Imagine if you didn’t have emotions. What would life be like? I know what you are thinking. Yes, we would all be robots or machines. We would have templates or programs written inside us. One program to wake up, the other to do our work, maybe one more to play some sport etc. God knows how many such programs we would need. However, we are emotional beings. We have emotions for every event. Believe it or not, emotions are our strength, but they can turn into our weakness very easily. The primary reason behind emotions becoming our weakness is the inability to manage them. Yes, we need to be a little intelligent about how to manage our emotions, especially when they are at their peak. We tend to take permanent decisions based on temporary emotions and that is the dangerous part because most of the times, these decisions prove to be wrong. Then is it possible to manage your emotions in a manner where we tend to produce only positive results out of it? The answer is Yes. We can manage our emotions and it results through something called as Emotional Intelligence.

Let us first understand what are emotions and how do they exist. So, let’s say you are told you are promoted. This is one of the many events or triggers to which the Thalamus in the brain produces certain chemicals (in this case ‘happy’ chemicals) which are flushed in your body in a matter of seconds (6 seconds to be precise). These chemicals are peptides, made up of proteins and these are called chemicals of emotions or feelings. The ‘happy’ emotions are what make us feel alive and some emotions are highly desired such as love, thrill, ecstasy, freedom etc. We spend a lot of time and money to get the emotions we want. Some of us may read books, go for movies, travel or maybe spend time with others who give you the kind of emotions you want. But emotions (negative ones like anger, hurt, grief etc.) can cause us problems as well and we seek to avoid or control them. Negative emotions can be triggered due to inter-personal conflict or a tragic event, maybe as simple as receiving an intimidating email from your client. Do we have the capacity to channelize the negative emotions so that we don’t harm ourselves or others physically or mentally? So, for each event, you will have an emotional response from yourself for sure. The question is, would that response be a well thought of response or a reaction? Response without a thought process is a reaction.

Emotional Intelligence! Doesn’t this sound a little conflicting? My friend once said, “It sounds as if the brain and heart are meeting to have a cup of coffee together”. I have heard people saying, “If you want to succeed, keep your heart out of whatever you are doing and do it only with your brain”. I wonder how the heart got accused of having the wholesale agency of emotions including the unwanted ones. The reality is, the brain responds in the form of emotions whenever there is any external or internal trigger as described above. For those who like clear definitions in black and white way, “Emotional Intelligence is all about channelizing emotions in the right way for the right preconceived results. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize, regulate and effectively communicate our own emotions to other people. It is the ability, capacity or skill to perceive, assess and manage the emotions of one’s self and of others”. So why is it important?

First of all, impulsive, unthought of reactions can lead to a lot of problems in your personal and professional life. Without the ‘compelling’ emotions, we wouldn’t be motivated to do anything or achieve anything. We would just be stranded on a ‘wanted to be something but couldn’t achieve it’ island. Not to mention the make and break in relationships because of a simple 3 syllable word – Emotions. Emotional Intelligence covers 4 aspects listed below:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-management
3. Others-awareness
4. Others-management or Social skills

Needless to say, Emotional Intelligence peeps into your leadership skills in your personal and professional life. Remember, a good parent is a good leader and a good leader is a good parent. It is seen so many times in day-to-day life. I have always been of this opinion that Emotional Intelligence training should be an integral part of all graduation courses. You need to have domain knowledge and also the emotional quotient propels your growth. When you say something is impossible and it can’t be done, you are just showing the limit of your horizon. Then someone comes along and does it. That reflects on your attitude and that attitude talks a lot about your emotional quotient. Proven, researched piece of information – 90% of top performers are high in emotional quotient. What do we mean by emotional quotient? It is a measure of how well we regulate our emotions to be able to come out with the best responses in any area of life. Stephen Covey says, “Research shows convincingly that Emotional Intelligence is more important than IQ in almost any role”. Something similar has been echoed by Jack Welch, “A leader’s intelligence has to have a strong emotional component. S/he has to have a high sense of self-awareness, maturity and self-control”. I have seen this on a lot of occasions, the top management of any organization that is doing well, will always be high on EQ. They have this unique capability to dissociate themselves from a situation to take rational decisions. When we are associated with a situation, we are too hung up on the emotions and we find it difficult to find solutions. Take a football match for example. 11 players are fighting it out and are losing the game. Captain is clueless of where they are going wrong. Then you have the Coach, standing outside at a different level, looking at the game and taking the actual game-changing decision. He can do that because he is dissociated, at another level. Some people find it easy to suddenly become the fly on the wall and think from 3^rd person’s perspective.

By the way, did you know, IQ cannot be increased but your EQ can be. It is indeed true that Emotional Intelligence will help you move forward in your career and Emotional Stupidity will hold you back. I ask this question to so many people in my training’s, “Do you think something is wrong with you by some degree at mental level?” Most of the times I get an answer, “No”. Now, I know that we all lack in some thing or the other. Knowing what you lack in helps you win 50% of the battle, because you are now on course to overcome it. But who don’t know it, are definitely psychotics. Ha Ha! Emotionally, we all are vulnerable in some way. Having knowledge about areas of vulnerability is the first step in being Emotionally Intelligent. Emotional Intelligence training teaches us a range of techniques and interventions which can be run on ourselves or on others. Very easy to implement. I am listing a few of them below:

1. At least 4 ways of how not to react and respond well in any situation
2. How to deal with negative emotions and channelizing them for our own benefit
3. Moving to the solution end of the equation, rather than being ‘locked’ in the problem state
4. Finding the root cause of why you feel something and dealing with that root cause
5. Appropriate emotional regulation when it comes to dealing with relationships
6. Interventions to be a better Parent.
7. Capability of identifying personality profiles and being flexible in your dealings and communication with different types
8. Interventions in Behavioural Problem solving
9. Identifying and dealing with stress
10. Benchmarking your emotions to have right expectations from yourself and others. Basically, that will help you be at peace.
11. An idea of what Mission and Vision you have or should have in your life because most of our stress is related to not doing what we should be doing. Probably a bigger stress comes from the realization that we don’t know what we ought to be doing

These, and many more actually. Imagine a life, where there is empowerment and achievement through applying these techniques. I have seen lives change for better after learning to be Emotionally Agile and Intelligent. Needless to say, my life has definitely changed ever since I started implementing every single thing learnt in Emotional Intelligence. I am sure everyone would want to have everything sorted out inside their heads so that all pieces of life are falling in the right place.