Our emotions influence most of our day-to-day decisions. Our thinking helps us make the decisions but our emotions or how we feel about those decisions push us to act on it. Emotional intelligence is simply the ability to make our emotions work for us instead of against us. It is also known as emotional quotient or EQ consists of 3 parts.
Emotional Awareness:
Which means being aware of our emotional state and being perceptive of how we feel in different situations. Along with the ability to notice and accept these emotions without judgement.
Emotional Application:
This is all about utilising our emotions for our own benefit. It’s the ability to think and feel independently and apply this knowledge to assist oneself.
Emotional Management:
It’s the ability to regulate or control our emotions. It’s all about learning to respond instead of reacting to a situation.
Emotionally Intelligent people live more fulfilling and happy lives than their counterparts. Developing emotional intelligence gives you the ability to forge meaningful relationships and trust in yourself to overcome adversities.
Developing emotional intelligence isn’t easy, it takes a lot of time, patience and perseverance, but it’s totally worth it.
Here are 5 questions that you must ask yourself to develop emotional intelligence:
- What are my emotional strengths and weaknesses?
- How do I describe the way I make decisions? What factors influence my decision making? And am I quick or do I take time to make these decisions?
- How do I rate my self-esteem and self-confidence? How do these affect my decision making?
- Am I open to other’s perspectives but independent of their judgement? Do I get swayed by their opinions?
- Do I let my current mood or past experience influence my thoughts and decision making?
These questions aren’t comprehensive, but it’s a good start. Asking these questions will help you become more aware of your emotions and your being as a whole. Take time to analyse. Once you become more aware and perceptive of your emotions you can train yourself to respond instead of reacting to everything that happens in your life.
How meditation and mindfulness affect our emotional intelligence?
While meditation alone isn’t enough to develop emotional intelligence, it sure does stimulate and strengthens your mind to be in control of emotionally charged situations.
According to Peerayuth Charoensukmongkol (2015) in his paper Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation on Emotional Intelligence, General Self-Efficacy, and Perceived Stress, mindfulness meditation helps manifest emotional intelligence in three major ways:
- It improves your ability to comprehend your own emotions.
- Helps you learn how to recognize the emotions of other people around you.
- Strengthens your ability to govern and control your emotions.
Understanding our emotions and developing a sense to control is not easy. But once we learn to use the abundant strength and limitless potential that being aware of our emotions gives us, then what we can achieve is limitless.
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