Emotional intelligence goes beyond academic intelligence and school performance. Furthermore, academic intelligence and emotional intelligence do not always have to go hand in hand. But how can we promote emotional intelligence? Is it an innate ability or can it be developed? To learn more about this intelligence, do not hesitate to continue reading this Psychology-Online article: how to develop emotional intelligence in 12 steps. In which you will find techniques, strategies and activities to develop emotional intelligence. You dare?
What is emotional intelligence
The psychologist who developed the term emotional intelligence was . Emotional intelligence is a concept that gives a new vision to the popular intelligence that has always been linked to academic performance, taking into account the cognitive aspects and intellectual aspects of people. Specifically, the definition of emotional intelligence refers to the management of all those aspects related to the emotional and social worldthat is, those aspects that people turn to to understand the day-to-day life.
Thus, from the perspective of the , it is understood that there are not only academic skills as the only important skills to achieve maximum work, personal, academic and social well-being. However, from emotional intelligence it is considered that there are other more important skills to achieve said well-being. Therefore, he plays a secondary role when talking about emotional intelligence.
In short, emotional intelligence is that capacity or ability that people have to be able to manage and/or understand one’s own emotions and those of others. Therefore, it turns out to be a capacity that allows us to improve in terms of quality of life and in terms of maintaining better social relationships. Seeing the benefits of emotional intelligence, you may wonder how to develop emotional intelligence. Below we will answer this question.
Emotional intelligence test
Do you want to know what your level of emotional intelligence is? In Psychology-Online you can find a free and online to be able evaluate the level of emotional intelligence. It is a test that contains 68 questions that must be answered by scoring them based on a numerical scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is “totally disagree” and 5 “totally agree.”
All of these questions are designed to evaluate five different categories: recognition of one’s own emotions, emotional self-regulation, self-esteem/self-motivation, recognition of other people’s emotions, and social relationships.
If your score is low, don’t worry, below you will find techniques, strategies and activities to develop emotional intelligence.
How to develop emotional intelligence in 12 steps
Emotional intelligence is not something innate, something you have or lack from birth. It is a skill that we all have, but it is not demonstrated if we do not train or practice to develop it. To develop emotional intelligence it is necessary to practice it, you can do emotional intelligence exercises on your own or you can attend emotional intelligence workshops or courses.
Below we show 12 steps that allow develop emotional intelligence:
- Know yourself: It can be useful to benefit from a self-awareness that allows you to know your own.
- Manage your own moods: With the help of self-knowledge we can more easily manage the different moods we go through. Knowing how to differentiate them makes it easier to recognize when we should self-regulate.
- Empathy: maintain more respectful interpersonal relationships, approaching others without judging them. Accept people as they are. All of this allows for greater fluidity in interpersonal relationships, a greater degree of maturity of people and greater well-being.
- Detect emotions: In the same way that we must know our own emotions, we must also know the emotions that are hidden behind the actions of other people.
- Don’t judge us: We should not judge ourselves for feeling a certain way or another. To do this, it will be useful to read this information about the .
- Non-verbal communication: It is important to take into account the message that is transmitted through the body, this also helps to understand the emotions and feelings that oneself and other people express.
- Control thoughts: In order to control our behavior, we must first learn to control our thoughts. Well, thoughts usually make us act in unexpected ways.
- Show emotions: identifying the emotions we feel at each moment, specifically, this can help us understand how we feel at certain moments.
- Diary: Keeping an emotions diary is a good technique to show, writing down, how we have felt during the day. It is not about explaining the activities that have been carried out, but rather how we have felt in each of those activities and in each social exchange.
- Because?: It is important to investigate the reason for each action or reaction, both your own and that of others. On many occasions, we focus only on the reaction and tend to judge the reaction as being excessive, but why did a person react like that? What is behind that situation that makes it act in a certain way? It is a good way to understand people and not judge them for their actions.
- Assertiveness: Once we are able to identify our emotions and feelings, it would be great to be able to express them assertively, understanding assertiveness as that ability that allows us to act without causing negative or adverse effects. In the following article you will find.
- Motivation: Motivation and optimism are essential to achieve our goals. If we want to train and develop our emotional intelligence, it is essential to enhance our motivation.
If you want to delve deeper into the topic of emotional intelligence, here you can purchase Daniel Goleman’s essay, which offers a broad approach to human intelligence.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to How to develop emotional intelligencewe recommend that you enter our category.
Bibliography
Extremera, N., and Fernández, P. (2004). The role of emotional intelligence in students: empirical evidence. Electronic Journal of Educational Research, 6(2).