For many of you, the term “emotional intelligence” is thrown around in management circles and the workplace. Just as often as terms like “customer service” or “teamwork“. While we all seem to be embracing the concept that managing emotions and dealing with others are important for success. Few managers are actually showing their teams how to do it. It is also hard to know where to start: after all, emotional intelligence is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of personal skills.
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How to apply emotional intelligence in your life
The idea was pioneered by John Mayer and Peter Salovey. who defined it as “the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions, and regulate emotions to promote personal growth”. There are four basic components that make up emotional intelligence:
1. Being aware of our own feelings
2. Liking other people
3. Being able to manage our own feelings effectively
4. Being able to manage other people’s feelings effectively
Emotional intelligence is a hot and controversial topic in the realm of psychology. Currently, there is no universally accepted definition for emotional intelligence. It has been described as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” While this definition may seem vague, it does highlight the key elements involved in emotional intelligence.
How can you improve your own Emotional Intelligence
The most important skill you need to be successful in life is emotional intelligence. It’s the best predictor of how well you will do in your career and relationships. It determines whether you rise to the top of your field or barely get by.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions. People with high emotional intelligence are good at handling their own emotions, as well as reading and empathizing. They usually have strong interpersonal skills and are better able to navigate social interactions without conflict or drama.
If you want to improve your emotional intelligence, there are three skills that you need to work on. Understanding yourself, understanding others, and managing your emotions. Understanding yourself means being aware of your emotions and can name them and explain what caused them. You should also know how your thoughts and actions affect the people around you. Understanding yourself leads to greater self-awareness, which is one of the key components of emotional intelligence.
Examples of emotional intelligence
Among the members of the animal kingdom, we humans are noted for our high level of intelligence. We can make and use tools, develop language and writing, and form rich cultures. But also capable of great emotional intelligence we have a capacity for compassion and empathy that is rare in nature.
This ability to share in each other’s emotions underlies many important human qualities, including altruism (the tendency to help others), trust (the willingness to rely on others), cooperation, and the formation of larger social groups. It’s easy to see how these qualities could be beneficial in a species like ours, which depends so much on group living.
Also Read: How does money affect human behavior
Emotional intelligence has evolved in humans over millions of years and is deeply embedded in our biology. Our emotional brain – situated mainly in the limbic system, a primitive region deep within the brain – produces feelings that motivate us to act in ways that facilitate our survival and reproduction. The limbic system also allows us to experience feelings in other people, a useful skill for any social animal. The limbic system is highly interconnected with all the sensory areas of the brain and with regions involved in planning.
Ways of increasing your emotional intelligence
“Emotional intelligence” is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. There are several components of emotional intelligence. The first is being aware that emotions can drive our behavior and impact people (positively and negatively), and learning how to manage those emotions both our own and others especially when we are under pressure.
Decreasing stress by controlling emotions
One of the best ways to reduce stress is to control our emotions. One of the most important and simplest ways to do so is to control our breathing. We breathe without thinking, but we can deliberately change the way we breathe.
We can use this ability to inhibit emotional reactions, which can help us decrease our stress levels. For example, when we are angry or excited, our breathing becomes rapid and shallow, making us feel more agitated. If we can slow our breathing down, we will feel less agitated.
In one study, researchers used slow breathing as a relaxation technique for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Who were experiencing high levels of stress after 12 weeks of training in slow breathing techniques, these patients had lower blood sugar levels than a control group that received no training in slow breathing.
The researchers concluded that “slow breathing improves insulin sensitivity [a marker for type 2 diabetes mellitus] by reducing oxidative stress.” This reduction in oxidative stress was also linked with lower blood pressure and heart rate in the experimental group compared with the control group. In other words, patients who learned how to slow their breathing down had positive changes in their physical health as well as improved mood and decreased anxiety.
Emotions impact decisions in every aspect of life.
Emotions impact decisions in every aspect of life. This is the primary reason why emotions play a key role in decision-making. Without emotion, decisions would be based solely on facts, and humans would never be able to express their creativity and innovation.
Emotions are important because they facilitate decision-making and make life more enjoyable. They help you choose what you want to do, they can make you feel better when you are sad or down, and they make you feel better about yourself and also have a strong influence on your actions, behaviors, and choices in life.
Emotion influences everything that we do and how we do it. You may not realize it but your emotions have an impact on every decision that you make. For example, if you were feeling angry about something then this would affect your decision to go out for dinner with friends or to stay in to read a book instead.
Emotional intelligence is more important than IQ
The idea that success in life is determined by your emotional intelligence and the way you handle feelings not just for yourself, but for others is now widely accepted. And it’s no wonder: people with high emotional intelligence have higher self-esteem and enjoy better relationships than those with low emotional intelligence.
High emotional intelligence also gives you a greater ability to deal with stress management and setbacks, while low emotional intelligence is linked to depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse.
The argument that IQ might be less important than EQ has been put forward so often that it’s become something of a cliché. But the fact that this argument – like many clichés has been repeated so often doesn’t mean it’s untrue. In fact, there is substantial evidence to support this argument.
In one study, the emotional intelligence scores of a group of students were measured in their final year at school, again when they were 21 years old, and finally when they were about 30 years old. The researchers found that students’ emotional intelligence scores had little correlation with their academic performance as teenagers (as measured by their final grades at school), but did predict how much money they would earn as adults.
Also Read: Why Are We So Emotional about Money?
Why emotional intelligence is important
Emotions are not just feelings, they are also judgments. If we are afraid of something, that fear is a judgment that whatever provoked it is a threat. If we feel guilty about something, that guilt is a judgment that we have done something wrong.
Emotional intelligence has been defined as the skill of recognizing our own and other people’s emotions, discerning between different feelings, and labelling them appropriately. and using emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
IQ measures how well you can reason and solve problems. It’s what you think of as intelligence. But success in life depends on more than just the ability to think logically. It also depends on knowing what emotions to feel, when to feel them, and how to express them appropriately. So emotional intelligence is not some airy-fairy quality that only touchy-feely people care about. It’s a real skill that smart people need too.