Practical advice to activate emotional intelligence
Each of us has different types of intelligences . The first to theorize this was Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner. Later, other researchers focused on different types of intelligence. The most "useful" is emotional intelligence, because it helps us to be better people and workers. It is known that a business division led by managers with extensive skills in the field is on average capable of achieving financial results at 20 percent higher, and that 90 percent of the difference between the results achieved by people in positions of Senior leadership is due to their emotional intelligence, as noted by studies by psychologists David McClelland and Daniel Goleman. In this article, I want to gather some ideas to increase emotional intelligence .
What is and what is emotional intelligence composed of?
Among the different types of intelligence mapped by scientists, there are two that help us define who we are and how others perceive us. These are:
- Intrapersonal intelligence: That is related to the awareness of our feelings, values and objectives.
- Interpersonal intelligence: Or the awareness of the feelings, emotions and motivations of others.
Together, these two types of intelligence determine the emotional intelligence of each of us, or the ability to understand the feelings and emotions of ourselves and others, and the ability to use our knowledge to guide our actions and thoughts.
How to cultivate emotional intelligence
According to Chade-Meng Tan, a former Google software engineer and now president of a nonprofit organization that combines meditation, neuroscience and technology, says meditation is at the center of practices to increase emotional intelligence. In the book Search Inside Yourself, written to spread the course of the same name within Google, and appreciated by the Dalai Lama among others, Meng identifies five areas in which you must “train” to improve Emotional Intelligence . The first three are relative to ourselves, and the other two to our relationship with others:
By working in these areas, we can increase the results we get in life and work.
- Self awareness
Being aware in the last instance means being honest with yourself. Knowing who we really are helps us see things more clearly, because we can understand how feelings and emotions affect our perception of the world and our actions.
How to be more aware
The main characteristic of self-awareness is the ability to not take things seriously. Laugh at yourself. So, to begin to increase our capacity, it is enough to welcome what comes to our conscience and smile at our concerns. That, after all, they are no more than part of everyday life. But this is not enough to achieve our goal. What we can do is ask other comments or give us feedback about us. Because others generally see us more objectively, and they certainly don't have our emotions that disturb them.
- Self-regulation
Wise is he who never responds or acts before he has reflected. To be a little wiser, therefore, it is necessary to free yourself from your own feelings and take time to reflect on what is happening to us, thus avoiding reacting and, instead, activating reasoned actions. How to do it? It is necessary to learn to control our emotions and our feelings and channel them in the right direction.
How to control your emotions
When we are able to regulate ourselves, we can finally make better decisions, we are more resilient and we are able to act while maintaining our integrity. For this reason, mindfulness is an excellent tool for self-regulation . It is nothing more than a form of meditation aimed at increasing our ability to pay attention (or focus on something) and meta-attention (be alert to be focused). This is easier to understand with an example: when you ride a bike, you focus on maintaining balance, and to do this, you adjust your body's position constantly in relation to the conditions of the asphalt, the route to follow, your movements and those of others, being careful not to lose concentration.
In particular, the meta-attention we train through meditation is that ability to realize whether or not we are focused on what we should focus on. The mere realization of being distracted puts us back in search of the concentration we had. Therefore, in meditation it is not important not to have thoughts, but to realize that they are there and invite them to return at another time. This allows us to maintain our focus on what we are doing and, consequently, obtain better results. Starting to meditate is so simple that never having tried is really a sin.
- Motivation
One of the characteristics of emotional intelligence is the intrinsic desire to achieve established objectives. This desire, motivation, is stronger the more we perceive that we are part of something bigger than us, both at work and in everyday life (which is why it is very useful to have a life plan). Somehow, this is something a little nerdy : I don't know if you've ever wanted to solve a problem, or be able to do something at all costs, for the simple desire to succeed.
How to always be motivated
A simple trick to be more motivated every day in what we do is track our results. It is the concept behind all the best applications to track our habits. Behind this idea, there is an interesting investigation carried out by Teresa Amabile, according to which the most motivating thing is to track progress in meaningful work. To put it into practice, it is enough to keep a list of things that are done every day in a place where we can see it, for example, in our bullet journal. The results I obtained with my parallel projects began to be significant just when I started using my journal systematically.
- Empathy
Empathy for emotional intelligence means more or less the ability to understand other people's emotions, combined with the ability to treat others based on them. It is very delicate because too little empathy and too much empathy can cause problems.
The best way to generate this empathy is to show kindness to others and make them feel understood. The trust of others is generated from this.
How to be more empathetic
To increase our empathy, we can use some specific meditations called Just Like Me and Loving Kindness . The first is that we imagine ourselves disguised as others and try to understand that they also want to be happy and feel loved, like us. The second is to have happy thoughts for others and wish them well. It is not necessary to meditate to put these things into practice, but doing so is a step towards the introduction of this habit in our day.
- Social skills
Said brutally, social skills define our ability to create and manage relationships with a specific purpose in mind . Not surprisingly, an investigation by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner illustrates how the most successful managers are the ones who can show compassion towards their employees and worry about their happiness at the company's results. This is because compassionate people have a greater capacity to influence others. Ultimately, social skills are nothing more than the ability to direct people in the direction we want and create relationships defined by our goals.
How to develop social skills
The best way to develop our social skills is to cultivate the other aspects of emotional intelligence defined by Meng, as suggested by the writer Erik Barker in an article on the subject. The people who can better manage relationships with others are those who are able to understand and control their own and others' emotions, generate empathy and be deeply motivated in what they do.
Author: Silvio Gulizia, vivereintenzionalmente.com
Translated by: Rosanna Iuorno writer / translator of the Great Family of hermandadblanca.org