Emotional intelligence skills is the ability to be aware of your emotions and surroundings, the ability to express emotions and the management of emotions.
Emotional intelligence skills makes a difference, which is the ability to be aware of your emotions and surroundings, the ability to express emotions and the management of emotions. This concept consists of two opposite words: emotions and intelligence.
Is there any intelligence in emotions, or we can bring emotions in intelligence? Daniel Goleman wrote a book, Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ. In this book, one can learn how to manage his emotions in daily life and professional life.
It has been argued that IQ is a genetic given, which can not be changed, and a high IQ is not a key to success. Many times, people with low IQ perform well.
What are emotions?
Don Hockenbury and Sandra E. Hockenbury in their book “Discovering Psychology” describe emotions as a complex psychological process that involves three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral expressive response.
Psychologist Paul Ekman, in 1972, described that there are six basic emotions that every human being has: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise and sadness.
Five components of emotional intelligence skills
Self-awareness
Learning and understanding one’s emotions are called self-awareness. Through self-awareness, one can learn about one’s emotional feelings and the reasons behind them.
Self-regulation
It is capacity to take good decision on the basis of careful observation and make responsible choices.
Empathy
Empathy is an ability to value other people’s emotions and understand them. An empathic person appreciates other people’s opinions.
Decision-making
Management of emotions in certain situations and environments. Self-regulation saves us from poor decision-Making.
Social skills
It is required in every relationship. A person with good social skills can understand the needs of good relationship and create good bonds.
Core components of Emotional Intelligence Skills
Why emotional intelligence skills are important?
As we know, humans need social connectivity to build a good relationship and through this, they can experience the fullness of life.
Emotional intelligence skills can help us to become good friends, partners, parents, and good human beings. Developing emotional intelligence is key to all good relationships.
Emotional intelligence allows individuals to overcome the internal and external conflicts.
It reduces anxiety, and stress and improves the quality of life.
Other people feel safe, connected and understood around the person who has higher emotional intelligence.
It is equally important to understand one’s feelings.
How to increase Emotional Intelligence skills?
Self-evaluation is key to understanding oneself. It provides self-awareness and clears the thought process. By asking a simple question to oneself, an individual can evaluate one’s mental and physical health.
It is important to note one’s reactions during stress and anger situations. How do you respond to tense situations? How do you handle your emotions? Do you consider others before taking any action? These questions and cues help to understand in accessing and managing emotions.
Mostly, self weaknesses are not visible to individuals. To analyze the weaknesses, one should ask questions from peers, friends, family etc. Seek feedback and accept criticism.
Assessment is also a daunting task, and changing oneself is more difficult. Many helpful tools can make it easy to adapt to manage emotions. For example, chat chains are an emotional learning game that helps to initiate a conservation or vulnerable dialogue that is difficult in real life. Playing this game will help to identify the one’s weaknesses and strength.
Other than this, learning to motivate yourself, maintaining a positive attitude, noticing about how your behavior affects others, and be assertive while communicating.
This article is jointly written by Rameen Ishfaq, Aiza kamal Khan and Hira Saleem.