Have you ever felt dissatisfied or unhappy even after performing well at academics or at work front? How many times have you felt that you aren’t able to understand your feelings or of the people around you? Have you ever felt yourself at an awkward position just because you aren’t able to convey your thoughts to others? A single YES of yours will imply you are suffering from nothing, but low-level emotional intelligence.
What is Emotional Intelligence? – A Quick Overview
The term Emotional Intelligence was coined by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in 1990. Emotional Intelligence ( EI) or Emotional Quotient (EQ) is an individual’s ability to recognize and manage their emotions and the emotions of the people around them, both at an individual level and in groups. It is what you use when you empathize with your colleagues, have deep conversations in a relationship, or you attempt to manage an unruly or distraught child. It allows you to connect with others, understand yourself better, and live a more authentic, healthy, and happy life.
Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Theory
Though Goleman was not the one who first introduced the subject of Emotional Intelligence, he definitely popularized the concept and made the elements of EI accessible to broad segments of society. As per Goleman’s theory, there are 5 different categories of skills which form the key characteristics of EI:
- Self Awareness
- Self Regulation
- Social Skills
Before we proceed to our next segment highlighting the importance of EI, let’s take a short peek at the characteristics again:
It’s the ability wherein you identify your emotions and mood swings. It is further categorized into two elements:
- Emotional Self Awareness: Your ability to recognize and feel your emotions which also enables you to understand its aftereffects
- Self Confidence: The ability wherein you understand your abilities better than others and are confident about your self-worth
As the name indicates, it’s your ability to keep a check on your outbursts. You directly control your emotions and redirect them to something else just to avoid acting on impulse. Doing so, also helps you anticipate the consequences of your sudden lashing.
Staying motivated helps you achieve your goals faster. You thoroughly enjoy your learning process and are able to maintain your perseverance when faced with obstacles. Practicing self-motivation is an art worth learning and hence, I bring you some easy hacks to stay motivated. Follow in the tips and breathe a new life into your daily routine.
One important factor which separates us from other living creatures is our ability to understand the emotions. Empathy too helps you utilize this unique ability bringing you closer to your loved ones as well as others in your vicinity.
Teenagers at times avoid being a part of social functions and big gatherings. Doing so makes them a loner and impacts their personal growth. Going by Daniel Goleman’s EI theory, indulging in social skills teaches you the art of managing your relationships properly. It strengthens your bond with others and helps you inspire them.
Importance of Emotional Intelligence
You might have come across many people who used to be average in their academics yet now are much more successful than the ones who used be brilliant academically. This happens only because the former is more socially involved, understands their emotions and manages their professional and personal relationships more effectively. Such people don’t fear failures as they know how to recover quickly and come back as a winner.
Intellectual Intelligence (IQ) can help you get good degrees and placements but eventually, it’s the emotional intelligence that helps you to be happy and fulfilled in life. EQ is your gateway of a balanced life.
Emotional intelligence is important because it affects 4 different yet most important aspects of your life:
- Physical Health
- Mental Wellbeing
- Personal Relationships
- Work Performance
As we are progressing, we are affecting our physical health at an alarming rate. We are living in an era wherein even the kids undergo anxiety and depression attacks. So, its high time we start taking care of our bodies and fight stress with proper stress management. Your negligence can affect your body in a number of ways like high blood pressure, poor immune system, etc. A good and balanced EQ plays a great role in helping you fight stress or anxiety.
The way you react to your life circumstances is highly controlled by Emotional Intelligence. We experience anxiety and stress at myriad levels due to the obstacles that cross our path. The unwanted stress leads to frustration and you completely fail to understand your emotions. You start maintaining a distance from others which further isolates you, so it’s better to maintain a high-level of EI to stay positive throughout.
When you fully control your emotions, you are in a better state to express your feelings to others. You start understanding the needs, feelings, and response of your loved ones strengthening your bond with them. A balanced and fulfilling relationship keeps you energized and positive across all phases of your life.
