emotionalintelligence

Building Emotional Intelligence!

Continued from..the previous blog.

The Essential Component of Success!

Emotional Intelligence like any other skill can be built up with conscious and regular practice.

Self Reflect to Build Self Awareness:

The ability to observe oneself and reflect helps one make  conscious choices. The more you acknowledge and name your feelings, better aware you become at knowing your own emotions, what triggers them, how do you feel at that time and how do you behave or act. Deliberate reflections on your own actions, helps you realize you have choices in your actions.

For Self Reflection to be a part, you can practice following-

  • Practice being in present.
  •  Deliberately stop over the day many times to check your mental state at a given point of time.
  • Acknowledge your feelings and name it.
  • Practice observing others and their feelings.
  • Notice your judgments for the self as well as about others. Doing this helps you realize that people are different.
  •  Practice sharing your feelings through speaking. This helps you pay attention to why of the feelings around.
  • Notice the intensity of your positive and negative emotions, thoughts or feelings.

Self Soothe to Build Self Regulation:

Self soothing is like positive re-affirmations to the self. It helps us to manage ourselves when somebody is attacking or blaming us. Self soothing helps us to remain objective and take the feedback positively.

Practice self soothing by-

  • Have faith in yourself and your capabilities. To have faith in your capacities, regularly ask feedback from others.
  • Be objective and look at the situation without adding emotions to it.
  • Look for what is right and not who is right.
  • Act as if you really count. This helps you to overcome your fear and empowers you to listen to yourself.

Practice Empathy to Build Empathy:

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and see where is it pinching. Being high on empathy makes us able to understand others, their viewpoints, helps us to listen more and we become able to appreciate differences.

To build up empathy, we can practice;

  • Acknowledging self and self feelings.
  • Acknowledging others and their feelings.
  • Trying knowing others; your friends, colleagues, team members.
  • Try listening without interrupting.
  • Try initiating conversation during stress.
  • Practice keeping yourself at other person’s place. Consequently we get more control on our actions and behaviors.

I believe, being high on Emotional Intelligence is the new mantra of success because in real life it is all about our abilities to understand self and others, their feelings, emotions and intentions. Once we can see through that, we can enhance the outcomes of our interactions. We can see what drives us and at the same time what drives others. Together as a team, we can be more productive, at home we can be more accepting of others, at work place we may learn to go well with others. We can choose to be not in agreement at all times but our manners of disagreement can be more agreeable. We can choose to be more happy, peaceful and successful just by building on our emotional intelligence.

Happy Emotional Intelligence Building!

The Essential component of Success!!

Emotional Intelligence!!

Ever wondered what makes some people ever happy? How do some people go mostly well along with everyone, practically everyone? How come some leaders are able to inspire their team and get the best out of them? How come some teachers are listened to by the students or how come some of our uncles or aunts or cousins are always able to get done what they wish to?

There is only one answer to all your wonderments, and that is all these people are Emotionally Intelligent. The findings of various researches in the field of Emotional Intelligence tell us that People with High Emotional Intelligence are likely-

  • To be very happy, ever vibrant and going well along with others.
  • To have more fulfilling and satisfying relationships.
  • To be more productive and successful at work.
  • To have solution seeking mindset in case of any problem.
  • To overcome challenges, upsets, heartbreaks, business failure, job loss etc. with vigor.

On the other hand People with Low Emotional Intelligence are likely-

  • To havefrequent emotional outbursts, typically out of proportion to the problem at hand, and are demanding and boring.
  • To be impulsive and argumentative most of the times.
  • To have difficulty in listening to others and understanding them.
  • To blame others for all their mistakes.
  • To be excessively critical, picky and fussy in any relationship.
  • Toshow resistance to change, and not take any initiative to overcome the challenges of life.

What exactly is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to regulate and monitor one’s own self and as well as other’s emotions, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

To quote from Daniel Goleman’s (a psychologist) on Emotional Intelligence, it comprises of following elements;

Self Awareness: Knowing one’s emotions or the ability to recognize a feeling as it happens. Being aware of our own feelings, emotions, thoughts and moods is necessary to manage emotions.

Self Regulation: Managing emotions, the ability to behave and act appropriately in a given challenging situation. Self regulation is possible only when we are self aware.

Empathy: Recognizing feelings in others, being able to put the self in other’s place and able to see how it feels. Empathy also builds on self awareness. If one doesn’t know and understand one’s feelings and emotions, one won’t ever be able to understand those of others.

With so much on hand, do you not think that someone high on Emotional Intelligence would be successful?

Along with visible examples around us, research also presents ample evidences to claim that truly successful people actually have high EQ( Emotional Quotient) to complement  their qualifications, competencies, skills and IQ(Intelligence Quotient). So the next logical question in your mind must be  how can we build on our emotional intelligence?

How Can We Build Emotional Intelligence?

To be continued..through the next blog.