On Emotional Intelligence

Can it be too much sometimes?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is about identifying and regulating one’s emotions and being in tune with the feelings of others. Emotional intelligence harbors a few essential elements: the ability to determine one’s own emotions and harness them into one’s thinking and the capacity to recognize other people’s emotions and integrate them within one’s behavior to inform the decision-making process in particular situations.

We can describe four particular pillars surrounding emotional intelligence in the below quadrant.

• Self-awareness: recognizing the different moods and drives and their impact on us and others
• Social awareness: understanding the emotional makeup of others and treating them (with empathy) based on their emotional reactions
• Self-management: controlling disruptive impulses and maladaptive moods, stopping judgment from flaring, thinking before acting
• Social skills: managing relationships and building network and rapport with others

The compelling insight lies in the fact that there is a solid cross combination between two aspects: self vs. social, on the one hand, awareness vs. management on the other; meaning emotional intelligence is equally about the self and others in order to better control both the dynamics of the personal and the social affinities.

It is not always the most intelligent people or those with the highest IQ who succeed the most in life or are the most fulfilled. We may know people who used to be academically brilliant and excellent yet are socially incompetent or unsuccessful in their relationships or when working with other people. Intellectual ability is not enough on its own to help us achieve the most in our lives. It is vital in our early stages of development, yet the more we grow, the more versatile the skills we need to evolve.

How can emotional intelligence help us in our daily lives?
Emotional intelligence gives us the ability to accept criticism and be responsible for our actions, move past the consequence of one mistake and the guilt-tripping phase that follows, share our feelings with others, listen to other people without judgment, have empathy for them and not just look at their behavior from the outside but also understand that their intentions and inner thoughts matter just like ours.

The inability to look past other people’s actions relates to the bias blind spot deeply rooted in almost everyone, including emotionally intelligent people. We recognize the impact of cognitive biases on the judgment of others, but we fail to see the effect of biases on our own judgments. We would claim for instance that commercial and political advertisements do not impact us, yet they influence everybody else. We are immune to their hex, whereas others aren’t.

We know how to look inwards. We are aware of our inner world of introspections, yet when other people behave in a certain way, however understanding we may be of their behavior, we don’t go deep into their world of thoughts to assess better. We remain around the shell of refraining ourselves from judging without proper understanding, protected by the umbrella of emotional intelligence. Yet we can do better in emotional intelligence.

But how better can we be without losing the spice of being ourselves as well? A heightened level of self-awareness can sometimes backfire. Often, hyperaware people are chimerical and may find their heads in the clouds, focused on every emotion and feeling to the point of obsession without being conscious of that stage itself. They lose themselves in overidentifying with their emotions.

Managing oneself to the point of inhibition can also sometimes be boring. We need a scarcely unfiltered version of ourselves that other people can relate to; we need to be vulnerable and whimsical without weighing every word and without necessarily reaching the point of destructive impulsivity. This allows us to have our unique flavor and touch around people.

Living in the present moment and being emotionally intelligent is key to living truthful lives and having candid conversations with others. We need to be sincere with ourselves and live up to our best version, and that could mean sometimes slipping a quirky comment that could be a bit out of line, but that could also be perceived as fun and humorous by others. It can also mean taking risks in saying unpopular opinions because we believe in them, and we are not afraid of voicing them. Emotionally intelligent people need not to lose themselves in becoming a robotic predictable version of an ideal human being, and should allow themselves to be slightly unrestrained and spontaneous, to be simply human.