Unfortunately, there is a worldwide trend for younger generations to be more emotionally disturbed than previous generations, which leads to negative consequences such as mental illness, crime, addiction, and more. Schools and colleges also do not pay attention to the emotional problems in their lives, so parents should educate their children.
The problem is that most of the youth are not very emotionally literate because they were not given any education on their emotional intelligence. Through this blog, we will understand all those aspects in detail.
What does Emotional Intelligence mean?
Emotional intelligence refers to a person’s ability to manage and control their own emotions and also the ability to control the emotions of others. In other words, they can affect other people’s feelings as well.
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill in leadership. It is said to have five main elements namely – self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.
Let us understand each of them in detail.
What are the 5 elements of Emotional Intelligence?
Self Awareness
It is the ability to recognize and understand your moods and emotions and how they affect others.
Self Regulation
This includes being able to control your impulses and moods and to think before you act.
Intrinsic (or intrinsic) motivation
In contrast to extrinsic motivation, it refers to being motivated to pursue goals for personal reasons rather than for some sort of reward.
Empathy
Essential to building and leading teams, empathy is the ability to recognize and understand the motivations of others and to put yourself in their place.
Social Skills
It is the ability to manage relationships, build networks and connect with people.
Emotional intelligence is powerful. Anyone, who develop these skills can find great success.
What is important between IQ and EQ?
The contribution of IQ i.e. Intelligent Quotient in a person’s success is a maximum of 20%. And the rest is contributed by EQ i.e. Emotional Quotient. Where IQ is your ability to know, understand and apply knowledge correctly, EQ is the art of understanding and managing your own and others’ emotions. People with high EQ can adjust easily to changing environments.
Why EQ is better than IQ?
It is an ability by which we can understand and manage our emotions. How emotionally intelligent you are determines the quality of your relationships, how you handle stress in your daily work, how well you can communicate with others, and how good you are at your job. This means that you must know how to manage your negative and positive emotions.
IQ is a measure of your ability to solve problems and think logically, EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) measures your ability to understand and manage emotions. Your EQ can have a greater impact on your success in life than your IQ.
We can’t spend our whole life just feeling good. We should never ignore our negative feelings. An emotionally intelligent person cannot be happy all the time. He always knows how to respond to the feelings of others. And when we don’t know how to react to others’ feelings, the best approach is to not react at all.
Why is EQ important?
As we shared earlier, the way you react to your emotions, and your smallest reactions affect your life in the same way. Let’s take a look at how developing emotional intelligence can help you be better at life, in health, in relationships, and at work.
Importance of Emotional Intelligence for mental health
Your mental health reflects your emotional life. How you manage stress in your everyday life exposes you to stressors, both big and small, and determines the health of your brain. You don’t need to obsess over your feelings, you just have to be aware of them as a curious observer. You have to thoroughly experience every emotion in your life. You will soon understand, that the pain you are suffering is optional. And you were willingly attracting that pain to yourself.
Importance of Emotional Intelligence for Relationship
your relationships You can make your relationships a successful bond, which is linked to your feelings. If you respond well and meet the emotional needs of your friends, family members or those you love, you are attracting healthy relationships into your life. If your needs are not met by your relationship, learn to communicate effectively, and with good communication skills, explain your needs to your partner. This is the biggest problem in any relationship and many people have to face this problem.
your work. If you are in the position of leader in the job, then listen carefully to your employees. This technique is also used by the richest and most successful people in the world. When you listen to your employees, your employees will love it too. And the employees will respect you even more. They will do the best in everything and complain the least.
Let’s say you are an employee, what motivates you the most? And how does this motivation affect our emotional level, making our life easier than before, and how can you relieve your stress? And do the same with your employees.
How to Improve Emotional Intelligence?
How to improve your EQ?
5 ways to improve your emotional intelligence
here, we want to show 5 practical ways, through which you can develop emotional intelligence in your life.
You can never fully understand emotions until you understand what emotions are. When you begin to lose self-awareness, it is as if you are on a small boat, trying to reach the heights of the ocean, which are your emotions. But the waves bring you back with that. You do not know how to reach the heights of the sea. You just ride your boat and then call someone for help.
Self-awareness means understanding yourself. There are 3 levels of self-awareness.
What are you doing? How do you feel about what you’re doing?
- The hardest part, what don’t you know about yourself? Know what you are doing: This may sound very simple, but the truth is that people in the 21st century have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
People don’t know where to go, what to do. They just go on roaming like sheep. We’re on autopilot about 90%. Autopilot means repeating your daily habits. Checking e-mail, texting my best friend, then using Instagram, and then watching some online videos. All this keeps repeating again and again.
If you remove yourself from these distractions and turn off your phone, you are in the first stage of self-awareness. You have to find a quiet place and meditate there quietly. Meditation is important for your mental health. There are many types of distraction: TV, drugs, alcohol, video games, competing with people for likes in the comment section, and many more. You have to make a timetable, which will help you stay away from distractions.
Don’t wake up in the morning listening to a song or a podcast, just think about your life. Think about how you are feeling. Meditate only for 10 minutes. Delete social media for a week. You will be stunned to think what has happened to you. By deleting social media apps, you will know that you are being programmed like a machine, which is called phone addiction.
We use distraction in our lives. Because we tend to ignore many feelings that don’t make us feel good. That’s why you have to block out all distractions, and focus only on how you feel. Sometimes we don’t know what we want to do. Everyone wants to feel good, so Netflix, Amazon Prime, and many other video platforms are cashing in on you. And you don’t even know. We do not blame these platforms, but most of the time they end up wasting your good time.
