Emotions help us learn new things, understand other people, and push us to action.
Are emotions holding us back? Perhaps it is better to be insensitive, logically minded beings?
Emotions are vital - they allow you to live a full life and learn from your own experience.
Example. The brain not only accumulates facts, but also remembers feelings. Touching a hot stove will hurt. In the future, such an idea will revive a sense of pain in memory. So emotions will not allow to make the same mistake.
Emotions help interpret the feelings of other people and predict their actions.
Example. Imagine that you are facing an angry person. Body language (clenched fists or loud voice) tells you about his emotional state, and you can predict his future actions.
Emotions help you respond quickly.
Example. In the case of an angry person, emotions will make us feel threatened or angry, allowing us to quickly respond to an attack.
People without emotions are not able to act.
Example. In past centuries, many mentally ill patients were treated with a “lobotomy” that separates two areas of the brain that are vital for emotional processes. As a result, patients lost their initiative and desire for action, as well as most of their emotional potential.
Sometimes emotions interfere with a decision or make you act unreasonably
Although emotions are an important tool for interacting with the environment, they are imperfect and can lead to erroneous actions.
This happens when we are overly emotional. Our mind is able to "juggle" with many elements at the same time, but in a state of excitement, anxious thoughts and images overcome it. There is no room for rational thinking, and judgment is clouded.
Example. When you are afraid, you react too emotionally to the situation (“fear has big eyes”) and you can even take a sheet on a clothesline for a ghost.
Under the influence of emotions, we rush to act instead of soberly assessing the situation. When information enters the brain, part of it enters the “new cortex” region, which is responsible for rational thinking, and passes into the emotional brain. If the latter considers that the information is a threat, he can make us act without thinking, without resorting to the brain of thinking.
Example. You startle if you see a strange figure out of the corner of your eye in a dark forest.
Under the influence of outdated emotional reactions, we can behave unreasonably. The emotional mind responds to the current situation based on experience, even if its conditions have changed.
Example. A boy who was beaten by peers at school can grow up a strong man, but will still feel threatened by others.
Emotions are very important, but they can block rational thinking. To avoid this, you need to learn how to effectively manage emotions.
Emotional intelligence allows you to control emotions and use them to achieve goals
How to use the power of emotions, eradicating their all-consuming influence?
Emotional intelligence will help to recognize feelings and manage them without falling under their total control.
The first aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and name your feelings. This skill is vital. People who are unable to recognize their own feelings are more prone to fits of rage. Understand your emotions, and you will immediately understand the causes of their occurrence.
Often your feelings in a particular situation depend on your attitude to it.
Example.If on the street a friend passes by without recognizing you, you will immediately find that he does it on purpose. This can upset or even anger you. But a friend might just not notice you.
When you can recognize and control your feelings, emotional intelligence will help you focus on achieving certain goals.
Example. Let's say you need to write an article. You don’t like the topic, and you would rather go to the movies instead. Emotional intelligence will help manage these different feelings. You can try to look at the topic from a different perspective. Perhaps some aspect of it will interest you. And knowing what feelings a trip to the cinema will cause, you can temporarily postpone this pleasure, anticipating it.
Students who manage their workload tend to succeed, even if they have an average IQ.
Emotional intelligence helps navigate the social world
People around you play a big role in your life. Only by managing social interaction can one hope for a full, happy life. Emotional intelligence contributes to the development of social interactions, allowing you to put yourself in the place of other people. Understand the emotions of other people by analyzing non-verbal signs. To judge a person’s mood, it’s enough to pay attention to the prompts (facial expression or body language). We usually detect such signals automatically.
Example. If a person turns pale and opens his mouth in amazement, then he is in shock.
Since emotional intelligence allows people to sympathize, you will behave in such a way as to cause a favorable reaction from others.
Example. Imagine that you are a manager, and one of the team members constantly makes the same mistakes. You must tell him about it and help change, but do it right. If you hurt a person’s feelings, he can take a defensive position and is unlikely to do what you want. But having shown compassion and putting yourself in his place, you will certainly achieve your goal.
People with emotional intelligence can develop social abilities: teach others, resolve conflicts, or manage staff. And these abilities help maintain relationships in a social environment.
Emotional intelligence needs a balance between the emotional “brain of feelings” and the rational “brain of thinking”
Our thoughts and feelings are intertwined. The brain of thinking (the stronghold of rational thoughts) and the brain of the senses (the birthplace of our emotions) are inextricably linked through neural pathways. Emotional intelligence depends on the connectors between the brain of thinking and feelings, and any damage to these pathways can lead to a deficit of emotional intelligence.
Example. A person whose emotional brain is separated from the mental one ceases to experience feelings and loses emotional self-awareness. Such an ailment is demonstrated by patients who underwent a lobotomy: after the interruption of the connections between the two brains, they lose their emotional potential.
