What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own internal world as well as the internal worlds of those around you. It is also the ability to understand how your actions and word can impact the emotions of others as well as the outcome of conversations and decisions. It is a powerful tool that can help you to prevent conflict, de-escalate heated emotions, and build connection through strengthening emotional ties and connections. For some people emotional intelligence is innate. For others, it is a skill that has been learned over time.
Emotional intelligence will help you to navigate all relationships with more grace. Whether it is relationships with coworkers, bosses, friends, family, or a significant other, it will help you to influence situations and circumstances for the better.
Five Ways To Build Emotional Intelligence
If you are not naturally emotionally intelligent, don’t fret. It is a skill that can be built with time and effort. Here are five ways to get started.
1. Practice observing and understanding your own emotions.
Understanding the world around you starts with understanding yourself. If you have lived your life mostly unaware of your own emotions, starting to understand and manage your own emotional landscape is the best place to start. By understanding what upsets you or makes you feel heard, you can apply your learnings to the relationships around you. Sharing your own emotional journey with others is also a great way to broaden your understanding. By considering outside perspectives, you also can become more well rounded.
2. Start trying to understand the emotions of those closest to you.
Once you understand and manage your own emotions and are comfortable with sharing your internal world from others, you are ready to start understanding the emotions of those closest to you more deeply. It is important to remember that each of us is unique.
We have all lived different highs and lows and have experienced a story that no one else can truly comprehend. Through bonding with others and attempting to understand their internal worlds, you can approach them with empathy, remembering similar situations from your own life while simultaneously respecting that their experiences, thoughts, and feelings may vary. By giving people the space to be themselves, you will become more well rounded and as a result, more emotionally intelligent.
3. Get involved in a social group.
Your relationship with yourselves, with a one on one friendship, and with a group of people will show you different ways that people behave in different circumstances. Group dynamics can trigger all types of different emotional ways of relating and interacting. By participating in a group of any kind, you will become more comfortable with group dynamics.
You can start to explore your role within a group, the roles of others, and the ways that people interact. By experiencing group dynamics, your experience with human relationships will grow, and give you countless opportunities to learn.
4. Read books about human psychology.
Rooted in your real world experience with yourself and others, a great way to expand emotional intelligence is by reading about human psychology. People’s thought processes follow patterns that have been studied. Reading about the proven ways humans tend to function will help you to better understand different ways to understand yourself and those around you.
5. Practice the concepts you learn.
Beyond understanding the logic behind the way emotions work, practicing the concepts you have learned is key. The most valuable lessons you will learn will come through interacting with others in an open and honest way. Overtime, you will gather real world experience that will guide you through the inevitable emotional highs and lows of life.
Why Does Emotional Intelligence Matter?
Emotional intelligence has the ability to completely change the way you interact with the world. When people lack emotional intelligence, they are often living in a reactive state. Their moods and interactions with others are completely dependent on outside circumstances. They are nice when someone is nice to them, and mean when someone is mean to them. They remain calm when they are spoken to calmly, and they yell when yelled at. Emotional intelligence is a way to rise above depending on others for peace and clarity of mind.
Life will inevitably present us all with a variety of people and behaviors. The thoughts, feelings, and actions of others only have the amount of power that we are willing to give them. Through emotional intelligence, you will gain the ability to influence your surroundings instead of letting your surroundings influence you.
In the heat of a conflict, you will be the calming factor that brings logic back into the interaction. In the midst of overwhelming pain, you can bring the comfort that roots those around you in reality and hope for better days. Emotional intelligence breeds stability and leadership.
You will be able to focus on achieving the outcome you would like to reach instead of getting bogged down in the emotional clouds that may roll over various situations. Emotional intelligence can positively change your life and the lives of those around you.