How Emotional Intelligence can change your Life?

Emotional Intelligence is a skill essential to creating fulfilling careers, strong relationships, and rich personal lives, and yet it’s not something most of us are ever explicitly taught.

If you’re not familiar with Emotional Intelligence, or EI, it’s “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions to distinguish between them and use this information for thinking and actions (Marc A. Brackett, 2011)”. Put simply, EI means being able to understand what you’re feeling (and why) and being able to apply that knowledge to govern your decision making.

We haven’t always known how important emotional intelligence is. Historically, emotion and intelligence were considered opposing forces (thinking with your heart versus your head, for example) and emotions were often derided as unreliable and erratic.

Despite these wayward beginnings, researchers have increasingly begun to study how emotional intelligence can work to boost careers, strengthen interpersonal relationships, relieve stress, and improve mental wellbeing.

Why is it so important?

Well, if you’re aware of your emotions, able to understand where they come from, what they feel like, and how to deal with them in a positive way, you have a head start in virtually every situation. If you aren’t aware, however, even simple situations can quickly spiral out of control.

It’s normal for us to experience emotional responses to life events — large and small.

Imagine someone cutting you off in traffic, for example, or being fired unexpectedly. Both can both provoke intensely unpleasant emotions. The emotions themselves are normal, but those with lower levels of emotional intelligence may not deal with these emotions in a healthy way — finding themselves consumed with road rage and screaming at a total stranger, or destroying a professional relationship that took years to build.

Being unaware of your emotions can mean not recognising your triggers for stress and doing poorly on an exam as a result; or taking everything so personally that your social anxiety begins to feel crippling. It means living your life while being governed by a system you don’t fully understand.

The Good News is that EI can be taught:

CEO’s, Managers, and Scholars have all worked on improving their EI for greater success, and mentoring programs in EI involving student interaction with teachers have shown significant positive impact on student retention and success, too.

Now that we understand why EI is so crucial to our success both Personally and Professionally. Next, we’ll discuss how to strengthen our own emotional intelligence levels. Stay tuned for our next blog on building emotional intelligence and incorporating it into a healthy college life.

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