Emotional Intelligence

In fact many advertising campaigns and sales pitches are built heavily upon the emotive impulse factor that is best summed up by this phrase “Sell the sizzle not the sausage”.

With improved emotional intelligence we are able to stay more focused and attuned to the task at hand which in turn allows us to better manage stress and control impulsiveness in a more orderly self-managed way. We need to be in touch with our emotions in order to be able to use them as a guide to the best overall decision to a problem rather than being used and overtaken by our emotions or even totally ignoring them and trying to make decisions purely on the intellectual level.

Either way we will ultimately fail since we are cutting ourselves short and not using every tool at our disposal to apply to solving a problem or managing an issue.

Relationships and Being Yourself

Improving our emotional intelligence helps to promote our individual ability to analyze and understand relationships between the entities surrounding us including objects and living things. In many situations the ability for individual members of a group to be able to “connect” with other members of that group and “outsiders” alike is crucial to the ultimate fate of that individual, group and even to entities external to the immediate sphere of influence of that individual or group.

Einstein and others before him introduced us to the concept of relativity. Depending upon the relative aspect of an observer the same events or outcomes of those events may be viewed differently. In order to function collectively we need to be able to connect with others and maintain strong relationships built on mutual trust and respect.

In this way you will have people you can rely on and who in turn can rely on you. Only then can you really be yourself; which means that once all pretenses are dropped you will have more time and energy to devote to what is really important to you and those with you. Contentment will then be attainable.

Intuition

Emotional intelligence will help you to develop that “gut feeling” to the extent where you will know when you should and when you should not follow it. The importance of being aware of and being able to knowingly and correctly interpret the signals from your body in order to use them as a “guide” will help you to overcome situations when confronted with them the first time. After all you will not have any direct experience to draw upon for decision making with regards to new experiences and circumstances. This is a part of what many people mean by “living life to the fullest”.

Plasticity

Plasticity of thought and emotion involves considerable creativity and flexibility as well as lateral or 4 dimensional thinking. This is what gives us the ability to generate a multitude of possible and probable alternatives and consider all of the options from all aspects and perspectives. Not shutting down in the face of a challenge, but opening up to allow new information and insights in.

Without this ability Einstein would never have formulated either the Theory of General Relativity or that of Special Relativity. Galileo would still think the Earth was the center of the universe. Isaac Newton could never have created the new mathematical discipline of calculus to help explain the laws of motion and Stephen Hawking would have given in to overwhelming despair.

These are but a few of the examples of the benefits of plasticity at work.

Balance

I will touch upon one more element of emotional intelligence and that is the importance of balance. We only function at our best when the “all of us” is working smoothly. This means the physical, the mental, the emotional, the social and the spiritual. After all; we humans are social animals. One within and one without.

We all need a life that includes work, relationships and regular periods of rest, renewal and relaxation. Perhaps Zen or yoga or something else but there must be that something else and the first step is in realizing that emotional intelligence and its related competencies can be learned, and can be increased over your lifetime to your advantage and that of others.

Remember that “no man is an island unto himself”.