Emotional Intelligence: How To Make It Work For You

One of the major setbacks people face when dealing with other people in business and relationships is how to control their emotions. It is so disheartening to see how people lose control of themselves and more importantly their emotions, this uncontrolled level of outburst has led to poor financial decisions and relationship break ups.

Emotional intelligence teaches you how to manage your emotions. Your being able to understand your emotions and pulling through current challenges will help you prevent future ones. It helps you to discover you first before you can discover other people, or, help them with their emotions.

Mayer describes, Emotional Intelligence, EI, (also called EQ), as follows:
“Emotional intelligence, as we described it, is the capacity to reason about emotions and emotional information and of emotions to enhance thought. People with high EI, we believe, could solve a variety of emotion-related problems accurately and quickly.”

Your ability to possess emotional intelligence determines how you are able to deal with challenges, without having people share in your pain.

There are, however, practical steps we can take to make emotional intelligence work for us. Some of these steps are explained below:

Identify your emotions: Daniel Goleman, an emotional intelligence pioneer, argues that, there are two minds, “in a very real sense, we have two minds; one that thinks and one that feels”.

Developing the mind that feels requires you to take notice of your daily emotions, which are, how you react to things, your response to certain challenges you are faced with and how you handled such situations.

Interpret your emotions: Haven discovered reasons why you react to some things, the way you do, then, you try to understand them. You begin to ask yourself questions and try to find answers to them.

For instance, why do I feel sad when I am ignored? You have understood this part of your emotions, now you need to understand how you react to people in the process of understanding your emotions and how you have properly managed it over time.

Manage your emotions: Emotional Intelligence helps you to manage your internal mood before you can lead others into the right mood.

Knowing that you have to learn how to manage your own emotions first before you can help others manage theirs, then, you have to ask yourself certain questions like, can you handle a mood swing when it comes? Can I help myself to be calm down, when angry? If you can manage you, then, you are ready and fit to manage others.

Emotional intelligence is a great tool for societal peace if given proper attention. Not only helps you build and discover yourself, but also helps you to find others, which will better enhance a smooth relationship in our society.