It is very important that you remain self-motivated at work. A high level of emotional intelligence leads to strong willpower and keeps you motivated at the workplace throughout. It helps you in a lot of ways like:
- It improves your quality of work
- You are able to navigate the social complexities of the workplace in a better way
- It improves your networking skills and helps you become a better leader
With higher EI, you are able to adapt to changing circumstances quickly. Considering this change, even big multinational corporate firms have started hiring candidates on the basis of their emotional intelligence test results.
In the words of Daniel Goleman:
“Reasonable people – the ones who maintain control over their emotions – are the people who can sustain safe, fair environments. In these settings, the drama is very low and productivity is very high. Top performers flock to these organizations and are not apt to leave them.”
How to improve Emotional Intelligence? – Some Handy Tips Curated Just for You
The above title definitely makes you think about one fact: Can you actually learn or improve Emotional Intelligence? The answer is a simple YES. EI is the result of your life experiences since childhood. Being a child, you may not be able to control how your EQ improves, but as an adult, you surely can. Let’s check out some easy-to-follow ways you can make use of to improve the EQ:
- Understand Your Emotions Well
- Work Around a Proper Stress Management Strategy
- Learn to Empathize
- Work on Your Communication
- Accept Your Criticism Openly
- Organize Yourself in a Better Way
- Keep Practicing to Consistently Improve your EQ
Understand Your Emotions Well
You as a human being must consider giving your emotions some importance. Irrespective of their nature, it is important that you have full control of your feelings and emotions. Doing so keeps your temper under control and makes you enjoy the tiniest of the moments of your life.
Work Around a Proper Stress Management Strategy
Stress is harmful to your body and mental peace and you know it. So, you must create a proper stress management strategy to ensure your anxiety or panic attacks do not overrule you. Failing to manage stress or depression can not only impact your well-being but of your loved ones too.
Learn to Empathize
Your emotions are only one-half of all your relationships. All others that matter to you have their own set of feelings, desires, triggers, and fears. Empathy is your most important emotional intelligence skill for handling your relationships. Start listening to what others have to say and give importance to their emotions as well. Highly emotionally intelligent people are in a better position to put their own emotions and desires aside and take others’ into account.
Work on Your Communication
It’s important for you to have healthy communication with others in your vicinity. Your choice of words while communicating matter a lot, so ensure you aren’t hurting someone with it. You must work out on methods to improve your verbal communication as well as nonverbal communication skills. Your sitting posture, hand gestures, voice pitch everything matters when you are communicating with someone.
Accept Your Criticism Openly
Not everyone takes criticism well. So, if someone criticizes your work ever, always remember the English proverb:
Criticism is your first step to Being Successful – Anonymous
People will criticize you only when they are jealous of you as an individual. So, whenever you feel someone is pointing out mistakes, rather than abusing him/her, understand why s/he did that to you. Take their feedback positively and use it to bring out a better version of yourself.
Organize Yourself in a Better Way
Being organized doesn’t mean that you must keep your things at the place. It majorly means that you must have your eyes on the goal you wish to achieve. You must focus on what are your priorities and must work on them to reach out as a winner. The only difference between a good planner and the winner is that winner knows what s/he wants and works for it rather than just planning it out on a blank parchment. So, avoid a laid back attitude and start executing your plans today.
Keep Practicing to Consistently Improve your EQ
Improving your emotional quotient isn’t a cakewalk. You need to invest your time to make sure it improves and you are at peace with it. Just because you don’t see the results coming out, it should never STOP you from trying because only with consistent effort and a lot of regular practice, can you bring it to the optimum level.
The Bottom Line
Emotional Intelligence (EI) includes knowing what your feelings are and using them to influence your decisions for good. It is one of the main factors that shape and defines your personality. While proponents of Emotional Intelligence theory typically claim that while a person’s personality, much like their IQ, dictates a certain level of potential, EQ is a little distinct. EQ typically measures how well a person is able to use their personality characteristics and traits when handling different life circumstances either for himself/herself or for others. Emotionally intelligent people know how to make work, and the world, a better place.
Are you one of the people who have good EQ? Do let us know what are your viewpoints on Emotional Intelligence and how it affects one’s personality through the comments section below.