Learning to be successful

It’s of­ten said that suc­cess can be learned. And it can. But per­haps not in the tra­di­tion­al way. We must lis­ten to our in­ner feel­ings; our emo­tions.  And then use them to our ad­van­tage.

Our emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence ar­ti­cle pro­vides five tips on how to de­vel­op your emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence. So that we can be more suc­cess­ful. And hap­pi­er. Un­like your IQ, your emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is elas­tic; you can work on it. We di­vide the process up for you, pro­ceed­ing step by step.

The five el­e­ments of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence

Self-aware­ness

Recog­nis­ing and ac­cept­ing our own feel­ings. This abil­i­ty is cru­cial to un­der­stand­ing our own be­hav­iour and mo­ti­va­tion. In­stead of be­ing at the mer­cy of our emo­tions and fight­ing or avoid­ing them, we should be aware of the fact that we can ac­tive­ly con­trol them

Self-reg­u­la­tion

Han­dling our emo­tions in such a way that they’re ap­pro­pri­ate to the sit­u­a­tion, in­stead of drama­tis­ing or triv­i­al­is­ing them. This in­cludes the abil­i­ty to paci­fy our­selves and al­le­vi­ate any feel­ings of anx­i­ety, ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, dis­ap­point­ment or in­sult and re­in­force pos­i­tive emo­tions. This helps to over­come set­backs and stress­ful sit­u­a­tions.

Mo­ti­va­tion

In­flu­enc­ing emo­tions so that they can help achieve our ob­jec­tives. This is the key to self-mo­ti­va­tion and en­cour­ages cre­ativ­i­ty as well as the fre­quen­cy of suc­cess­ful out­comes. It al­so en­ables us to de­lay short-term emo­tion­al ben­e­fits and en­tice­ments and sup­press im­pul­sive re­ac­tions. Pa­tience is a virtue: this longer-term per­spec­tive forms the ba­sis of every suc­cess.

Em­pa­thy

This is the key to un­der­stand­ing hu­man na­ture and forms the ba­sis of in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships: some­one who ap­pre­ci­ates what oth­ers are feel­ing can recog­nise the sig­nals of­ten hid­den in their be­hav­iour at a much ear­li­er stage and de­ter­mine what they need or want. But be care­ful: em­pa­thy is a val­ue-neu­tral abil­i­ty. It can al­so be used neg­a­tive­ly, for ma­nip­u­la­tion, for ex­am­ple. Nev­er­the­less, it’s con­sid­ered to be the ba­sis for suc­cess­ful so­ci­eties.

Re­la­tion­ship skills

Han­dling re­la­tion­ships or the art of man­ag­ing re­la­tion­ships es­sen­tial­ly con­sists of deal­ing with oth­ers’ feel­ings. It forms the ba­sis of seam­less co­op­er­a­tion in al­most all pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ments. It’s al­so a pre­req­ui­site for pop­u­lar­i­ty, ap­pre­ci­a­tion and in­te­gra­tion with­in a com­mu­ni­ty.

Us­ing this knowl­edge cor­rect­ly

These five skills are the key com­po­nents of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence. You’re there­fore able to ac­tive­ly man­age sit­u­a­tions and are not at the mer­cy of your emo­tions. Some writ­ers de­scribe emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence as the an­tithe­sis of the tra­di­tion­al con­cept of in­tel­li­gence. In fact, it’s an ex­ten­sion of the tra­di­tion­al no­tion of in­tel­li­gence, in which sim­ply cog­ni­tive and pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic skills are con­sid­ered to be the pre­req­ui­sites of a suc­cess­ful life. And it’s re­al­ly worth try­ing to ex­tend this. For in­creased mo­ti­va­tion and greater suc­cess.

Bild: Pixabay CC0