With the boom in technologies, we are fed with vast variety of information from every nook and corner. But what’s the benefit with this overflow of information if we don’t know how to reflect upon them, if we don’t know how to solve our own problems, if we don’t know how to offer a helping hand to the coworker, if we don’t know how to tackle social challenges?
There lies the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI). It breaks the stereotypical thinking and nourishes the child to grow with self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. If properly trained on EI, kids are self-driven, able to manage themselves better and relate to others around them easily.
One thing is for sure, “to enhance the morality and creativity at the same time, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a must along with academic learning”.
Emotional intelligence invokes a change in your thought process if the present thoughts can’t solve your problem. Changing is a part of growing up as I mentioned in my post How to deal with “You’ve changed a lot”. In addition it keeps you aware of your emotions and makes you express the feelings with that “emotional literacy”.
Emotional intelligence is about the ability to look within as well as to be present in the world around you.
How to improve your Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional self-regulation is an important component in emotional intelligence. It’s nothing but the control over one’s own emotions. Controlling doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions and finally becoming a victim of self criticisms. It’s much beyond that. It’s about the self awareness while feeling or expressing your emotions. Yes, you must satisfy your ego too while having compassion towards others. After all if you can’t feel for yourself, how can you empathize for others? Read the post on Emotional Intelligence
Mindfulness practices will aid in nurturing emotional intelligence.
- Be aware of ones’ actions and feelings, while owning the impacts too.
- Do self evaluation and take feedbacks at regular intervals
How can be Implemented ?
Nature and nurture takes a role in developing emotional intelligence. Of course, nurturing takes start at home itself. And then obviously it must be taken care at schools too. Many foreign schools are now trying to implement this. It’s high time for us to think and act on this movement more stringently as it is not that visible in Indian education system so far. It should not just get limited to a subject as ‘Moral science’ or so.
But with the increasing weight of school bags, will there be a slot for another type of learning? Obviously ‘where to fit in SEL while already packed with current syllabus’, would be a giant problem infront of schools if Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) gets mandatory. The thing is, there needs to have balance between the two.
More research should go behind this and incorporate it as a part of the K-12 curriculum in India. And above all teachers should be well trained too.