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In recent years, the phrase “emotional intelligence” has managed to fill the teeth of many, and yet it is foolish to deny how great the impact of this set of qualities and skills on our success in life. A high EQ helps us manage ourselves and communicate with others easily and with pleasure, while a low EQ makes social interaction difficult. How to determine that this is your case too?
1. You often argue
With friends and acquaintances, with colleagues and family members, and with strangers too – well, what can you do if there are only debaters around or everyone is very often mistaken, simply leaving you no other choice?
You may really be “unlucky” with the environment, but it will still be useful for you to know that this is exactly how people with low emotional intelligence behave: since it is difficult for them to understand what others feel, they argue, usually without caring at all about the condition interlocutor.
2. You find it difficult to understand how others are feeling.
A person with a low EQ often does not really understand that the interlocutor is angry with him or upset by his words or behavior. It is really very difficult for him to recognize the emotional state of another, and there is no such habit, and the requirement to listen to the feelings of others causes nothing but irritation.
3. You think that everyone around you is too sensitive.
Do you think that everyone around you suddenly became “too tender” – it’s already impossible to joke about anything? Perhaps the fact is that in communication you really cross the line, release inappropriate and offensive jokes to others, and they get upset quite rightly. It is based on the inability to understand what the interlocutor has to do, what can hurt and upset him.
4. You find it difficult to take into account other people’s opinions.
In most cases, a person with a low EQ is absolutely sure that he is right, which means that listening to other points of view seems to him a waste of time. He passionately defends his position and does not even want to listen to anything; is often rather pessimistic and tends to criticize everyone and everything.
5. You blame others for your mistakes.
People with low emotional intelligence find it difficult to recognize not only the emotions of others, but also what they themselves feel and what their actions, committed thoughtlessly, under the influence of such emotions, can lead to. When something starts to go wrong in life, such a person usually begins to blame others, the situation itself, and the whole world for this. It seems that others simply do not understand him or her, do not want to meet halfway and do everything out of spite. Needless to say, this only complicates the life of both the person with low EQ and those around him?
WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THIS?
The good news is that you can and should work on improving your emotional intelligence. There are dozens of materials devoted to how to do this, for a start it is useful to know that, according to the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso model of emotional intelligence, EQ consists of:
- perception of emotions – own and other people; this includes the ability to identify emotions, including facial expressions, gestures and other non-verbal signals;
- use of emotions to stimulate thinking;
- understanding emotions – the ability to correctly determine the cause of their occurrence, trace the connection between thought and emotion, etc.;
- emotion management – their own and those around them.
Different methods and exercises are aimed at developing each of these abilities, but the main thing is to understand that your emotional intelligence really needs to be “pumped” and not give up, even if at first it will be very difficult to understand the “fine mental organization” of the people around you.