Enhancing Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the foundation of all human behaviour. It has the power to transform relationships, belief and value systems and therefore lives. We see stress and conflict at almost all areas of our lives whether it is within family, at the workplace or with friends, relatives, neighbours and even strangers. The inner conflict, that is conflict with myself, cognitive dissonance, the battle within the metamorphic mind and heart certainly top the chart. Lack of emotional intelligence hampers our life in almost all domains like relationships, career, finances and health. Being emotionally intelligent empowers us to manage both success and failure in life and therefore must be second nature to all.?

Empathy – A person who is not listening to his noisy all the time has enough time, bandwidth and space for understanding others and listen to others, something which is a most deficient habit in people today. Empathy also gets enhanced by cautious and aware extrospection on whatever is happening around. One reason for inter personal conflict is that people just want to empty their mind and not listen to the other person empathetically. Being empathetic helps in

??????????????????????????????????·?????????building strong relationships

??????????????????????????????????·?????????socialising well

??????????????????????????????????·?????????enabling the emotional ability to listen and not just hear

??????????????????????????????????·?????????managing conflict

Empathy is the corner stone of excellent interpersonal skills in society. Empathy enables us to look at things from the other person’s vantage point. When we see things from ‘there and not here’, there is a paradigm shift in the way we perceive the situation.

Compassion – Compassion is the lack of negativity against self and others. It is as natural as gravity. You dint need to be a physicist for gravity to apply to you with the help of formulae. When the clouds of negativity disperse, compassion shines naturally. Compassion is the most important ingredient to be emotionally intelligent.

Self aware – It is suggested to us to count until ten when you get angry and your anger will diffuse. But we seldom remember to count in that moment and anger gets expressed as it had to. We need to cultivate the awareness level in us to be able to see the emotions at the moment they arise and manipulate them in our favour. In fact, high EI also helps strengthen and develop the empathy neurons eventually increasing awareness and so the equation works both ways.

Clarity of mind – Lack of clarity of mind among people is prevalent in such large numbers that it is almost a pandemic for the human society. Being led by a scarcity mindset in a greed driven society and torn between so many choices on how to live a successful life, one is not able to decide on what is right or wrong in a given situation. This leads to stress and an inappropriate emotional expression many times. Being driven by a high self-esteem and abundance mindset, one is clear about the priorities in life and is able to control and manage emotional outlet in various sitiations.

Meditation – Meditation has been known to heighten awareness levels of emotions and as per plenty of research. Research also says meditators see a increased level of empathy and stress reduction. Reduced stress brings clarity to the mind and moves a person out of self centeredness thereby increasing self awareness and empathy. Therefore meditation is a very good tool to enhance emotional intelligence.

Writing – A tool less talked about but extremely effective, mapping your mind on a piece of paper through writing helps bring lot of clarity into an otherwise confused mind about the way we look at life and analyse it. While typing is also good, neuroscience says taking a pen or pencil and writing has better results.?