First, you have to pay attention to how you’re feeling, and it may even bother you. Some may be disappointed and some may go into depression due to negative feelings. This is not good for us. If you focus on yourself, you will feel sad more and more times during the day.
You will realize how many people you have quarreled with and your anger gets out of control. You will understand that you are using only phone in your life. And you are on the wrong track like everyone else.
97% of the population is unsuccessful. Have you ever wondered why? Because of the habits that rich and successful people follow, a common man does not want to follow them. Because it is difficult to form a good habit. There is a good reason behind any emotion. Even if you don’t get that reason, it’s still good for you. So don’t blame yourself.
- Now you will think, if you are feeling bad then how can it be a good reason? So in the next issue, we’ll learn how to channel your emotions. If we are feeling uncomfortable then we get jealous and angry. Therefore, it is important for us to develop emotional intelligence.
Some people believe that emotions can be controlled. But it is not true. You can only react to an emotion. Emotions are like signals, telling us where to pay attention and where to pay attention. We can decide how well we react to a particular emotion.
There is no such thing as good or bad feeling in the world. There are only good or bad reactions related to emotions in our life. In emotional intelligence, if your anger is used for a bad purpose it can hurt others. But if it is used to protect the society, it can do a good deed. You feel good when you feel happy. You also share it with others. Then something good manifests in your life.
If you can use your anger for a good purpose, then you have learned to manage your emotions. Now you know what you’re feeling. You have to decide that feeling, whether it is good or bad. Looking at that emotional state, you have to take a decision.
The purpose of explaining all this is to use your emotions in the right direction for good purposes. The right direction is what psychologists call goal-directed behavior.
Are you lost doing something? Like, you started and didn’t even realize the time. And you’re deep into that stuff. After 3 hours, you feel like only 15 minutes have passed. The same happens with many other people as well. People should be ready to earn in their work.
Often good ideas do not come while working. This is because of our negative emotion. Change your feeling into good feelings while you work. With good feelings will come good thoughts.
Our feelings depend on our actions. Initially, your actions drive you. Your emotions then enter a state of flow, where you are lost in your work. This is called “Action theory”. This principle is so strong, that you too can start using it today.
Action Theory
Action theory states that taking action is not only an effect of motivation, but also its cause. Now let’s understand it in simple language. This theory says, your actions do not depend on the motivation, rather it depends on the cause of the motivation.
If you start taking action, your enthusiasm will increase even more. Many people find inspiration by watching videos. And they think that I will take action after this. They think that doing so will change their life. And also their position.
People think that we need to be ready to take action first. And after a few days, they finally take action. And after a few days, the same people watch more videos to find new ways to get motivated. It is wrong to think that we get inspiration from outside. no way. First we act, and then we get inspired. Then we take action. And this cycle continues.
What we mean by this is that if you want to learn how to manage your emotions effectively, you have to do something. You can take free online classes, you can learn to play a musical instrument, learn new skills from Google, learn writing, read books by successful people, and much more. You have to pay special attention to your feelings. Use that same observation in your future behavior.
We’ve covered a lot so far, how to deal with our emotions, and how we should direct our emotions. It is all within you.
Our main goal is to help you develop your emotional intelligence and strengthen your relationships. In healthy relationships, romantic relationships, family relationships, and friendships, you need to understand the emotional needs of others in all relationships. How your partner or friend expects you to react, and how you actually react.
When you connect with your family members, they will expect you to listen to them. Therefore, all you have to do is quietly listen to others. And there you got a technique. When you hear the whole thing from a friend, they feel very satisfied in themselves. And this makes the bond of your relationship even stronger.
Listen carefully to others. That doesn’t mean you have to understand everything. You just have to accept them completely. If you don’t understand them, however, listen to them fully and accept them. You should appreciate the people who are available to you.
Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence came out in the 90s and caused a stir around the world. And it became a new concept in the field of psychology. CEOs, and managers, all these people started reading about emotional intelligence. And he learned to turn his actions into inspiration. Physicians, through emotional awareness, began to provide even better treatment to their patients.
Parents understood how emotional intelligence could be beneficial to their children. One child’s father taught him to use emotional intelligence. And also taught the lesson of honesty and respect. There may be people who use this knowledge for evil deeds. And will try to trick people for their benefit.
If you want to live your life well, you must be very clear that you value others with all your heart. Because whatever your emotional energy is, it will always reach people. And hence, you must develop emotional intelligence skills.
I hope you enjoyed this blog, and I hope you are emotionally intelligent after this blog.
Emotional Intelligence Test
The Global Emotional Intelligence Test uses 40 questions, derived from the Global EI Capability Assessment Instrument, which consists of 158 items. These are based on Goleman’s Four Quadrant Emotional Intelligence Competency Model (2002).
Read more on “Hope Molecules” – The Secret to Mental Health!
Love,
Saurabh Goel
Saurabh Goel
He is the Founder and CEO of the Training and Counselling Company ‘Brain Soul & You’. He is an NLP Wellness Coach, Life Coach, Brain analyst, and Trainer for Education, Corporate, and Entrepreneurship. For more than 7 years, he delivered presentations on entrepreneurship, mind programming, and motivation. He did his B.tech in IT and later choose to be a successful psychologist. He is helping people in various ways through his counseling and training sessions.