When Google en­gi­neer-turned-mind­ful­ness ex­pert Chade-Meng Tan gives a talk in front of a group of Sil­i­con Val­ley de­vel­op­ers and ex­ec­u­tives, he of­ten starts with a sim­ple ex­er­cise.

"Imag­ine two hu­man be­ings. Don't say any­thing, don't do any­thing, just wish for those two hu­man be­ings to be hap­py. That's all."

Dur­ing one re­cent talk, he gave the group a home­work as­sign­ment: Per­form the ex­er­cise the next day at work, spend­ing ten sec­onds each hour ran­dom­ly choos­ing two peo­ple and silent­ly wish­ing for them to be hap­py. The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Tan re­ceived an e-mail from an em­ploy­ee who at­tend­ed the work­shop that read, "I hate my job. I hate com­ing to work every day. But yes­ter­day I tried your sug­ges­tion and it was my hap­pi­est day in sev­en years."

It's not the first time that Tan–who Wired re­cent­ly dubbed an "en­light­en­ment en­gi­neer"–has seen emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence ex­er­cis­es trans­form an em­ploy­ee's work and life. As Google's res­i­dent "Jol­ly Good Fel­low," Tan de­vel­oped Search In­side Your­self (SIY) pro­gramme, a mind­ful­ness-based emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence train­ing pro­gramme. Tan's phi­los­o­phy is that cul­ti­vat­ing emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence through mind­ful­ness train­ing and med­i­ta­tion can help an in­di­vid­ual reach a state of in­ner peace, the es­sen­tial foun­da­tion of hap­pi­ness, suc­cess and com­pas­sion.

More than 1,000 Google em­ploy­ees have gone through the SIY cur­ricu­lum, ac­cord­ing to Wired, the prin­ci­ples of which are out­lined in Tan's New York Times best­seller, "Search In­side Your­self: The Un­ex­pect­ed Path To Achiev­ing Suc­cess, Hap­pi­ness (And World Peace)." The pro­gram fo­cus­es on build­ing up the five emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence do­mains of self-aware­ness, self-reg­u­la­tion, mo­ti­va­tion, em­pa­thy and so­cial skills, pri­mar­i­ly through med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness train­ing, which aims to im­prove one's fo­cus and at­ten­tion on the present mo­ment.

The ben­e­fits of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence in the work­place are well-doc­u­ment­ed, from ca­reer suc­cess to im­proved re­la­tion­ships to bet­ter lead­er­ship–and Tan says get­ting Sil­i­con Val­ley in­ter­est­ed in a med­i­ta­tion pro­gramme to train em­ploy­ees in emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence wasn't dif­fi­cult.

"Every­body al­ready knows, emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is good for my ca­reer, it's good for my team, it's good for my prof­its," Tan tells the Huff­in­g­ton Post. "It comes pre-mar­ket­ed, so all I had to do is cre­ate a cur­ricu­lum for emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence that helps peo­ple suc­ceed, with good­ness and world-peace as the un­avoid­able side-ef­fects."

Here are five ways that you can cul­ti­vate emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence–and rev­o­lu­tionise your work, re­la­tion­ships and hap­pi­ness.

Med­i­tate

Tan out­lines three ma­jor steps to de­vel­op­ing emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence: Train­ing at­ten­tion ("the abil­i­ty to bring the mind to a state that's calm and clear, and to do it on de­mand," he ex­plains), self-aware­ness, and so­cial in­tel­li­gence. The first step is build­ing an in­di­vid­ual's pow­ers of at­ten­tion through med­i­ta­tion.

Tan is con­vinced that much like im­prov­ing phys­i­cal fit­ness, im­prov­ing "men­tal fit­ness" through med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness prac­tices can im­prove near­ly every as­pect of your life, from work to fam­i­ly life to phys­i­cal health.