The brain of thought must adjust the functioning of the brain of the senses. This is a process of emotional self-regulation.
How does emotional self-regulation work?
Incentives such as sudden loud bangs often overload the emotional brain. The brain of feelings automatically perceives the stimulus as a threat and puts the body on alert. To regulate this process, we use the brain of thinking.
Hearing a loud bang, the emotional brain sends a signal to the body, the brain of thinking checks the stimulus for the presence of a potential threat. In the absence of danger, it calms both the brain of the senses and the body, allowing us to think again soberly. Therefore, we are not too afraid of every sudden noise. If you break the connection between the two brains, such a process is impossible.
Example.Patients with severe brain damage thinking have difficulty controlling their feelings.
Emotional intelligence helps to be healthy and successful.
What is the secret of a successful and fulfilling life? Many people think that with high IQ people are more likely to have a happy life. Experience shows that people with developed emotional intelligence are often more successful.
Students with a high level of empathy are more successful than their less sympathetic comrades with a similar IQ. In general, students who are able to control their feelings receive high marks.
Example. One Stanford University study examined the ability of a group of four-year-olds to resist a treat. Years later, it turned out that those who controlled their impulses at the age of four excelled in school and the social sphere. Success accompanied them in adulthood.
Emotional intelligence also helps to lead a healthier lifestyle.
Example. During periods of stress, the heart experiences tremendous stress as blood pressure rises. Hence the risk of heart attack. Stress also weakens the immune system - in a stressful condition, there is a high chance of catching a cold. Emotional intelligence will help to avoid such dangers. By learning to mitigate stressful feelings such as anxiety and anger, you will reduce their detrimental effects. So, if people who have had a heart attack learn to manage anger, then the risk of seizures in the future will be significantly reduced.
The influence of emotional intelligence on success and health is enormous, but in the school curriculum, almost no attention is paid to emotional skills.
The face of society depends on the emotional intelligence of children
Weak emotional intelligence can lead to negative consequences across the whole society.
Example. Threefold increase in the number of homicides among adolescents in 1965−1990. may be associated with a weakening of emotional intelligence.
A lack of emotional intelligence can lead to increased crime.
Example. Studies show that it is difficult for juvenile delinquents to control their feelings and “read” by the expressions of other people's faces - as well as sexual maniacs. And heroin addicts had difficulty controlling their anger even before they began to be addicted.
The well-being of the child is also determined by emotional competence. Children growing up surrounded by emotionally intelligent people have a high level of EI. It is easier for children of emotionally intelligent parents to control their own emotions. They are practically not subject to stress, they enjoy a large location of peers and are more socially adapted, according to teachers. Children with a lack of self-awareness, empathy, or impulse control are at risk for mental health problems and are more likely to encounter difficulties at school.
Modern children are future parents, managers and politicians. Many of them will have a great impact on society and it is better that they are partial, able to resolve conflicts and not inclined to blindly follow feelings.
Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence provides a full life. How to increase his level?
1. To increase self-awareness and self-control, practice internal dialogs. This will help to recognize your own feelings.
Example. If your friend talks about his marital problems to everyone except you, you may be upset. An internal dialogue will help solve this problem. Ask yourself: “Why does it hurt?” and answer the question: "Because my best friend shared his family problems with everyone except me." Having defined the feeling and its cause, weaken its influence. Tell yourself: “I can feel like an outcast, but maybe he didn’t want to bother me, because I was busy preparing the annual reports.”So you will be less upset.
2. To develop compassion, try copying another person’s body language. This is useful because body language not only expresses emotions, but also evokes them.
Example. By copying another person’s tense posture, one can also cause tension in oneself.
3. To increase self-motivation and think more positively, think this way: people who are convinced that they can change the causes of failure do not easily give up. They do not stop trying, because they are sure that success depends on their own actions.
How you explain your successes and failures greatly affects your self-motivation. And vice versa: the one who connects failures with personality defects will surrender in the near future. Such people are convinced that they will not be able to achieve success. If you want to become successful, drive such thoughts from yourself.
The most important thing
Emotions play a much larger role in thinking, decision making and personal success than is commonly thought. IQ is not your destiny. People with developed emotional intelligence succeed more often: their relationship flourishes, they are stars at work. Remember that emotional intelligence can be “brought up” in each of us.
- Use emotional intelligence to sort out your emotions.
- As soon as you understand your emotions, you will understand the reasons for their occurrence and you will be able to manage them or reduce their negative impact.
- Emotional intelligence will help to concentrate on achieving certain goals.
- A balance is needed between the emotional "brain of feelings" and the rational "brain of thinking." At the same time, the “brain of thinking” is able to correct the functioning of the “brain of feelings” with the help of emotional self-regulation, preventing emotions from gaining total control.
