What do we know about our emotions? Can we manage them? Or do we let them manage our lives? What is emotional intelligence and how important is it to increase it? This article will answer this and other questions. After reading it, you will learn what steps your need to take to increase your emotional intelligence and, as a result, create a better and more harmonious life.
The way we feel emotionally directly affects our mood and behavior. Negative emotions deprive us of the opportunity to think, make reasonable decisions, and be constructive. If we don’t control our emotions, we can make a number of mistakes. We can shout at a person we love and irreparably damage our relationships. We can lose ourselves at work and destroy the career we’ve been building for all our life. Being affected by emotions, we can even physically harm others. And when we come out of the negative emotional state and come to consciousness, we realize what we have done. But, unfortunately, often we can’t even fix anything.
Have you ever been in similar situations? If you have, you understand how much harm can be brought by uncontrollable emotions, both for ourselves and those around us. They destroy families and careers, lead to wars, and don’t let us live a happy and successful life.
According to statistics, people who control their emotions and understand the emotional conditions of others are more successful. Even the financial stability of a person depends on their communication skills. Studies have shown that 85% of people’s financial success was due to emotional intelligence and only 15% – to intellectual skills. If one doesn’t let emotions control their actions, they will attain success both on professional and personal levels. This person will know how to build good relationships and successful career, work in a team, settle conflicts peacefully, and choose proper behavioral strategies.
However, most of us tend to think that intellectual skills are the main yardstick for success. We’re sure that it’s essential to study well at school and university and get the knowledge that will be applied at work in the future. Of course, it’s important, but developing the ability to understand ourselves and others is even more important. However, most of us forget about it. And, as a result, we witness an interesting paradox: those who received bad marks at school become company owners, while those who were excellent students don’t succeed as often. Why does it happen? According to the logic of most people, A-students are the ones who have to end up being managers and bosses, because they studied diligently, focused on their lessons, and received much knowledge, while flunkers always slacked and didn’t do anything to study well. But it’s a mistake to think so – not all D-students were slackers. Some of them managed to develop their emotional intelligence, creative thinking, and communicative skills. Subsequently, they applied all these skills and succeeded. In the meantime, A-students focused on their studies and didn’t pay much attention to developing creative thinking and understanding emotions, and later it resulted into their inability to generate bright ideas and understand themselves and others.
Of course, it doesn’t always happen like that. But think about it, how many geniuses are there in the world, who don’t have any communication skills? They know everything about everything, but they can’t talk to others properly and can’t live a happy and harmonious life. That’s why we need to take another look at our approach to education, incorporating the development of both intellectual and emotional abilities in it. In symbiosis, these two aspects can do miracles.
What is emotional intelligence and how to develop it?
According to Wikipedia, emotional intelligence is “the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s).” To cut a long story short, it’s the ability to effectively interact with other people. In order to develop emotional intelligence, we need to take the following steps patiently and diligently:
- Know thy enemy. Recognizing that a problem exists is the first and foremost step in eradicating it. You need to accept the fact that uncontrollable emotions cause harm and prevent you from creating a successful life.
- Be aware. Remaining constantly aware, you can notice the moments when emotions go out of your control. To attain this result, you should meditate and study your reactions to different stimulants.
- Control yourself and your emotions. Every time you get annoyed, angry, or subjected to other negativities, try to distract yourself from the situation and take a look at it from another angle. Imagine that you are an outside observer. It will help you understand your reactions and treat some situations differently.
- Develop new mental images of your behavior in different emotional situations. Imagine the scenarios of how you react differently to the situations that usually cause your negative emotions. How do you want to behave? How do you see yourself in these situations? Make this image brighter and more detailed every single time.
- Change your habitual reactions and act in a new way. Applying your new image, start acting differently in your day-to-day life. Work diligently, and soon you will learn to manage your emotions, know how to stay calm in any situation, and better understand the emotions of other people.
Developing your emotional intelligence, you will attain the success, just like the people you admire.
- You will understand yourself better
- You will know how to create and preserve good and solid relationships
- You will establish a successful career
- You will create a team of good friends and partners
- You will better understand the emotions of other people and intuitively learn what they need
- You will experience less stress
- You will become a truly happy and successful person
If you think that the people who have high emotional intelligence were born with this skill, you’re not entirely right. Of course, some people have a certain inborn ability to better understand emotions, but it doesn’t mean that one can’t learn how to do it. Emotional intelligence, just like any other skill, can be developed, if you apply the steps given above. Of course, it’s not going to be easy, but we, at the International Life Academy, are ready to help you! Reading the book “Cup of Coffee to Awaken”, you will study the nature your emotions and get a practice that will help you control them. Using the method “Mindscan”, you will better understand your emotional reactions. And completing our free course “Life Diagnostics”, you will learn more about yourself and realize how you can create a happy and successful life!
