Imagine this: You have an argument or a disagreement with someone and you say some things you don’t mean that you’ll eventually come to regret later. Afterwards, you ruminate on what you said and wish you can take it all back, that you had better control over your emotions. That’s where emotional intelligence comes into play.
What is it?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to regulate and understand your emotions and that of others’. Meaning when you are angry, you have the skills and knowledge to reflect on your anger and try to understand the root of it. Sometimes, our triggers are actually a reflection of a past hurt or an injustice we believe was done to us.
Being emotionally intelligent is important for various reasons. One such reason is the ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships. With emotional intelligence, we are able to review our emotions in a healthy way, understand the perspectives of others, develop empathy and resolve conflicts through effective communication.
Benefits
Being emotionally intelligent can encourage you to create and maintain boundaries. It helps to communicate clearly your limits: the lines that should not be crossed to protect your mental and emotional stability. Boundaries sound like telling your friend that you currently cannot be their emotional support. Not because you don’t care, but because you also aren’t in a good place emotionally. Or discussing with your partner to participate in doing house chores. Creating boundaries is not only beneficial for you, but also helps to maintain healthy relationships. It gives people the ground to show respect for each other through honoring boundaries.
How to start
To begin practicing being emotionally intelligent, you can begin by asking yourself how you are feeling. We sometimes get a little lost in feeling our emotions that we forget to pinpoint exactly what it is we’re feeling. When you’re able to identify the particular emotion, you can then ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. What exactly is the cause of it? Was it a statement the other person made? Or was it the emotion evoked by the statement? Perhaps it made you feel small and weak, or stupid.
Another question you should then proceed to ask yourself is if that was the original intentions of the person when they made the statement. We can sometimes be the greatest causes of our own suffering through assumptions. Maybe previously, you had heard that statement from someone else and it had malicious intentions. Because of this, you think everyone who makes a similar remark has malicious intentions. You are then inadvertently projecting your fears and hurt onto this new person.
If you think you need help in this area, take a few simple steps to probe your inner thoughts and actions a bit more. This will be a good start to understanding your emotions and hopefully becoming emotionally intelligent.