What is EI?
You may have already seen the EI acronyms. It means emotional intelligence, but there is much more to say.
As the IQ acronym refer to our intelligence quotient in a general way, the EI acronym is the another side of our brain – Emotional Intelligence -that has gained the spotlights. It is a kind of intelligence that is required to relate in a successful way with others and with ourselves.
Emotional intelligence is often confused with emotions or emotional characteristics, such as optimism or pessimism, or be more or less sensible.
Although these aspects of our personality belong to the sphere of emotions, and not the more traditional intelligence, based on cognitive aspects, it is not the fact that we feel things with greater or lesser intensity that evaluates our emotional intelligence.
The ability to manage our own emotions, the correct identification of the emotions of others and how we’re building our relationships are indicators of our emotional capacities.
One of the greatest researchers in this area, Daniel Golemon, describes this kind of intelligence as “the ability that we have to manage our emotions and our relationships.”
Emotional intelligence can be divided in four essential aspects:
The self-awareness, that allows us to be able to correctly identify the emotions we feel and the respective causes.
The self-management, namely, the way we manage our emotions, especially the more negative, in order to prevent harmful interference in our lives.
The empathy, that is the ability that we have to get in the shoes of others, getting feeling what these people feel.
The final aspect is the Administration of relationships, meaning to be able to combine and “fine tune” the first three components so we can establish and structure levels of healthy relationship with ourselves and with others, whether they are professional, personal or love.
