Learning Emotional Intelligence
Hi there!
Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.
I’m so glad you’re here.
This week, we are going to discuss: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE! Yay!
Last week, we discussed how emotions work. Today, we are going to discuss how to utilize our understanding of emotion to generate emotional intelligence.
First, let’s start with a definition:
According to Drs. Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, who first popularized the idea of emotional intelligence in 1990, emotional intelligence is defined as, “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”
In therapy, when I teach clients about emotional intelligence, here’s what I tell them:
Being emotionally intelligent means that you are able to identify what you are feeling so that you can figure out what you need.
Contrary to popular belief, being emotionally intelligent has very little to do with simply feeling one’s emotions deeply. Being a sensitive or intuitive person does not make you emotionally intelligent. Rather, emotional intelligence requires having the capacity to accurately label and decode one’s emotional signals (sometimes harder than it seems, see last week’s post as an example) in order to guide effective decision-making.
Generally speaking, here’s a breakdown of how emotionally intelligent people operate:
1) They notice their emotion(s)
2) They name their emotion(s) accurately
3) They can identify what prompts their emotion(s)… because they know emotions always have a cause
4) They seek to regulate themselves by identifying what they need (as opposed to what they want)
5) They consistently meet their need(s) in a steady and rational way
Essentially, emotional intelligence is about more than just knowing what you feel. Instead, it requires the use of logic and reason to facilitate self-soothing and problem-solving in order to make useful decisions.
Remember: On their own, emotions supply insufficient evidence for mature and effective conduct. They are merely signals that help us formulate an understanding of what’s happening in our environment. To that end, emotions are more like informants, and less like strategists.
Therefore, being emotionally intelligent requires taking the information that our emotions provide us and superimposing upon that a curiosity to learn even more. Emotional intelligence means feeling your emotions without getting lost in them—which generates a unique capacity to sit in discomfort long enough to respond to any situation skillfully.
In essence, we become effective decision-makers once we can both respect and feel our emotions, but also think through them, too.
In summation, emotional intelligence requires combining emotional awareness with logical thinking in order to achieve a balanced mental state. In therapy, we call this balanced mental state wisdom. Next week, we will talk even more about cultivating emotional intelligence, as we explore further what it means to be wise.