Emotional intelligence

Does ‘emotional intelligence’ sound like a contracted phenomenon to give consultants reason for getting us confused? Likely. But it is also a necessary part of being successful in any project, a fact often ignored. Those who find it get what they want much more easily. It is a useful vehicle to success that is often unused -though so useful we should have been used to it. Apparently its discussion is a relatively recent addition to the learning circuit.

The concept is about being intelligent in the expression of emotions. Anger, fear, anxiety, joy, excitement, passion, responsiveness. Handling them intelligently because mastering your emotion is the ultimate mastery of self. It is the key to excellence in the use of skill. The fuel that drives endurance, perseverance and focus. Why do I fear? Why do I get anxious, irritated etc. What are my triggers? Best still, how do I utilize knowledge of my inner make-up for good rather than allowing it to derail my progress?

I recommend that you pay serious attention to becoming emotionally aware and intelligent. When you practise this awareness in relation to how you relate to others, it is called empathy. That is what employers want, customers require, and friends and families count on. Practising it with self helps us not to make wrong moves.

Emotional intelligence helps us to recognize the deep veins of fear, sometimes laid in childhood or teenage, when we are most vulnerable. These veins can send arrows of blood into our consciousness and activate anger against people we barely know just because they remind us of some earlier bad experience we had. They are veins that jaundice our responses before they are intelligently framed.

Then there are passions ignited by dreams compelled into dormancy by need and want. I’m beginning to realize that emotional distortions affect the quality of self much much more than we are consciously aware of. Were we to wake up to this, perhaps the tentacles of emotional tyranny will not catch us sleeping, weaken us and derail potentially precious opportunities. We will better know how to behave, what to count, and what not to count at all times. We will get stronger. The outcome of emotional intelligence is living a step ahead of those who do not note the intangible as much.