Being able to manage and understand your own emotions is a vital skill that will help you to navigate not only your own self but also to be better understanding of others and their emotions. One’s emotional intelligence consists of a few different characteristics, being self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills. This doesn’t mean you need to have a perfect understanding of each of these topics in order to be emotionally intelligent, but at least a basic understanding can help you. I believe that emotional intelligence is an important attribute that many people lack, and in reading this article I hope that you can gain some perspective as to why our emotional state is important to understand.
Self-Awareness
Being self-aware of the way we’re feeling is important, but also being aware of what our needs are at that moment, and how to come up with a solution is important as well. Some ways to become more self-aware of the way you’re feeling could be to keep notes on how you feel throughout the day, or more specifically, when you notice you’re feeling especially happy, sad, or stressed out. Being able to see those patterns of why you may be feeling a certain way could help you overcome stressful or anxious feelings in the future, or even just offer some explanation as to why you might be feeling a certain way. It can also offer a way to directly cope with those feelings.
Self-Regulation
My take on self-regulation has to do with our ability to deal with our feelings and emotions. This also has to do with preserving our emotions, knowing when to say no and when to say yes, as well as putting yourself first in situations. Self-regulation also includes tasks you can do to keep yourself calm in stressful situations, like breathing tactics or mantras you can repeat to yourself. Being self-regulated in terms of our emotions allows us to develop a better understanding of how to deal with them and being regulated with our own emotions can even help in situations dealing with other people’s emotions.
Empathy
This one’s self-explanatory, but empathy is a key component of emotional intelligence because we need to be able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes in order to have emotional intelligence at all. I believe that empathy is arguably the most important aspect of having emotional intelligence because it requires you to see things from another point of view, and I don’t think you can claim to be emotionally intelligent if you lack this quality. It doesn’t mean you need to be the most empathic person in the room, but at least having basic empathy for others is crucial, even just to be a decent person. Don’t underestimate your ability to help others, even the simplest acts could change the course of someone’s day.
Social Skills
Developing good social skills is another important aspect of emotional intelligence, again going back to the empathy part, so you can better understand others and how they are feeling. Social skills allow you to pick up on cues you might see from others, as well as being able to communicate how you’re feeling to others. If you can’t communicate the way you’re feeling to your friends and family, it’s time to learn, no matter how awkward it may be. Communication is so important and being able to take a moment and gather yourself to explain how a situation made you feel to your friends could change the course of your evening with them. Never assume that your feelings don’t matter, they do matter, but sometimes your friends might not pick up on the fact that you’re upset if you don’t say anything about it.
Emotional intelligence is a skill I believe everyone should be well versed with; we need to be emotionally intelligent for our own sake, and in such a social world, it could do a lot of good for others when you’re emotionally intelligent. Offer what you can to those who are struggling and make sure to always have empathy for others!