Emotional Intelligence: Concept, Benefits, Areas Of Personal Skills

Emotional intelligence in simple words is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.We define Emotional Intelligence as the ability to: Recognize and control our emotions or the ability to influence the emotions of others. Practically this means making oneself aware how can have an effect on them , and to learn how to control those emotions specially when we are under pressure.

Benefits of Higher Emotional Intelligence:

People with higher emotional intelligence find it easier to form and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and to fit into group situations.

People having higher emotional intelligence are also better at understanding their own psychological state, which can include controlling stress efficiently and being less likely to suffer from depression or other such disorders.

There is no correlation between Intelligent Quotient and Emotional Intelligence scores, In other words academic aptitude has no connection with how people understand and deal with their emotions and the emotions of others. This makes sense as we have all met very clever people who nonetheless had no idea about how to deal with people, and also we quite often observe the reverse.Some people have high IQ and low emotional intelligence , while some people score highly on both. IQ and emotional intelligence measure different forms of human intelligence, along with personality, these measures make up the individual’s psyche. Emotional intelligence is a part of human psyche that we can develop and improve by learning and practising new skills. IQ and personality are more static measures and are likely to stay reasonably constant throughout life (although you can develop your ability to complete IQ tests very successfully over time).

Personal Skills or Competences

There are three areas of personal skills in emotional intelligence.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness includes:

Self-awareness is the skill of being aware of oneself and understanding ones emotions as they occur and as they evolve. It is wrong to think about emotions as either positive or negative. Instead, we should think of them as appropriate or inappropriate. For example, anger is commonly associated with being a negative emotion. However, it can be a completely reasonable and appropriate emotion in several situations.

Effective self-assessment of feelings and emotions will help to improve our confidence and self-esteem significantly.

Self-management

Self-management includes:

• Self-control
• Trustworthiness
• Adaptability
• Innovation

The skill of self-regulation is related to managing our self emotions appropriately. Self-management skills relate to the emotions we are feeling at any given time or in any given situation and how well we can manage them. Self-control is plays a fundamental part in this, but other aspects relate to what we then do: whether we behave in a way which is recognised as ‘virtuous’ or not.

Motivation

The final aspect of emotional intelligence is the skill of Motivation. Self-motivation includes our personal drive to improve or to achieve, commitment for our goals, initiative, or readiness to act on appropriate opportunities, and optimism.Self-motivation and personal time management are the key skills in this area. Do not make unreasonable demands for yourself, we should learn to be assertive, rather than just saying, ‘Yes’ to the demands of others. Biologically, Emotional Intelligence is supposed to be at higher levels of energy. Emotions are the results of physiology. Physiology is composed of signals like, electromagnetic signals, electric signals, chemical signals, heat waves, sound waves and pressure waves. The cells and systems in the body talk with each other through these signals. These signals influence each other's working and also balance each other through effective communication.

There are specialized neurons throughout body who take responsibility of each of these signals. Heart is the principle organ to synchronize these signals and this way heart builds up a lot of raw energy in the body. When there is a positive interference among these signals, we are in a positive state of emotions and when there is an destructive interference, we are in negative state of emotions. When the heart functioning is affected, the energy is not effectively build up in the body and this disturbs physiological as well as cognitive functioning. The conscious ability to manage this internal communication web so that we are continuously building up energy in the body gives birth to Emotional Intelligence.

The Emotional Intelligence is very important for the optimum functioning of higher brain centres. These centres handle functions like planning, discrimination, pursuing and managing resources to effectively achieve goals, deep thinking and reasoning, transforming stress, problem solving etc. “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand if you don’t have self-awareness if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”