How to be Intelligent Emotionally!

You need to know about EI if you are facing these in your life:

- Do you find it difficult to connect to people around you?

- Do you get irritated on other’s behaviour?

- Do you feel very low and isolated in life?

- Do you think you are always misunderstood?

The emotions and their expression makes us vulnerable to many situations like these. The answer to handing is learn EI.

Formally,

“ EI involves the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others” .

Emotions come from Hormones. Mood swings happen due to imbalance of chemicals.

Emotion Intelligence is not about removing emotions, its not about controlling emotions, its not about suppressing emotions. EI is about expressing emotions. It is not shouting or crying or screaming or throwing somethings at someone in anger. It is about TALKING about your emotions. We should learn to find the trigger of emotion. We should learn to RESPOND in place of REACTING.

There are four core EI skills:

I. Self-awareness

II. Self-management

III. Social awareness

IV. Relationship management

Understanding these makes us emotionally intelligent and we can handle our and other’s emotions in a better way.

I. Self-awareness: Emotional awareness follows emotional intelligence. It gives us the ability to handle situations with people at work or at home wisely without anyone telling us to control. For example, one cannot start yelling at office colleagues when one has an argument with wife at home.

But does being non expressive is the solution? No. The solution is to spend time with loved ones and friends or people who understand you well. One needs to help oneself to help others. For helping oneself, one needs to identify one’s emotions first. People with higher EI form and maintain better inter-personal relationships to ‘fit in’ to different groups.

One should be aware of emotional literacy. There are basic 7 emotions: Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust, Surprise and Love. Emotionally aware people handle other people in better ways. This can expand or shrink circle of influence and circle of concern. Circle of concern indicates how much a person is concerned about one’s own well-being. The circle of influence increases when we show care for others. Dominating and considering only our own benefits affects circle of influence in a negative way.

II. Self-management:

Many good techniques for self- management are:

· Increase positive SELF-TALK: Be a FRIEND of Yourself

· Problem solving: Scratch your mind in solving some problems so that your mind has something useful to do

· Having confidence in one’s ability and taking initiatives: Do something for HELPING others

· Repeating activities which ones feels being good at : Be in LOVE with your HOBBIES

· Visualization for good future and working for it: Make a PLAN and WORK towards it

· Getting feedback for the work and improving: Be in contact with people who are better than you

· Lifelong learning: Keep learning new things Small or Big

· Be RESILIENT: Have patience and build stamina or working for goals requiring precision

· Improve communication skills: Keep joining workshops for learning new things to communicate

· Be FLEXIBLE when faced with different challenges: Accept less than expected HAPPILY and Move ahead; Remembering that tough things take time

· ADAPT and LEARN to choose between FLIGHT and FIGHT modes when dealing with people with different temperament. Flight says ‘Go away from the situation’ while fight mode is obvious, but can invite further complexities.

III. Social awareness: One needs to learn how to ‘Tune in’ with different people when learning relationship management.

Under tuning occurs when one has lack of empathy and is isolated or unaware of other’s feelings.

Over tuning occurs when one is able to read other’s mind and act based on predictions. This may lead to difficult relations in many situations.

Tuning in is the best option where one needs to connect with others, listen them carefully, show EMPATHY and avoid any mis-communication. Increase social awareness which involves being EMPATHETIC, being COMFORTABLE, LISTENING and UNDERSTANDING the other people’s point of view.

IV. Relationship management: One cannot work alone. Key practices for dealing with inter-personal relationships in a better way are:

· Be BUSY with your OWN WORK

· Don’t react to odd situations, Be NORMAL

· Be with the FLOW: Work constantly

· Divide oneself with work and SURROUNDINGS

· DON’T have BLIND TRUST on anyone

· Carefully HAVE CONFIDENCE and BELIEF IN OTHERS

· Have HEALTHY ATTITUDES about working with others: While recognizing that we can be successful of our own, working with others will be better.

· Have a BALANCED OUTLOOK by keeping a positive attitude but also being realistic and objective about the likelihood of succeeding and turning out the way we want.

Building trust and having a balanced outlook, we can work well with your social complexities o college, lead and motivate students and excel in your career.

In a nut shell, few TIPS for Managing your emotions:

1. Identify your emotions (How AM I FEELING?)

2. Take responsibility of your emotion (Don’t BLAME ANYONE)

3. Be emotionally aware: If you feel disrespected, You need to feel Respected; If you feel unloved, You need to feel Loved; If you feel disobeyed, you need to feel Obeyed.

4. Increase areas of acceptance: Increase your level of acceptance, Be Tolerant, Be Patient, Be understanding, Be predictable

5. Lower your Expectations

6. Help others by accepting their feelings and be in their SHOES

7. Be a creator of Positive Environment: Don’t argue; Don’t lose your cool; Don’t look for Revenge; Praise and be grateful for good things/ behaviour