Kindness, charity, generosity, caring, and genuine support are all wonderful qualities to foster. But you can’t fully develop them without being able to empathize with other people. It’s only by putting yourself in their shoes, seeing their perspective, that you can authentically connect with them and understand their goals, issues, and aspirations. Once you do that, you often find that you have plenty in common, and there’s lots of room to either collaborate or compromise.
Emotional intelligence, also known as EQ and EI, is your ability to recognize, interpret, and regulate your emotions. It also denotes your ability to understand the emotions of other people. A high EQ allows you to improve your personal life, as well as all the varied relationships in your life.
EQ is also linked to better academic achievements, better decision-making abilities, and more success in life. What’s more, it is also very helpful when navigating conflicts, whether at work or elsewhere.
Even though some people are born with a natural inclination toward empathy and emotional intelligence, the good news is that these are all learnable skills. And they’re vital in most parts of your life, not just in maintaining healthy relationships.
According to Verywell Mind, based on the findings of psychologist Daniel Goleman, there are 5 key skills that contribute to a person’s emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Social skills
- Empathy
- Motivation
The first crucial EQ-related skill, self-awareness, is the ability to recognize and understand your emotions. A core part of this is being able to understand how your emotions, moods, and actions affect everyone around you. Essentially, you learn to monitor and recognize your emotional reactions, and find the link between how you feel and how you act.
Broadly speaking, individuals who are self-aware know their strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, learn from their interactions with other people, and are open to new information. Not only that, but they also tend to have a good sense of humor, have confidence in their abilities, and understand how others around them perceive them.
However, being aware of your feelings isn’t enough. You also need to know how to regulate and manage them.
This does not mean repressing or ignoring your emotions. But it does require you to express them appropriately, and at the right time. It’s all about being conscientious, flexible, and adapting to change to defuse tension instead of amplifying it.
In terms of social skills, highly emotionally intelligent individuals have great active listening, verbal, and nonverbal skills. They’re also persuasive and can build meaningful relationships at work and in their personal lives.
As for empathy, you need to be able to recognize the shifts in other people’s emotional states, as well as the reasons behind them.
And the final EQ-related skill, motivation, means that you are action-oriented, take initiative, and you’re able to pursue and fulfil your inner goals and needs instead of relying merely on external rewards. So, you rely on intrinsic motivation, instead of just being moved by money, fame, and recognition.
