To think with your heart: How and why to develop emotional intelligence
Modern culture is focused on productivity. For many active people, this translates not only into a constant nervous tension, but also the desire to rationalize everything and everyone to the detriment of their emotions. But it is a comfortable emotional state that allows us to achieve great success and helps to move further, and rational decisions do not always coincide with what we want "deep down." The concept of emotional intelligence, which will help you to better understand yourself and your impulses, can come to the rescue. We explain what it is and what it is for.
What is the difference between feelings and emotions?
Both feelings and emotions affect our psychological state, but they differ significantly. Feeling refers to a conscious emotional experience (a flash of anger, for example). Emotions arise against the will of a person, give rise to specific feelings and are often too complex to be aware of. At the same time, they can and should be analyzed in order to be able to separate themselves from their negative experiences or moods and maintain a pleasant emotional background. True, the sensual side of life can be so confusing that it can take a long time to become aware of volumetric emotions: sometimes it becomes possible to recognize falling in love with a best friend over the spectrum of constantly flashing positive and negative feelings with the help of a therapist.
The matter is complicated by the fact that there is still no single list of emotions. In 1972, psychologist Paul Ekman compiled a list of six basic emotions, which included anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness, and fear. Later Ekman added embarrassment, passion, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction and excitement. Robert Plutchik proposed another classification of emotions, the so-called wheel. In his opinion, there are 8 main emotional spaces that can intersect and generate new emotions. For example, faded amazement and horror can cause trepidation, and annoyance and boredom - result in contempt.
Where does the concept of emotional intelligence come from?
The concept of emotional intelligence is relatively new, before such a phrase was perceived as an oxymoron. He was seriously talked about it for the first time in 1990 after an article of the same name by Peter Salove and John Mayer for the magazine Imagination, Cognition, and Personality. They defined it as the ability to recognize one’s own and other people's emotions and feelings, to distinguish between them and to use this information for further reflections and actions. Salové and Meier noted that they consider emotional intelligence to be a subsystem of already well-known social intelligence, which allows "to understand people and control them."
Naomi Wolf, Daniel Goleman, a writer, a psychologist, and the author’s unfolding Myth of Beauty myth, went on to throw firewood into the fire and continue to throw it: it was after his best-selling book about emotional intelligence that a wide range of readers learned. Goleman managed to find the right intonation for talking with a huge audience and captivate her is not the easiest topic. True, the writer not only chewed on the works of his predecessors, but also offered his own interpretation: in his opinion, emotional intelligence does not consist of four spheres, as Saloway and Mayer suggested, but of five.
What does it consist of?
In the classical model, emotional intelligence has four components. Self-awareness - the ability to recognize your emotions and feelings; self control - the ability to control them; public awareness allows you to understand the emotional processes taking place in society; relationship management affecting both interpersonal and group. Goleman agrees with the first two positions, but in his own way he combines and breaks the rest: in addition to self-awareness and self-control, his model contains intrinsic motivation, empathy and social skills. On the whole, Goleman’s classification looks simplified, but it is extremely practical and does not cause rejection even among those who come across the topic for the first time.
Is it true that emotional intelligence is more important than IQ?
In recent decades, the mind has been evaluated only on the basis of IQ. Those who were “lucky” to get a high rate were forecasted a great future, and people with low were thrown in new ways to pump their intellectual abilities. Microsoft, for example, used to select candidates by how quickly they could solve logical problems.
The fact that, in addition to intelligence, there are other equally important components of the mind (intelligences in the English-language literature), Harvard professor Howard Gardner spoke. He argues that the mind should be judged not by IQ or another single indicator, but by seven. These are the tendency to linguistics, logical-mathematical thinking (that is so much appreciated at school to the detriment of the rest) and understanding of one's own body, musical abilities, spatial thinking and, finally, the ability to get along well with other people and yourself. Later, Gardner added to them the "naturalist mind" (Neville Dolgopups, hello) and also admitted that competences in existential and moral issues can also be reasonably useful categories in the analysis of personality.
So the statement made in the title of the sensational book of Goleman that emotional intelligence may be more important than IQ is true (for some people in some circumstances), but more of a marketing ploy: emotions, unlike intelligence, are still a fresh topic on which effectively speculate.
Why develop emotional intelligence?
Surely you have heard about how easy it is for someone to move up the career ladder. Or how well someone can communicate with their own children. The heroes of these situations almost certainly have highly developed emotional intelligence, which allows them not only to realize their goals more clearly (and therefore reach them faster), but also successfully build communication with people at different levels - at some point in development this becomes a necessary step. in any field.
If productivity does not seem so attractive to you, think about the peace with which you can perceive not the most praiseworthy of your own and other people's actions and emotions - developed emotional intelligence allows it. It does not threaten anyone to become an unfeeling chump - on the contrary, without unnecessary reflections, time is freed up in order to enjoy the pleasant manifestations of life and minimize unpleasant (and draw all the necessary conclusions from them). Note that independent work with your emotions does not replace medical care, so if you suspect that you have urgent or serious psychological problems, you should not solve them yourself.
How to do it?
Curious, you can first get a test for the definition of emotional intelligence. At the end of this questionnaire, for example, will give a very soft assessment of your emotional skill, which can be taken as a starting point. In addition, tests of this kind help us to recognize ourselves in the proposed situations (“being in a group of friends, can you always understand how each of them feels?”) And independently analyze your abilities. In general, there are many evaluation systems (SASQ, MSCEIT, ECI, for example), but in order to understand them, it takes either really a lot of free time or specialist help.
In any case, it is not unhelpful to read the articles of Mayer with Salovei and the work of Goleman. The first two will give an academic look, useful for general development, and Goleman's books can be addressed for more vital information. He gives it enough to get acquainted with the topic, and forces the reader to perform simple but demonstrative exercises like keeping a diary of emotions. If there is no time for articles and books, you can use proven methods for self-development, there is a good example here. It is important to remember that the development of emotional intelligence, like any other restructuring, takes time and impact, so you should not worry if you don’t have a personal life for a month or you don’t fly up the career ladder (but surely even in this short time small changes in relationships with people and themselves will be noticeable).
Photo: 1, 2, 3 via Shutterstock