EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence helps you build stronger relationships, succeed at school and work and achieve your career and personal goals. It can also help you to connect with your feelings, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to you. (HelpGuide.org). There are four basic skills we can use build our EQ, this skills include 

i) Self-management – also referred to as “self-control” or “self-regulation,” is the ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. Self management  also refers to when one’s health is under individual control, deliberate, and self-initiated. This could include how we manage stress, how we motivate ourselves, when we sleep, what we decide to eat or wear and setting and working towards achieving goals 

ii) Self-awareness – involves being aware of different aspects of the self including traits, behaviors, and feelings. Essentially, it is a psychological state in which oneself becomes the focus of attention.

 iii) Social awareness – is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to understand social and ethical norms for behavior. Social awareness is being aware of the problems that different societies and communities face on a day-to-day basis and to be conscious of the difficulties and hardships of society.

 iv) Relationship management – how to effectively relate with the people around us and manage one another’s emotion to align with a set of goals and objectives. We are built/created to be inter dependent on one another, It is a skill it can be learnt and develop.

Our emotional intelligence affects the quality of our lives because it influences our behavior and relationships. When we can skillfully put together these basic skills and develop a high level of emotional intelligence, it will help us to better communicate well with others, reduce their anxiety and stress in our daily life activities, diffuse conflicts, improve or make our relationships better, empathize with others, and effectively overcome life’s challenges.