspective responsiveness is the ability to draw from perspective to respond judiciously.  It seeks perspective around the nature, causations, and dynamics surrounding a circumstance, and when proficiently accessed, illuminates the broadest spectrum of choices in order to act judiciously.  Perspective responsiveness is a proactive driver located upstream so we can temper our actions early in the circumstance and elicit an optimal response as we navigate downstream.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” (Viktor Frankl).

That space provides an added dimension to gain perspective from the outset so we can access and control our emotions as well as respond optimally to others’ emotions.

Rather than react on the level of emotion, a person accessing Conscious Intelligence^® can  draw from an illuminated perspective above the circumstance rather than be constrained to react to the emotions within the circumstance.

THINK OF IT AS UPSTREAM VERSUS DOWNSTREAM

The ability to gain powerful perspective while in the stimulus phase (upstream) poises us to conduct ourselves more intentionally while we navigate downstream. This pre-emotion phase allows us to effectively guide a desirable outcome in the response phase (downstream).  Emotions are located downstream AFTER a stimulus has happened, making it much more likely to react haphazardly, rather than respond optimally.

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Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ)  Vs Conscious Intelligence®

Emotional Intelligence:  While studies have ramped up in pursuit of evidence of neural mechanisms and markers of emotional intelligence, EI remains a contrived term that aggregates a set of characteristic traits.  The traits include using emotional information and empathic listening to connect one’s personal emotions with those of others, processing emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discerning between different feelings, labeling them appropriately, and managing or adjusting emotions to adapt to the social environment to achieve goal(s).

Collectively, these skills are aggregated and termed Emotional Intelligence (EQ or EI).

Conscious Intelligence^®:  There are an array of elemental distinctions Eric Erenstoft has identified in his research that, around sixty of them, when present and collectively aggregated in our circumstances, constitute our access to Conscious Intelligence^®. Eric Erenstoft terms them “The Invisible Distinctions^®” and organizes them into a paradigm called “The Genome of Elevated Consciousness^®“.

“There is no such thing as a perfect or correct emotion in a circumstance, only action, but there is such thing as approaching circumstances without being clouded by emotions, be it ours or someone else’s.”, says Erenstoft. The ability to decouple emotions from a circumstance, to see it more clearly, is an important component of Conscious Intelligence^®.  This may sound a bit like stoicism, but there are many examples of stoic predispositions and behavior that are NOT sourced in, and do not employ Conscious Intelligence^®.  (Examples vastly range from  ambivalence to sociopathology.)  “…It is important to note that from this perspective, although we become keenly effective at decoupling our actions from our emotions to perform optimally, we do not permanently remain there (decoupled from our emotions).  Rather, in responding optimally by creating the space and clarity that perspective illuminates, we can access emotions that most closely resemble the best expression of our essential Self.  This is transformative and correlates to an elevation of consciousness.  This is Conscious Intelligence^®.”

What about Analysis Paralysis? The risk of remaining above the circumstance observing is that there is much thought and pontification, but no action.  The rubber meets the road with our decisions on what we do with the perspective we gain. “Conscious Intelligence^® “also has an execution component called Perceptive Responsiveness, that is, the enhanced ability to process our circumstances to make optimal decisions. We draw from Conscious Intelligence^® to inform the decisions we make in eliciting a response, so that when we do, an optimal one is executed.”.

It can more powerfully serve all involved to initially respond to the dynamics of the circumstance rather than react to the specific emotions of a person. The difference is in focus.

Rather than react, which is a downstream and emotionally-based locus of control, one can respond having first gained perspective, which is upstream and more action-based locus of control (because we have set the table ahead of time to do so).

This approach contrasts that of Emotional Intelligence because rather than reacting on the level of emotion, we can powerfully respond while rising above the circumstances instead.  There are many ways to do this, most involve gaining a clear, unfettered perspective over the circumstance versus being in the trenches trying to gain perspective in the circumstance.  We can gain broader and deeper perspective while in the stimulus phase to better shape the surrounding circumstances (pre-emotion) rather than be forced to react much later in the process to circumstances we are served.

In his new book Conscious Intelligence®, Eric Erenstoft has expanded on what he identified as a swath of distinctions he terms The Invisible Distinctions^® that when illuminated allow us to gain broad perspective. With this vastly optimized perspective, we gain the ability to respond judiciously to our circumstances rather than merely react within them.  Conscious Intelligence^® illuminates a path to our True North, our essential guide to create a life and world worth living into.

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ABOUT ERIC ERENSTOFT: 

Eric Erenstoft  , is an expert on Conscious Intelligence^® and a prolific author, futurist, entrepreneur, businessman, GenX’er who has emerged out of this brave new 21^st century to disrupt the transactional way of thinking most people default to today when perspective is not properly illuminated.

Eric Erenstoft is publishing his research on Conscious Intelligence^® and sharing his findings on accessing our Conscious Intelligence^TM in his new book: Conscious Intelligence^®

Conscious Intelligence^® acknowledges that our paths are as unique as our own DNA, and the choices we make- including the choices we may not realize we have, are informed by our thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, experiences, memories, and circumstances.  This lays in stark contrast to our path being informed by a prescriptive process dictated by transactional thinking made popular in our previous 20^th century:  Do this…and get that…. De facto, transactional thinking shuts out our access to Conscious Intelligence^®. Conscious Intelligence^® is the measure of one’s ability to have perspective responsiveness and mastery over their circumstances.