Emotional Intelligence
A few days ago i attended a business to business exhibition at the Brighton centre. The keynote speaker (top of the bill) was Doug Richards, successful entrepreneur and one of the panel of dragons in the first series of Dragons Den shown on BBC 2.
His talk was both informative and amusing. One of his early motivators for succeeding in business (after an initial failure) was revenge. When asked about how much of his business decision making was down to intuition as opposed to hard facts and number crunching he revealed that his emotions played a large part in the process. In fact, when considering investing in an entrepreneur’s idea he was more interested in the person than the product.
Earlier in the day a marketing expert reminded us all of the emotional aspect to buying and how the advertisers used peoples emotions to their advantage when selling. I didn’t expect to come away from business seminars thinking about the power of our emotions. However it did remind me of the increasing importance being attached to ‘emotional intelligence’ within the business sector and just how powerful our emotions can be.
One of the most disabling negative emotions is fear/anxiety which prevents many of our clients from achieving their goals. Even though someone with a spider phobia knows, rationally, that a spider won’t hurt them their emotional brain overrides the rational brain and so they scream and run away. The vast majority of smokers know and accept that smoking is harming them but their emotional brain often overrides the rational brain and provides them with a series of excuses for carrying on smoking. It is often the fear of failure and the fear of not being able to cope without nicotine that prevents the smoker from stopping.
To give you an idea as to how strong your emotional intelligence is take this emotional intelligence test. If you want to become more emotionally intelligent and release negative emotions contact the Brighton & Hove Hypnotherapy practice.
“What are your success rates for stopping smoking?”
This is a question we get asked a lot and you will notice that there is no mention of success rates for helping people to stop smoking on this website - or in any of our promotional literature. This is because we don’t know precisely and so any figures on smoking cessation would have to be an estimate.
Definition of a Non-Smoker …
The NHS gold standard for evidence of success is that the ex-smoker must have been continuously abstinent for a minimum of 1 year (continuously abstinent means that he or she must not have had a relapse in that time, not even a single puff) and you can’t just take the person’s word for it. It must be verified, for example, with a carbon monoxide breath test or a blood test! It also states that you must count any people that you can’t get hold of after a year, as a failure. Asking people to have their blood tested is totally impractical and suggests that we are not prepared to take their word for it. A carbon monoxide breath test at 12 months will not prove that the person hasn’t taken a single puff of a cigarette in the previous 12 months.
Personal Definition of Non-Smoking Success …
The definition of success is a variable. For example, last year i helped a 30-per-day smoker who subsequently became a social smoker, which means that some days she doesn’t smoke at all but will smoke when she is in the pub. She claimed the treatment to be a success but i didn’t.
Our Follow-up Treatments
We will continue to follow-up and support our clients at 1 month, 3 months and 12 months after treatment so that we have a good idea as to how we are doing even if we can’t publish those figures. Some therapists quote success rates as high as 95% or even 97%. Beware of anyone quoting success rates in their promotional material and if you are tempted by their claims ask them to verify how they came to that figure and what determines a success.
