Here I have put together a little guide to what emotional intelligence is and how to improve at it, enjoy.
Emotional intelligence is an ability to monitor your own, and emotions of others and to distinguish between them. If someone is emotional intelligent, they understand feelings, what emotions mean, how they affect people and also how to manage their emotions in different situations.
Emotional intelligence is divided on four types:
- Self awareness
- Emotional self – or awareness of you feelings and to know yourself
- Accurate self – or assesment of your strenghts and weaknesses
- Self – or confidence and having faith in yourself and being willing to put yorself forward.
- Social awareness
- To be helpful, contribute to group effort, to be a good listener
- Ability to express yourself well and being aware of how you are understood by others
- Empathy – understanding other people’s emotions
- Self management
- Able to work towards yout goals
- Adaptive and knowing when to change course
- Having a positive outlook, be an optimist
- Emotional self control, knowing how to control your feelings and expressing them properly
- Relationship management
- Working with others effectively
- Helping others build their skills, being a mentor
- Having skills to negotiate and to settle disputes
After a brief explanation of the term, we can now move on to how we can build on it and become a better version of ourselves.
It is good to start with yourself and get to really know your emotions. Ask yourself often how you feel and why you are feeling this way. Stress is an important factor of self-management as it can lead to loosing ourselves. Try to manage the stress, I know it is sometimes easier said than done, but it is going to help you stay in tune with your emotions and self control. The social media nowadays can be a major factor of stress and feeling bad about ourselves, so take time to ‘turn off’ from the phone and maybe do some mindfulness (maintaining an awareness of our thoughts) and yoga instead, or something else that will connect you to your mind.
Accept your emotions, and let them be a healthy part of you! Learn to be confident and comfortable with them, it is completely ‘human’ to have emotions. Try to objectively value yourself and your emotions and actions. This will also help you in understanding other people’s feelings.
Try to pay attention to others, it is important if you want to work well with them. Try and become aware of how you communicate; verbally and non verbally. Be an active listener, try to emphasize with others, take critique well and try to respond to conflict not reacting to it.
I hope this helped a bit, and that yo now better understand emotional intelligence and how to become better at it!