Research has shown that IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is not everything, even as it confirms that our current view of intelligence is too narrow ignoring important abilities that determine how well we do in life. The preferred and more superior metric recommended by these studies to measure life success is EI otherwise known as Emotional intelligence.
There are several different definitions of what Emotional intelligence is and I am going to use a simple definition from one of my favorite speakers. She defines emotional intelligence as your ability to identify what you are feeling, why you are feeling it, and how your feelings affect you and those around you. Emotional Intelligence is a combination of self-awareness and social awareness. It starts with mastering yourself, your belief system, what gets you fired up, and why? What triggers you? and how? How experiences that you have had in your history are actually affecting some of the decisions or interpretations that you are making today. This self-awareness of understanding yourself and really mastering yourself is the ability to be emotionally intelligent.
It’s made up of these five things;
- Self-Awareness – This is knowing your emotions as they happen. If you can do this, you will make better decisions.
- Managing Emotions – This is the ability to handle feelings. People that can manage their emotions are good at bouncing back from the setbacks in life which are sure to happen.
- Self-Motivation – Your ability to search for and find sources of motivation from within when needed.
- Empathy – This is recognizing emotions; it is the people skill that makes people better at teaching, sales, and Management.
- Handling Relationships -This is the ability to sense and avoid toxic relationships, embrace and sustain positive relationships which help to build interpersonal, communication, and leadership skills.
Many people do not realize that emotional intelligence is actually a skill, it is not something you were born with and it is not something you are destined to either have or not have. It is something that anyone can learn how to do. It really starts with mastering thyself and then becomes how to be maybe more charismatic and really more influential in engagements and social interactions. Now you can understand how emotions are present in every conversation that you have. So this combination of social intelligence with personal intelligence is really what makes up emotional intelligence. The question now is how do we improve our emotional intelligence? There are various insights about this, but we will look at some that are very useful and I believe you will find them useful too.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.
The Ventilation Fallacy:
Venting when you are angry prolongs your mood rather than ending it. Normally people think when you shout back at a person that did the same to you, it makes you feel better. Contrary to popular belief research along with findings from multiple studies argues that venting your anger doesn’t make you feel better. But instead prolongs and amplifies your anger. It Pumps up the Emotional Brain’s arousal and leaves people feeling angrier. Don’t get confused though, venting when you’re sad can be a great way to get your feelings validated. But it isn’t as effective when you’re angry. When you feel yourself becoming angry, what you can do to control your Anger are; (a) Take a few deep breaths to help you relax and slow your heart rate, this helps your body go from high arousal to a low arousal state (b) Go for a walk, but don’t indulge on anger-inducing thoughts (c) As bad thoughts come to you, write them down and then reframe them. For example, if your friend gets upset at you and storms out the room instead of thinking Oh, she is so cranky all the time for no reason it drives me nuts. Write down that thought and reframe it to maybe she is just had a bad day at school.
Don’t Ruminate When You Are Sad, Distract Yourself Instead:
A student fails a particular examination, gets depressed, and spent so many hours worrying about it that she doesn’t get the needed time to study for other subjects. Her studies start to deteriorate with poor results, making her feel like a failure which feeds her depression. But if she reacted to depression by trying to distract herself, she might well plunge into her studies as a way to get her mind off the sadness by studying more. Her studies would be less likely to decline and the very experience of making a better result might boost her self-confidence, lessening the depression. What we are trying to say here is that continuing to think negative thoughts will lead you deeper into sadness. Distractions are what break the chain of sadness. The best distractions are ones that will shift your moods, such as a funny movie, reading an uplifting book, or going to an exciting sports event. Distractions are more effective than crying because crying often reinforces rumination and prolongs the misery. Let’s see some solutions to managing sadness: (a) Aerobic exercise is good because it changes your physiological state. Depression is a low arousal state. An aerobic exercise counters up by putting you into a high arousal state (B) Go for that easy success. Do those small tasks that you have been putting off for a while and reap the rewards (C) reframe the situation Just like with anger, take note of bad thoughts when they come to you and see them in a more positive light. (d) Lastly, helping others in need helps us empathize with others and lifts us out of negativity.
The Artful Critique – How to Criticize the Right Way:
Criticism is important in how it is given. It determines how satisfied people are with important people in their lives. One of the worst criticisms parents or teachers can give to students is to outrightly say you are doing really bad, delivered in a harsh sarcastic angry tone. It provides neither a chance to respond nor any suggestion of how to do things better. It ignores the child’s feelings and leaves them feeling helpless and angry. A much better alternative way to criticize would be to say for example; The main difficulty at this stage is that your plan will take too long and will cost the school more, as a result, I’d like you to think more about your planning especially the planning specifications for your school play, explore ways you can see if you can figure out a way to do the same thing more quickly. This gives them hope of doing better and suggests the beginning of a plan to do so. You need four things to successfully deliver constructive criticism; They are; (1) be specific, (2) offer a solution, (3) do it face to face, and (4) be sensitive by showing empathy. This means you cannot be quick at criticizing because you have to plan your criticism and make it constructive criticism.
Emotional Contagion – Set the Emotional Tone:
During a simple experiment, two volunteers filled out a checklist about their merits at the moment and then sat facing each other quietly, waiting for the experimenters to return to the room. Two minutes later, the lead scientist returned and asked them to fill out the mood checklist again. The pairs were purposely chosen so that one partner was highly expressive of emotion and another appeared flat and expressionless. It turns out that the mood of the expressive person had been transferred to the expressionless person. This is an example of emotional contagion, our emotions are contagious like a virus, they spread through others. This is why inspirational speakers are able to hype up their audience and get them involved. They show their passion and energy which spreads through the audience like wildfire. The same way you go to a burial ceremony and suddenly your body adopts the mood in the room. It is important to note that scientists now recognize this ability to drive the emotional state of another person through emotional contagion as being in the heart of influencing people whether that’s through speaking, teaching, singing, or in any other interpersonal communication.
Finally, when you recognize that you have a choice in what you think, how you act, how you react, how you interpret events, how you perceive information, how you respond to situations, all of this boils down to your choice. The more you are out of your way the less reactive and more interactive you become in your emotional responses, behaviors, and actions. So emotional intelligence starts with your choice. I want you to take these three words home to constantly remind you that it’s your choice to be angry, it is your choice to be resentful, it is your choice to forgive, have compassion, understanding, or empathy. You and only you get to make that decision and every decision you make is going to determine how emotionally intelligent you are. So, enact that power this week, really own that thought process that is -my choice; when you find yourself getting angry, say it is my choice to be angry, it is my choice to be late, it is my choice to be on time. It all boils down to what do you choose and then owning your choices.
