Emotional intelligence has gone by several names over the years. It is often considered just as important as, or even more important than, a person’s intelligence quotient, or IQ. Essentially, it is the ability to recognize emotions in yourself and in other people and to manage these emotions in a positive manner. There are multiple facets to emotional intelligence and it affects your everyday life in a variety of ways.
There are five main attributes of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, motivation, social awareness, and empathy. Your ability to perform each of these facets is what determines your emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ. Each attribute contributes to your well-being and quality of life.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and how your emotions affect your thoughts and actions. Self-awareness also means knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and making an effort to understand your place in the world.
Self-management
Self-management is your ability to manage your emotions. Simply because you have self-awareness does not mean that you know how to control and use your emotions in a positive way. Self-management means that you’re able to control your emotions and adapt them to changing circumstances. It also means that you can manage your own behavior, especially impulsive behavior, and control your mood, responses, and reactions.
Motivation
While self-management means regulating your emotions and your emotional actions, motivation means harnessing your emotions and using them in positive and beneficial ways. You can use your emotions to help you achieve your goals, follow through with your commitments, and appropriately adapt to circumstances that may be changing or out of your control. Remember, the circumstances of your life might be out of your control, but with emotional intelligence, your emotions and reactions to these changes don’t have to be.
Social awareness
Emotional intelligence isn’t all about you; it also involves understanding the emotions of other people. Social awareness means that you can relate to other people in social situations and pick up on social cues. Relationships with other people are a large part of social awareness, as your social awareness helps you to build strong relationships, work with other people as part of a team, and resolve conflicts. Social awareness also involves understanding the power dynamics among a group of people and being able to effectively lead them.
Empathy
Empathy is a very important facet of social awareness and overall emotional intelligence. Empathy means that you are sensitive to the emotions of the people around you, that you can recognize and understand their feelings, and that you can use this understanding to better relate to them. When you can discern and understand the feelings of others, you can relate to them much more effectively.
How emotional intelligence affects your life
Emotional intelligence doesn’t only affect your everyday life; emotional intelligence is also integral to creating a well-balanced lifestyle. Your emotional intelligence impacts your mental health, physical health, relationships, your ability lead, how successful you might be, and your ability to resolve conflicts.
Mental health
Because emotional intelligence involves understanding and regulating your emotions, it has a serious impact on your mental health. When you cannot effectively regulate your own emotions, you are much more prone to mood swings and bouts of depression and anxiety. Additionally, your own emotional turmoil may hinder you from developing healthy or long-lasting friendships, and this can leave you feeling lonely and isolated.
Physical health
When your emotions and mental state are out of control, it takes a toll on your physical health. Stress that gets too overwhelming leads to high blood pressure, rapid aging, lowered immunity, and a host of other health problems. When you become too depressed, you may fail to take care of yourself properly. Motivation is one of the main attributes of emotional intelligence, and you need motivation in order to take care of yourself physically, particularly when it comes to getting the exercise you need. Learn to take care of your emotions so you can take care of your body.
Relationships
Your relationships can play a big role in your mental health, and your emotional intelligence plays a big role in your relationships. When you can discern and identify what other people are feeling, you can forge deeper, stronger relationships.
Emotional intelligence also means effectively communicating with other people about your feelings in a constructive way which builds trust and a solid foundation for relationships. Not only that, but higher emotional intelligence and more effective communication allow you to work more effectively on a professional level with your colleagues and coworkers.
Leadership
Those who display higher levels of emotional intelligence often make the best leaders. Leaders are able to relate to fellow workers in a positive way, understand what motivates other people, and identify what other people need. Leaders who are emotionally savvy can then address these needs and meet them to improve satisfaction in the workplace.
Additionally, emotional intelligence allows you to understand the dynamics of the members of your workplace. You can then use this to create more effective teams.
Success
Emotional intelligence leads to more success in your personal and professional lives. With more emotional intelligence in your personal life, you’ll experience stronger, more successful relationships built on trust, mutual understanding, and communication. When you apply emotional intelligence to your professional life, you’ll be able to become your own source of motivation and confidence. Those with high EQ don’t need external sources of motivation and confidence to succeed; rather, these things come from within.
The improved mental health and healthier relationships that accompany emotional intelligence also help you to succeed. You will see situations from a more positive and resilient perspective and rely on your supportive social network.
Conflict management
Finally, emotional intelligence has an enormous impact on your ability to detect, resolve, and even prevent conflict. If the lines of communication are open and you are in tune with the emotions of those around you, it’s possible to avoid many conflicts altogether. When conflict does arise, your ability to empathize with others will make resolving it easier.
How can I become more emotionally intelligent?
The road to developing your emotional intelligence begins at birth and winds all through our lives. It is a never-ending process, and it’s never too early or too late to become more emotionally intelligent. The keys to improving your EQ involve understanding your own feelings, learning to respond rather than react, and looking at situations from different perspectives.
Understand and evaluate your feelings
When you experience negative emotions, there is generally a cause even if it isn’t apparent at the time. When you begin to feel negative and want to react accordingly, it’s helpful to pause to consider why you feel that way. Don’t suppress or ignore your feelings, as this will only make them reemerge even stronger at another time.
It’s helpful to write down exactly how you are feeling and to meditate on why you are experiencing these emotions. This will allow you to come to terms with certain issues and, potentially, experience fewer negative emotions in the future.
Respond rather than react
Oftentimes, our “knee-jerk” reactions to situations are not conducive to our well-being or the well-being of those around us. When you begin to feel negative emotions, consider what exactly triggered those emotions. When you figure out your various triggers, you can anticipate them and learn to respond appropriately rather than automatically reacting in a potentially inappropriate way. This builds off of understanding and evaluating your feelings. You need to do both in order to respond appropriately to your emotions.
Consider different perspectives
We hear phrases like “walk in someone else’s shoes” fairly frequently, but how often do we actually consider what they mean? More importantly, how often do we put them into practice? Viewing situations through the perspectives of other people expands your own understanding of other people, the world, and even yourself.
Keep in mind that your viewpoint is not the only one, and it probably isn’t the best one for everyone involved.
Now that you know the importance of emotional intelligence, it’s time to start raising your EQ!
