What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient or EQ, is the ability to use, understand, and manage your own emotions in healthy and positive ways to communicate effectively, reduce stress, empathize with others, defuse conflict, and overcome challenges. Emotional intelligence helps you make and maintain stronger relationships, have a successful career, and achieve your personal goals. It can also help you connect with your feelings, turn thoughts into actions, and make wiser decisions about what matters most to you.
What is Emotional Intelligence Made of?
Researchers have suggested there are four distinct levels of emotional intelligence, including emotion detection, the ability to reason with emotions, emotion understanding, and the ability to control emotions:
1. Perceiving and Detecting Emotions:
Before you can understand emotions, you have to be able to accurately perceive them. In most cases, this may include figuring out nonverbal signals and signs, like body language and facial expressions.
2. Reasoning with Emotions:
The next step involves using emotions to facilitate thought and cognitive activities. Emotions help us to prioritize the things that we pay attention to and respond to; we react emotionally to things that catch our attention.
3. Understanding and Processing Emotions:
The emotions that we experience may have many different connotations. If someone is showing anger, it is up to the observer to interpret what is driving that person's anger and what that might mean. For example, if your boss is angry, this may mean they are unhappy with your performance, or it may mean that they got a speeding ticket while driving to work that morning, or they were in an argument with their partner.
4. Emotional Control:
The capacity for effective emotion management is a critical component of emotional intelligence, even at the highest levels. Regulating emotions, reacting accordingly, and responding to others' emotions are all essential aspects of managing emotions.
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important?
As we all know, the most successful and fulfilled people are not necessarily the most intelligent. You likely know people who are brilliant academically but are socially unsuccessful and fail in work or personal relationships. Intellectual prowess, or your Intelligence Quotient (IQ), is not sufficient in itself to succeed in life. Your IQ may get you accepted to a university, but it's your EQ that helps you handle stress and emotions as you tackle final exams. IQ and EQ coexist and are more effective when building on each other. Here are a few examples of how improving your EQ would make a good difference in your life:
1. At the Workplace:
Improved EQ helps you navigate the social complexities of your workplace, lead and motivate others, and thrive in your career. In fact, when evaluating high-value job candidates, many companies now value emotional intelligence just as highly as technical skills, and they are implementing EQ tests prior to hiring.
2. Physical Benefits:
If you cannot handle emotions, then chances are you cannot handle stress. This could lead to some serious health problems. Unchecked stress increases blood pressure, suppresses the immune system, increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes, promotes infertility, and accelerates the aging process. The first step in improving your emotional intelligence is learning to manage stress.
3. Mental Benefits:
Uncontrolled emotions and stress also affect your mental health, making you susceptible to anxiety and depression. If you are not able to understand, become comfortable with, or control your emotions, you will struggle to build lasting relationships as well. This, in turn, may make you feel alone and isolated, further exacerbating any mental health issues.
How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence?
While some people may have developed their emotional skills naturally, there is evidence to suggest it is a skill that can be developed and improved. Being emotionally intelligent is important, but what can you do to boost your own emotional intelligence?
1. Sympathize:
Picking up emotions is crucial, but you must also be able to put yourself in another person's shoes in order to really understand their perspective. Practice empathy for the person being talked to. Imagine what you would be feeling in their position. Such activities help you to develop emotional insight into the particular situation and also to build stronger emotional skills over the long term.
2. Listen More:
If you want to know how others are feeling, paying attention is the first step. Take time to listen to what people are trying to tell you, whether it is spoken or not. Body language can convey a lot of meaning. When you hear someone feeling a particular way, think about different factors that may contribute to this emotion.
3. Think:
The ability to reason through emotions is a big part of emotional intelligence. Consider how your emotions affect your decisions and actions. When thinking about the way others react, evaluate what role their emotions are playing. Why is that person feeling this way? Are there unseen factors that may contribute to these feelings? How do your emotions differ from theirs? As you examine questions like these, you might find that you can more easily grasp the role emotions play in the way people think and act.
Finally:
Improving your emotional intelligence is a huge part of growing up, and it’s your first step to maturity. You can always consult a professional therapist if you are ever having doubts about your emotions. A professional can always be of great use to help you understand your feelings before you move on to understanding others’.
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