Psychology Essay: Emotional Intelligence.

How do you see emotional intelligence connected to success? In what ways are you excelling in this area? In what ways can you improve?

Emotional intelligence means mastering these five components:

• Self-awareness, or knowing your emotions.
• Self-motivation.
• Self-regulation, such as managing your own emotions and behaviors.
• Empathy, which is recognizing and understanding the emotions of others.
• Social skills.

People who exhibit a high degree of emotional intelligence tend to avoid negative and dramatic relationships and maintain their own emotional equilibrium.

Personally, as I equate success with happiness, I see the abilities of perceiving emotions, using emotions to facilitate thought, understanding emotions and managing emotions as having a direct bearing on success in life. It recognizes the unique humanity of all people, and fosters compassion for others - so acquiring emotional intelligence would benefit those around us.

We would also be benefiting ourselves, too. Having a greater understanding of and being able to manage one’s own self, emotions, goals, intentions, and behaviors would reduce much needless stress and conflict, improve relationships and understanding, and result in increased productivity.

In what ways do I see myself excelling? I think I'm fairly good with self-awareness; I'm pretty honest and open with myself about my flaws and things that I need to work on - some days, more than is considered healthy, even; but I've been improving. I'm pretty good at feeling empathy, too. I know how to put myself into another person's shoes, and how to look through another person's eyes before coming to any conclusions.

In what ways can I improve? Self-regulation. Being aware of where I need to make improvement, and handling it all perfectly in a stressful moment, are two very different things. It's been a continuous work in progress, especially in the past two years, I would say - and as far as I can see, it's something that I will be struggling with for the rest of my life. I've made a habit since I was about nineteen of saying how I feel 'as is' [which is a 360° turn from how I was as a teenager, when I allowed myself to be trampled on] - I see now, that while it's a very different approach, it is just as equally ineffective. Finding the happy medium in-between the two extremes is what I'm striving for now, and the more that I learn about human behavior, and the more I understand about myself and about people around me, the little bit closer I feel to finding that.