Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to manage your own emotions and the emotions of others.
Most people consider high EQ important in building strong relationships with those around us.
According to this book, emotional intelligence can be developed through practice.
They define emotional intelligence as comprised of the following:
Perception
This refers to the ability to perceive emotions in oneself and others as well as in books, movies, or even art.
Use of emotion to think
This is the ability to use emotions to engage in other cognitive processes like decision-making.
Understanding emotion
This refers to the ability to understand emotions and the cause
Management
This is the ability to be open to feelings and employ effective strategies to promote personal understanding and growth.
Research was conducted where participants went through a brief emotional intelligence training.
They found that the training increased the participants’ emotion identification and management abilities.
A follow-up study was made and the training participants still showed stronger emotional intelligence.
The study concluded that EI can be improved.
Here are some ways to increase our emotional intelligence:
1. Use a diary to describe one emotional experience
The Belgian research study mentioned above used a personal diary as part of the training.
Participants were told to report one emotional experience daily.
By writing about your emotions, you become self-aware of your own emotional state.
You will remember what happened which brought up those feelings.
And that is one way to strengthen your emotional intelligence.
2. Reflect
To strengthen emotional intelligence, you need to improve your own regulation of emotion.
To do this, think about times that you may have lost to your emotions.
Now think about how you could manage that differently in the future.
An example is to compose your thoughts when you feel like losing your temper.
3. Identify other people’s feelings
There are a few exercises to strengthen your emotional skills. T
One is to analyze the emotions of a recent interaction with someone.
This strategy is helpful because emotions contain important information about people.
Identifying your feelings and that of the other person will improve how the situation is handled.
4. Identify your thoughts about the other person’s emotions
The author of the book said that emotions influence how we think.
Our thoughts then influence how we handle a situation.
To understand the cause of the emotional experience, ask what may have caused each person to feel the way he/she did?’
Finally, ask yourself the things you did to manage these feelings?
5. Identify non-verbal cues
Non-verbal cues give away a person’s emotional state.
It includes facial expressions, voice, gestures, or posture.
Example is recognizing the emotion you feel when your face feels hot and flushed. Is it shame or embarrassment?
It is important to have a healthy emotional state.
Various studies have proven that people with strong emotional intelligence are more likely to succeed than those with high IQs.
Because we are emotional creatures so we need to cultivate our EI as much as we value our intelligence.
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