Knowing ourselves better could help us better manage our knowledge. Emotional intelligence is one brain tool that could mean the difference between being a slave to your own mind and the minds of others, or taking control and beginning to attract the happiness and success you want.

More and more people appear to be unhappy with their work, fall short of achieving their goals, are uncertain about their relationships and live life with a perpetual background unease, which neither allows a full sense of peace nor a sense of 100% engagement with life.

In developing your emotional intelligence, you begin to discover many of the core questions and beliefs that have driven your behaviour, produced your current circumstances and have held you back without you even knowing about it.

So what does it really take to become an expert on ourselves and begin to live an authentic life in full connection with a sense of purpose and passion? There are five critical factors;

1. Know Your World

Know the reality of the physical universe you live in. How real is it? What part do you play in creating what you see outside of you? The world is a very fluid place constantly being built up by our individual and collective thoughts. Not being aware of this forces you to move through life as a victim of external circumstances. Awareness of this allows you to create your experience as you wish it to be - including your experience of purpose, health, wealth and happiness.

2. Know Yourself

This is simply about becoming conscious of what drives your behaviour and what really motivates you at the most fundamental level. Once you are aware and conscious of this, you are more and more at choice.

To really know yourself, it’s important to:

• Learn exactly how you have created the way you see the world, the way you see your life, your relationships.

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• Discover the most fundamental truth about the power of your beliefs and what a massive impact they have (whether you know it or not) in creating what you see around you.
• Know what you 'value'. What you feel is important to you provides an additional layer of motivation to anything you do or don't do. Self sabotage often results from having values in conflict with each other and where you say you want to go.

If you imagine your brain to be a computer, uncovering your core motivation, beliefs and values is the equivalent of discovering the programs that are filling your 'hard drive'.

Many of these programmes have been running in the background for years and you've forgotten where they came from. They're taking up an awful lot of space and while some are getting you results, most of them are just slowing you down. Maybe it’s time you closed them down for good.

Thousands of years old (and now one of the most popular systems for self-understanding and personal growth), the enneagram describes nine different types of motivation that exist behind behaviour. When you are stuck in your illusion, your particular enneagram type or number is the software program your mind runs by default. There are basically nine such programmes and although we exhibit some aspects of all nine, without exception, we operate mainly one of these programmes as our master programme.

As with any software program, your particular program has strengths and limitations. It also has an override – and that is your awareness. Knowing your type is about knowing your self, learning what you need to learn to be free of the limitations of the programme, and learning how to exploit its strengths.

Your enneagram profile does not come about by accident, nor does it change over the course of your life. Key events early in childhood make you rely more on one program than any of the others as a way of coping with your world. Just in discovering your type, you will recognise yourself, your friends, family, work colleagues and bosses with a clarity that will really surprise you.

This is not about putting you in a box, as most personality profiling systems seem to do. This shows you the major program you are operating, the key aspects of it that trip you up, and how to keep yourself operating at the healthiest level. Without your awareness, the mind runs riot with this programme and you get caught up in it. With your awareness you can take control of the mind and direct it in a way that serves you, and finally begin to make changes that are sustainable in the long term, not superficial quick fixes.

3. Free Yourself

Knowing yourself means keeping that which serves you and dropping that which doesn't. Know how to put to bed the fears, frustrations, negative thoughts and beliefs that place limits on what you allow yourself to do, be and have. It's a lot easier than you think. And the word 'think' has a lot to do with it. You must want freedom more than you want to be attached to your story, your circumstances and your pain!

Freeing yourself is about uncovering natural resources you have which consistently put you in a place of "I can" rather than "I can't", returning to your natural state of openness. Freeing yourself of the beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviours that you know don't help you need not be a difficult process. The very assumption that it's difficult is what often keeps the limitations in place.

One thing only is needed – your readiness to watch yourself. Become curious, be an astute observer of yourself and live in the present moment in your natural state. The beliefs you hold and run in your mind must absolutely support the outcomes you wish, or you've failed even before you start.

4. Be Yourself

What is ‘being yourself’? It is taking away the mask of your ego, your programs, and entering your 'natural state'. You are the most powerful creator when you are simply being yourself and this means bringing into balance the degree of trust you have in your logical, thinking mind and the trust in your intuition (the part of you that always knows the way).

Being yourself is also about being free and independent of the opinions of others, and being connected to personal passion and purpose that brings alive the uniqueness of your best personality. To be yourself, you must know how to maintain yourself in a place of congruent and authentic groundedness at all times.

Forget the peak performance techniques that just get you pumped up with short term ‘ra-ra’ enthusiasm. You know you've had authentic experiences where enthusiasm and joy just poured out of you without you having to 'do' anything. There very simple ways you can self-connect in seconds and feel this natural euphoria.

Self-connection is the essence of producing a state of mind where you are simply being yourself. So, when developing your emotional intelligence, you need to discover from your own experience the natural states in which you have had the greatest sense of connection with a part of you that has never changed. This will re-connect you with yourself and your intuition.

5. Create Yourself

Only when you have mastered steps 1-4 can you go inside and ask your self: what do I really want to accomplish in this life and where do I go from here?

It is perfectly alright to want abundance of every kind, be it related to money, relationships, health, fun, spirit or anything else you can think of. The biggest lie we live with is that it's wrong to want for yourself. If you are not happy in yourself, what good are you to anyone else?

To create your life consistently, however, you need a system – one that is easy to understand, easy to use and easy to replicate time after time; a system that keeps you focused on the result, connected to your internal compass, and that allows you to be yourself.

Finally, take full control of and responsibility for your beliefs and thoughts. Through developing results-focused emotional intelligence, you can see how the beliefs, thoughts and feelings you have on a consistent basis have such a massive impact on your ability to create your circumstances.

For more information please contact performance coach and accredited RC60 trainer Baiju Solanki or visit Performance Coaching and Training.