"There are some things in life where if you im­prove one thing, every­thing else in life is im­proved... If you im­prove phys­i­cal fit­ness, it im­proves your home life, suc­cess, well­ness, every­thing," says Tan. "The same is true for med­i­ta­tion, be­cause med­i­ta­tion is in fact men­tal and emo­tion­al fit­ness. If you are fit men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, every as­pect of your life im­proves."

Re­search has con­firmed that mind­ful­ness con­tributes to emo­tion­al well-be­ing, in ad­di­tion to im­prov­ing mem­o­ry and at­ten­tion. A 2013 Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah study found that in­di­vid­u­als with mind­ful per­son­al­i­ty traits (such as self-aware­ness and at­ten­tive­ness) ex­hib­it­ed more sta­ble emo­tion­al pat­terns and re­port­ed feel­ing more in con­trol of their moods and ac­tions. Brown Uni­ver­si­ty re­search al­so found that mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion could im­prove an in­di­vid­ual's con­trol over brain pro­cess­ing of pain and emo­tions.

Cul­ti­vate com­pas­sion

Med­i­ta­tion is al­so the pri­ma­ry ve­hi­cle for cul­ti­vat­ing com­pas­sion: A re­cent Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty study found that in­di­vid­u­als who un­der­went eight weeks of med­i­ta­tion train­ing were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to help oth­ers in need than those who hadn't gone through the med­i­ta­tion train­ing.

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists have even seen that med­i­tat­ing on com­pas­sion can cre­ate an em­pa­thet­ic state in the brain. When Ti­betan Bud­dhist monks were asked to med­i­tate on "un­con­di­tion­al lov­ing-kind­ness and com­pas­sion" in a 2006 study, the re­searchers mea­sured brain ac­tiv­i­ty in the left pre­frontal cor­tex, which is as­so­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive emo­tions, that was 30 times stronger than the ac­tiv­i­ty among a con­trol group of col­lege stu­dents who didn't med­i­tate, Wired re­port­ed. The re­searchers the­o­rised that em­pa­thy may be some­thing one can cul­ti­vat­ed by "ex­er­cis­ing" the brain through lov­ing-kind­ness med­i­ta­tion.

Tan ex­plains that mind­ful­ness train­ing helps to boost self-com­pas­sion first and fore­most, which then ex­pands to com­pas­sion for oth­ers. "[Af­ter the pro­gramme], peo­ple say, 'I see my­self with kind­ness.'"

But the ben­e­fits of cul­ti­vat­ing com­pas­sion go be­yond greater kind­ness to­wards one­self and oth­ers: In ad­di­tion to im­prov­ing hap­pi­ness, com­pas­sion can al­so boost a busi­ness's cre­ative out­put and bot­tom line, ac­cord­ing to Tan–a sen­ti­ment that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Wein­er, a lead­ing pro­po­nent of com­pas­sion­ate man­age­ment, would agree with.

"The one thing [that all com­pa­nies should be do­ing] is pro­mot­ing the aware­ness that com­pas­sion can and will be good for suc­cess and prof­its," says Tan.

Prac­tise mind­ful ob­ser­vance­of the mind and body

Mind­ful aware­ness of what's go­ing on in the mind and body–thoughts, feel­ings, emo­tions, phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions and dis­ease–is an im­por­tant step in cul­ti­vat­ing in­ner joy, says Tan.

"If you start from mind­ful­ness, the first thing you get is in­ner peace," Tan ex­plains.

"Then you add on oth­er prac­tices like ob­serv­ing well­ness in the body, you al­so get in­ner joy.

"Take that in­ner joy and add on oth­er prac­tices, and you will get kind­ness and com­pas­sion."

You may not think of in­ner peace as some­thing that you can de­vel­op through cre­at­ing good habits, but Tan ex­plains that hap­pi­ness is a habit that you can cre­ate through a dai­ly mind­ful­ness prac­tice.

"To cre­ate sus­tain­able com­pas­sion, you have to be strong in in­ner joy," says Tan. "In­ner joy comes from in­ner peace–oth­er­wise it's not sus­tain­able. And in­ner peace is high­ly train­able."

(Huff­in­g­ton Post)