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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotions play wide role in our day-to-day life. It not only affects how we react in a certain situation, but it also affects our all aspects of relationships as well. Have you ever experienced that when you feel happy than your productivity at workplace increases but when you upset you don’t want to work? You might have seen some cries when boss shout over them and some take it as a joke whereas some might not cry even at the worst situation of their life instead, they try to find solutions how they can manage it well. Here term arises Emotional Intelligence, lets understand it better.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence (EI) or Emotional Quotient (EQ) are the terms often use interchangeably. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and those of the people around you.

People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know what they’re feeling, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can affect other people.

WHY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS SO MUCH IMPORTANT TO LEARN?

You might have observed the smartest people who are the most successful or academically brilliant and yet are satisfied in their personal relationships. Intellectual ability or your intelligence quotient (IQ) isn’t enough on its own to achieve success in life. IQ can help you get into college or university, but it’s your EQ that will help you manage the stress and emotions when facing your final exams. IQ and EQ exist in tandem and are most effective when they build off one another.

 

But how you would understand that you are emotionally intelligent or not? There is the certain characteristic of highly emotionally intelligent peoples, lets find it out how many you have.

1. Do you often think before speaking?

Since emotionally intelligent peoples take a moment and think before responding. They understand clearly that emotions could be due to the particular situation and it is temporary, so they avoid taking any decisions at the heat of the moment.

      2. Do you often rely on negative thoughts?

Emotionally intelligent peoples always keep focusing on replacing negative thoughts with positive ones because they very well understand if they stick to negative emotions that will affect their life.

      3. Do you always learn from criticism?

It is hard to accept criticism for anyone, but emotionally intelligent peoples take criticism positively and think how they can learn from the critics.

       4. Are you aware of your strengths and weakness?

Emotionally intelligent peoples are aware of their strengths and weakness that’s why they accept their criticism without taking it personally and try hard where their strengths are.

      5.Are you able to show empathy?

Instead judging others emotionally intelligent people try to understand the situation and related emotions of others.

      6.Do you practice self-care?

Emotionally intelligent peoples understand that they will perform better if they will relax and recharge. So, they always take time for themselves out of their busy schedule and do something that they enjoy.

      7. Do you focus on what you can control?

We often face the situation which is often out of control but peoples with high emotional intelligence focus on how they can influence their reaction, habits or priorities in relation to the situation.

ELEMENTS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Personal Skills/ Competencies (How we manage ourselves)	Social Skills/ Competencies (How we manage relationship with others)
1.      Self-Awareness 2.      Self-Regulation 3.      Motivation	1.      Empathy 2.      Social Skills

 

Here are the certain strategies through which you can work on each element of emotional intelligence to improve your own emotional intelligence level.

 

TIPS TO ACHIEVE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Self-awareness –

Being self-aware means ability to focus on yourself, your actions, thoughts, or emotions. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you. You can achieve self-awareness by –

1. 1. Keeping Journal – You can keep journal with you where you can right your thoughts which will make your more aware.
   2. Examine the situation – You need to carefully evaluate the situation e.g., any situation which you felt angry or sad, explore the reason, how you have reacted and how could you have reacted in that particular situation to manage it well.

2. Self-regulation/ Self-management –

   •   Self-regulation is the ability to manage self your thoughts, emotions and behavior for long term gain. Self-regulation is all about staying in control. You can achieve self-regulation by using following strategies –
   • Take responsibility of your own action – In order to achieve self-regulation, you need to stop blaming others instead take responsibility to make the things as per your preferences.
   • Mindfulness – It is another very important tool for self-regulation. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying non-judgement attention, on purpose, in the present moment”. You can do so by engaging in skills such as focused breathing and gratitude, mindfulness enables us to put some space between ourselves and our reactions, leading to better focus and feelings of calmness and relaxation.
   • Cognitive Reappraisal – Cognitive reappraisal involves changing thought patterns. Is the technique through which involves reinterpreting a situation in order to change the existing emotional pattern.

 

3. Motivation –

   • Motivation is essential component behind everything, in order to manage your emotions well you need to be highly motivated for doing so. You need to replace negative thoughts with positive one in order to keep yourself motivated. You can keep yourself motivated by asking following to yourself –
   • Why you want to achieve that goal?
   • How motivated to you are to achieve your goal?
   • What would be the scenario if you will achieve your goal?
   • What would be the worst-case scenario if you would not achieve your goal?

 

4. Empathy –

   • Means putting yourself in someone else’s position, it is very important to understand another person’s situation and their perspective which is also a very important element of being emotionally intelligent. You can be empathetic by –
   • Try to understand emotional signals by not only listening pay attention to the non-verbal cues as well.
   • Show emotional sensitivity.
   • Respond to feelings, understand and appreciate that as well e.g., your colleague has joined office after the death of loved one in his family and he behaved rude to you then you can respond by saying “I understand you might be upset because of your loss; we will talk once you would like to talk and also, I am always available if you need anything”.

 

5. Social skills –

   • Social skills are the skills that are necessary to interact and behave well in group. Everyone loved to communicate with the persons having good social skills, for effective skills you need to learn the following –
   • Conflict resolution – A person with high EQ knows how to manage the conflictual situation well, it is very important to understand what is important and what is to be chosen out of the available options.
   • Communication skills – Effective communication skills are essential tool of social skill, it involves careful listening, responding and taking feedback that another person has understood. A person with high EQ will never speak anything he/she will always think before responding to anyone.
   • Praise others – We all know how much we feel happy when someone praised us, it is very important to praise others for effective social skills because it is tendency of every human being they love to connect to those who talk sweet to them irrespective of who keeps on pointing fingers on them.

Categories: Life tips