According to Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), Emotional intelligence (EI) is “a learned ability to perceive, understand and express our feelings accurately, and to control our emotions so that they work for us, not against us”. EI can be developed throughout our lives, by tuning into our senses, getting in touch with our feelings, and knowing our goals.
“75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust” (The Centre for Creative Leadership).
Developing EI means accessing all the resources we have available, either in our left brain (logic, reason, maths, analysis) or right brain (visual imagery, creativity, dreams, symbols and emotions). So how can we develop our EI?
Managing emotions
Managing our emotions effectively means controlling unproductive behaviour that doesn’t get us anywhere. By understanding the link between our interpretation of an event and our responses to it, we can choose an alternative way to feel. This is key to EI capability: we can choose how we see a situation. Our beliefs, values, drivers and the rules we live by create our map of reality; change the map, and we change how we see, hear, feel and behave in the world.
People with high EI master their emotions because they understand them and use extensive vocabulary to describe them. Instead of describing themselves as simply feeling “bad”, emotionally intelligent people may feel “nervous”, “irritable”, “anxious” “or frustrated”. The more specific our word choice, the better insight we have into exactly how we are feeling, what caused it, and what we should do about it.
Self-motivation
Being self-motivated means pursuing our goals with commitment, passion, energy and persistence. In order to achieve high levels of motivation, overcome setbacks and perform at our best, we need to be able to manage our own internal states, harness our emotions and channel them into a direction that enables us to achieve our objectives.
One way to do this is to adopt positive self-talk and quash negative self-talk: the more our negative thoughts run through our mind, the more power we give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that — thoughts, not facts. Write down affirmation statements (always positive and not negative), e.g.:
I am beautiful, talented, intelligent and creative.
I am growing cleverer, happier and fitter each day.
I have much to offer and others recognise this.
I have a lovely sense of humour that others appreciate very much.
Identify what we need to have around us to feel motivated. To create an environment that is conducive to high EI, our environment should be healthy, clean, well-lit, organised (clear your desk, clear your mind), with helpful sounds, with motivators we can surround ourselves with (pictures, people, phrases).
To become relentlessly positive, let’s focus our energy on what we can control, i.e. our attention and our effort. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists. They also perform better at work.