Developing Emotional Intelligence

Unfortunately, we can't always get exactly what we want that's why emotional intelligence is important

Benefits of Emotional Intelligence:

• Happier healthier relationships, you are able to communicate your emotions and thoughts better

• Much more efficient when dealing with problems

• Much higher chance of keeping your job, 46% of new hires failed within 18 months of starting a new job because of lack of EI (Leadership IQ study) 

• You will develop a much stronger sense of empathy

Steps to Emotional Intelligence:

1. Self-Awareness

First, actually understand what you are feeling. It may sound super simple, but the truth is that this step is often overlooked. For example, I might think that I'm angry at a person because they got something that they don’t deserve but the truth is that I'm jealous, so I justify it to yourself by hiding behind a more ‘acceptable’ emotion.

2. Reflection

It’s important that we make a clear distinction between our emotions and our response. The emotion we feel is often down to the perspective that we have on life, whereas the response that we have is completely down to us. Someone could rob your house and your initial emotion might be shock and anger, but your response might be forgiveness. Understanding this response is critical to building a good character as we all know it’s very difficult to make good decisions when our head is crowded with emotions.

3. Value alignment

This is the step in which you will decide how you need to progress. Once you are aware of your emotion and your response, reflect on it, and then think about whether your response aligns with your values. If you don’t already know what your values are then spend some time thinking about them. Then compare this with your response. Does your response line up? If it does then that’s great, if not, then what is it that you need to work on?

4. Take Action

Now you know what it is that you need to improve it’s up to you on how you’re going to go about doing it. Often simply being aware of it and then calling yourself out when you catch yourself doing it is the quickest way to change however, it can be quite difficult to be consistent with this. It can be quite useful if you ask a close friend or someone you spend a lot of time with to call you out when you don’t respond properly.