The opposition of IQ, the master of feelings and empathy – Emotional Intelligence. These individuals are pioneers in not just understanding our humans’ inner world but managing it effectively as well. They are able to utilise the uncontrollable.
Let’s have a look at these individuals’ strengths and areas for improvement. Are you one of them?
1. Strengths:
As we’ve said in our introduction, people with high scores in emotional intelligence have natural abilities in the area of empathy, understanding their own as well as others‘ emotions. This allows them to originate a deep level of understanding considering others’ problems. They can reimagine feelings and apply them to another situation. But, be careful not to mistake others’ emotions with your own; it is easy to lose yourself in other people’s pain.
With high scores in emotional intelligence, there is the potential to be highly sensitive. What does that mean? Well, this doesn’t mean emotionally intelligent individuals are crybabies. High sensitivity can appear in various forms – some might recognise if another person is lying, others claim to have visions. What they have in common is a skill some might call a sixth sense – they are able to feel the vibe in a room. This ability leads to good situational interpretation and judgment of character.
To be able to understand your emotions, you need to identify their origin. This needs self-reflection and honesty and leads to enhanced mental well-being, self-respect, and stress management. Knowing where your emotions arise allows you to work on its source. This also prevents rash actions which potentially lead to more chaos.
People with high emotional intelligence can develop deep and honest relationships. We’ve all experienced it: the bond you form with someone after that one deep talk session the two of you have. Emotionally intelligent individuals can build trust and comfort by listening and understanding their friends and family. Relationships, companions, colleagues, friends – we need them to move forward in life.
2. Areas for Improvement:
Whereas empathy holds great potential, there are some dangers as well. Emotionally intelligent individuals need to be careful when empathising. Especially when talking to someone important to them, mistaking others’ emotions with their own can happen without recognition.
Being emotionally intelligent, understanding others’ emotions, being a mediator and empath, all of these can become overwhelming. Therefore, some individuals have probably built walls around them, not allowing close relationships as it drains their energy.
Have you recognised yourself? Congratulations on being an emotionally intelligent individual! To help you move forward and understand yourself better, we’ll now give you some tips on how to refine your strengths and start your improvement work.
3. Refining Strengths:
Get to know yourself! Your emotions arise from within, so that’s where you start refining your strengths.
We’ve said it before, to work with emotions you need to understand their origin. This means, you need to engage in self-reflection. You can freely reflect wherever you want or look out for your behaviour in difficult situations. You might as well enjoy our post about everyday things which reveal more about ourselves than we might acknowledge. Read it >>here<<.
When reflecting on difficult situations in everyday life, you might gain new insights you have no time to further investigate at the moment. This is why you want to keep journaling aside. Document your progress and connect your thoughts. You will end up with a little book about yourself – a “you-guide,” ready to be applied to life’s challenges.
Another way to enhance emotional intelligence is by practicing mindfulness. Being mindful, on the one hand, allows you to acknowledge the effect something has on your mood, for example through mindful eating. You can use this knowledge to influence your mood by engaging in activities with specific effects on yourself. To practice mindfulness, make sure you focus on your given task or activity – put your phone aside. On the other hand, mindfulness practices such as breathing techniques help you to focus and reduce stress.
Engage in resilience training. To build resilience, you can again engage in mindfulness practices or train goal-setting and problem-solving abilities. Combining these with emotional aspects, or being able to consider them when working on solutions, is essential for success and leadership.
4. Improvement Work:
Setting up emotional boundaries is a central aspect of your improvement journey. You remember what we said about getting too caught up in other people’s pain? This is what you need emotional boundaries for. It is okay to stop when you’re feeling overwhelmed, it is okay to step back if you feel like you can’t manage a situation. You aren’t anyone’s emotional trash bin. Even if you want to help, make sure to look out for yourself as well.
Learn to distinguish between your own and others’ emotions. Whether to protect yourself from getting lost or working on walls you’ve built up, telling apart your emotions and the ones of others is essential for you to improve. Remember, walls don’t differentiate between bad and good emotions.
Being very empathetic can lead to a lack of assertiveness. Understanding the reasoning behind others’ behaviour might result in emotionally intelligent individuals being too naive or backing down in disputes. You need to internalise that no reason is an excuse for everything. Balance your empathy and assertiveness.
Now that we’ve learned more about your skills, let’s look at some jobs and hobbies you might enjoy.
5. Jobs:
You could be a therapist, counselor, or a company’s HR manager – jobs that require high scores in emotional intelligence are no rarity. Besides that, leading positions can be executed well with high emotional intelligence. As a leader, you have to manage a team; this requires you to effectively communicate and understand their concerns, as well as provide constructive feedback – emotional intelligence enables you to do so.
6. Hobbies:
Hobbies you might enjoy evolve around self-reflection, our emotional world, and helping others. Anything that brings joy and peace can soothe your empathic self. Try journaling, yoga, or volunteering.
Lastly, to fully understand the impact of emotional intelligence, we’ll take a look at its effect in everyday, social, and personal settings.
7. Everyday Relevance:
In everyday life, emotional intelligence enables you to resolve conflicts effectively. Your ability to communicate and understand allows you to acknowledge different perspectives regarding the problem in discussion. This makes you a great mediator.
Teamwork is a recurring theme in everyone’s life. Being able to empathise with others can enhance your understanding of their situation, concerns, and talents. Your empathy allows you to consider every opinion, and manage groups effectively.
Another related and important aspect is the fact that the ability to manage groups is key to leadership. Working on your problem-solving skills, as suggested before, and enhancing your ability to manage groups makes you a great leader.
8. Societal and Personal Impact:
To society, you resemble peace and unity. Emotions are uncontrollable, yet they are powerful enough to blind all of our other senses. With your ability to manage this powerful aspect of human life, you can build harmonious communities and lead others into success and improved well-being.
On a personal level, emotional intelligence allows you to build healthier, deeper relationships. These are necessary to provide support in tough times, yet “healthy” only applies if you’ve considered the aspects we’ve named before in this post. Besides relationships to others, emotional intelligence can also form a deep and powerful connection to yourself, leading to empowerment, resilience, and emotional balance. Emotional balance is key to navigating through life’s challenges.
Emotionality is often seen as a weakness. The unruly nature of emotions and feelings scares most people. As we humans always do with things we don’t understand, we lock them away, declaring them as weak and wrong.
Understand that your emotional nature is a strength related to a natural aspect of life that many are not willing to face. Using this ability opens an infinite number of doors for you, an infinite number of opportunities to pursue, and an infinite number of situations in which you are needed. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.