WHY IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IMPORTANT?
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence also called as Emotional Quotient (EQ) refers to the ability to understand, use and channelize own emotions in a way that it helps in relieving stress. It also means to communicate effectively, show sympathy, empathize with others, have concern about others emotions , avoid conflicts and disputes along with overcoming challenges, in short to a human who is equally concerned about others as he is of him. Emotional Quotient is equally important as Intelligent Quotient; in fact it is more important for survival.
What are the four components of Emotional Intelligence?
Self Awareness:
One should be aware of his strengths, weakness, feelings and emotions and what are the reasons behind it. What is the triggering point, what makes you happy? What is the one thing that makes you lose your temper or what help in calming your nerves? What is the one thing that makes you different from others? All of these things are important and one should be very much aware of it because no one can understand you better than you yourself.
Self Management:
Managing bad moods, impulses and not letting it harm anyone even including you is very crucial. One should consider all these as normal but should make sure that it doesn’t take a toll on mental health. If you have a tendency to get angry or annoyed over silly things the reason behind it could be so many like lack of sleep, hunger, family disturbances or something that didn’t worked out like you wanted it to be but that clearly doesn’t mean you have to take out this frustration on someone else or harm yourself. To keep calm you can practice yoga, do some physical exercise all of this helps to avoid anger. Maintaining a positive outlook and self introspection are few things that should be done by everyone, every night before going to sleep; you can sit down in a place with no outer noise or disturbance and should introspect of all the activities being done by you in order to correct yourself before anyone else points you out and you feel embarrassed.
Social Awareness:
We humans are social animals, we live in a society and a society composed of so many people with different views, opinions and outlook, imposing our own views on others is wrong and should be avoided, we should be concerned about others, their state of mind. Self love is important but don’t let that turn into being selfish. Taking note of the clues about others for e.g. someone is being quiet, looking upset in such condition we should ask them out, listen to all the things they have to say because listening is important than talking, and at times people don’t need advice they just look for someone who can help them out by listening without passing on comments or giving judgments. We should take out time from our busy schedules to listen to our close and dear ones and ask them again even if they refused to answer in the first place but remember this asking doesn’t turn out into pestering them, giving required space is also a good thing to do.
Relationship Management:
Building relationships is easy but the difficult part about this is maintaining it, maintaining relationships require a lot of effort, the thing that the relationship lacks these days is communication, it’s a well known fact that sharing problems eases the suffering, also speaking the heart out makes one feel lighter. Any miscommunication might lead to so many misunderstandings hence ruining relationships so it’s better to speak up about everything that bothers you.
Overall, Emotional quotient is very important for survival. Managing emotions, not letting negativity take a toll on you, finding ways to be optimistic in every situation all of it makes living easier to an extent.
Written By- Rituja Roy