16/08/2022
10:50 Pm
Emotional intelligence: why it's so important
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use and manage our own emotions in a positive way to relieve stress, communicate effectively, be compassionate with others, overcome challenges and manage disagreements. Emotional intelligence helps you build strong relationships, succeed at work, and realize your professional and personal goals. It also helps you connect with your feelings, turn your thoughts into action, and make decisions about what matters to you....
Emotional intelligence: why it's so important
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As we all know the most successful people are not the smartest. You probably know people who are academically brilliant but socially do not do well and are not successful at work or in their personal relationships. Intelligence helps you to be good academically but emotional intelligence is what will help you deal with the stress and emotions of exams.
Studies show that there are four different levels of emotional intelligence which include emotional perception, the ability to rationalize one's emotions, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to manage emotions.
1. Emotional awareness: the first step to understanding your emotions is to become aware of them. In many cases, this includes understanding non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions.
2. Logical understanding of emotions: the next step involves using emotions in thinking. Emotions help us prioritize important things and respond accordingly.
3. Understanding emotions: the emotions we perceive carry a range of meanings. If someone expresses feelings of anger, the listener must interpret the cause of their anger and what it might mean.
4. Managing emotions: the ability to manage emotions is an important part of emotional intelligence. Controlling emotions and responding to them in a healthy way is a very essential part of emotional intelligence.
Effects of emotional intelligence
Performance at work or school
Emotional intelligence helps you deal with complex social relationships in the workplace, guides and motivates others. Many large companies pay special attention to emotional intelligence for this and prospective employees take an emotional intelligence test before being hired.
Physical health
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If you can't manage your emotions, you can't manage stress. But this leads to serious health problems. Intense stress increases blood pressure, suppresses the immune system, increases the risk of stroke, contributes to infertility and accelerates aging. The first step to improving your emotional intelligence is learning how to deal with stress.
Mental health
Uncontrolled emotions and stress also affect our mental health, making us vulnerable to worry and depression. If you can't manage your emotions, it will be difficult to build strong relationships. This in turn makes you feel lonely and isolated and takes a toll on your mental health.
Relationships
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By understanding your emotions and how you can control them, you can express your emotions and understand how others feel. This enables you to communicate effectively and build strong relationships, at work and in your personal life.
When you understand your emotions it allows you to connect with other people and the world around you. Social intelligence allows you to recognize friend from foe, understand whether a person is interested in you, reduce stress, balance your nervous system through social communication, and feel love and happiness...
Thought before action
Emotionally intelligent people know that emotions are powerful but temporary. When an emotionally intense event occurs, emotionally intelligent people take their time to respond appropriately. This allows them to calm down and think more logically about all the factors surrounding an argument.
Awareness
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Emotionally intelligent people are not only good at thinking about how other people might be feeling but also have experience understanding their own emotions. This way they can think about different factors that contribute to their feelings.
Compassion for others
A large part of emotional intelligence is about the ability to think about and understand the feelings of others. Often emotionally intelligent people think about how they would feel if they were in the same position. That way they can use the information to explain why these people behave in a certain way.
How will you boost your emotional intelligence?
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The skills that enhance our emotional intelligence can be cultivated at any moment. However, it is important to remember that there is a difference between learning things about emotional intelligence and applying them to your life. Just because you know something doesn't mean you will do it, especially when stress is overwhelming you. To be able to change behavior when you are under pressure, it is necessary to learn how to overcome stress in order to be emotionally healthy.
Emotional intelligence is determined by:
Self-control: your ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviors, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, keep commitments, and adapt to changing situations.
Emotional awareness: recognizing your emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior. You know your strengths and weaknesses, and you are confident.
Social awareness: have compassion. You can understand other people's feelings, needs and concerns, feel comfortable at social events and recognize the dynamics in a group or organization.
Relationship management: you know how to build and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in teams and manage disagreements.
Self control
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To be able to strengthen your emotional intelligence, you must be able to use your emotions to make good decisions about your behavior. When you are stressed, you can lose control of your emotions and the ability to react appropriately.
When stress overwhelms you it's hard to think clearly. Emotions are very important information that tell us things about ourselves and others, but when stress pushes us out of our comfort zone, we can lose control. When you know how to manage your stress and emotions, you can learn to gather information without letting them control your thoughts and self-control. You will be able to make choices that allow you to control impulsive behaviors and emotions, and deal with them in healthy ways.
Awareness of emotions
Managing stress is the first step in enhancing emotional intelligence. Attachment science shows that current emotional experiences reflect early childhood experiences. The ability to manage strong emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, and joy depends on the quality and consistency of your emotional experiences in early life. If your parents or caregivers understood and valued your emotions, it is more likely that emotions will be valuable components in your adult life. But if your emotional experiences as a child were not clear, were scary or painful, you are likely to withdraw from your feelings.
When you can connect with your emotions, then you can understand how they influence your thoughts and actions. Mindfulness is a practice that helps you focus on the present moment and without judgment. Mindfulness helps you stop preoccupied with your thoughts and appreciate the present moment, your physical and emotional sensations. Mindfulness is calming and helps you stay in touch with your emotions....
Social awareness
Social awareness helps you recognize and interpret the nonverbal cues others use when communicating with you. These clues help you understand how others really feel, how their emotional state changes from moment to moment, and what is really important to them.
To build social awareness it is necessary to recognize the importance of mindfulness in social processes. You can't pick up on subtle non-verbal cues when your mind is on other things, or you're just busy with your cell phone. Social awareness requires being present in the moment. As many of us pride ourselves on multitasking, this means we miss the emotional cues of the people around us and fail to understand them.
Relationship management
When you work well with others you have the ability to recognize and understand what other people are experiencing. This way you can effectively develop social/emotional skills that will make your relationships more effective and satisfying.
Non-verbal communication is very important. It is impossible to avoid sending non-verbal messages to others about what you are thinking and feeling. Facial expressions, especially around the eyes, nose, mouth and forehead, help you non-verbally convey your feelings to others as well as read others' emotional expressions. The part of the brain that controls emotions recognizes these messages. Recognizing the non-verbal messages others send plays a huge role in improving your relationships.
- Humor and laughter are natural antidotes to stress. They help you see things in a positive light. Laughter balances our nervous system, reduces stress, calms us, and makes us more compassionate.
Arguments are an opportunity to grow. Disagreements and conflicts are inevitable in human relationships. No two people can have the same needs, views and expectations all the time. However, this is not a bad thing. Resolving disagreements is a healthy and constructive way to build trust in your relationships. When disagreements do not result in threats or punishments, they lead to freedom of expression, creativity and safety in the relationship.
- Applications of emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence can be used in many ways in everyday life which include:
- you can accept criticism and responsibility
- you can move on after a mistake
- you can say "no" when you want
- you can share your feelings with others
- you can solve your problems
- you can be compassionate
- you can listen actively
- you can understand why you do certain things
- you can be uncritical of others
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