Develop emotional intelligence: general tips and practical steps. How to develop a child's emotional intelligence

As practice shows, people who demonstrate an average or even below average level of intelligence often achieve much greater heights in life than recognized "wise men".

This is due, first of all, to the fact that not only the mind is important to achieve success, but also such qualities as the ability to communicate and cope with life's difficulties without losing optimism and presence of mind, the ability to understand oneself and one's desires, to rejoice to, and without regret to part with what prevents you from moving on.

All this is not directly related to the intellectual sphere, but rather lies in the field of feelings and emotions. The combination of these qualities and abilities is called emotional intelligence. modern science defines it as the ability to be aware of one's emotions and be able to manage them.

How to develop emotional intelligence

Like any quality given to man from nature, emotional intellect can and should be developed. Of course, the "initial data" for all people is different: they depend on heredity, on upbringing and style. family relations. Also important life experience each individual: if from childhood a person has to overcome difficulties, make decisions, then he is more capable of managing his emotional impulses.

But it is possible to develop your emotional intelligence by approaching this process consciously.

1. The first step is to admit that your emotional intelligence level is not high enough. Tell yourself that sometimes your emotions let you down, and because of this, problems arise in relationships, with health, in a word, this prevents you from living and enjoying life. So, it's time to deal with your emotions.


2. The next step is to study your emotionality. Try to write down for some time what events caused an emotional response in you and which one. Gradually, you will learn to realize the connection of your emotions with life situations, you will see your weak and strong points.


3. Develop your powers of observation and intuition. Master the skill of "active listening": react to the speech of the interlocutor, clarify - this will help to understand people. Master the skills of reading the state of other people by facial expression, posture, gestures - this is an exciting and useful activity.


4. Be aware of your emotions. Each time you experience a particular feeling, analyze what exactly you feel and for what reason. Learn to consciously evoke emotions - with practice, you will realize that this is quite easy to do.


5. Every time you experience dissatisfaction and other negative feelings, start mentally looking for pluses in the situation that has arisen, give strong arguments for the positive impact of this event on your life. For each failure, come up with 10 reasons why something didn’t work out for you. This way you will learn not to let negative feelings get the better of you.

Modern culture is focused on productivity. For many active people, this results not only in constant nervous tension, but also the desire to rationalize everything and everyone to the detriment of their emotions. But just comfortable emotional condition allows you to achieve great success and helps you move on, and rational decisions do not always coincide with what we want “in the depths of our souls”. The concept of emotional intelligence can come to the rescue, which will help you better understand yourself and your impulses. We explain what it is and why it is needed.

MASHA VORSLAV

How are feelings and emotions different?

Both feelings and emotions affect our psychological condition, but they differ significantly. A feeling is a conscious emotional experience (an outburst of anger, for example). Emotions arise against the will of a person, give rise to specific feelings and are often too complex to be aware of them. At the same time, they can and should be analyzed in order to be able to separate yourself from your negative experience or mood and maintain a pleasant emotional background. True, the sensual side of life can be so confusing that it can take a long time to realize a voluminous emotion: sometimes recognizing being in love with best friend behind the spectrum of constantly flashing positive and negative feelings is obtained only after years and with the help of a therapist.

The matter is complicated by the fact that there is still no single list of emotions. In 1972, psychologist Paul Ekman compiled a list of six basic emotions, including anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness, and fear. Ekman later added embarrassment, infatuation, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and excitement. Robert Plutchik proposed another classification of emotions, the so-called wheel. In his opinion, there are 8 main emotional spaces that can intersect and give rise to new emotions. For example, faded amazement and horror can give rise to awe, and annoyance and boredom can turn into contempt.

Where did the concept come from
emotional intelligence?

The concept of emotional intelligence is relatively new, previously such a phrase was perceived as an oxymoron. It was first taken seriously in 1990 after an article of the same name by Peter Salovey and John Mayer for the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality. They defined it as the ability to recognize their own and other people's emotions and feelings, to distinguish between them and use this information for further reflections and actions. Salovey and Mayer noted that they consider emotional intelligence a subsystem of the already known social intelligence, which allows "understanding and managing people."

Further firewood was thrown into the fire - and continues to be thrown - by the writer, psychologist and uncle of the author of The Myth of Beauty Naomi Wolf Daniel Goleman: it was after his best-selling book that a wide range of readers learned about emotional intelligence. Goleman managed to find the right intonation to talk to a huge audience and captivate them with a difficult topic. True, the writer not only chewed on the works of his predecessors, but also offered his own interpretation: in his opinion, emotional intelligence does not consist of four areas, as Salovey and Mayer suggested, but of five.

What does it consist of?

In the classical model, emotional intelligence has four components. Self-awareness - the ability to recognize one's emotions and feelings; self-control - the ability to manage them; social awareness allows you to understand the emotional processes taking place in society; relationship management, affecting both interpersonal and group relationships. Goleman agrees with the first two positions, but combines and breaks the rest in his own way: in addition to self-awareness and self-control, his model contains intrinsic motivation, empathy and social skills. In general, Goleman's classification looks simplistic, but it is extremely practical and does not cause rejection even among those who encounter the topic for the first time.

Is it true that emotional
Is intelligence more important than IQ?

AT recent decades intelligence was assessed only on the basis of IQ. Those who were “lucky” to get a high score were predicted a great future, and people with a low score were given more and more new ways to pump their intellectual abilities. Microsoft, for example, used to select candidates based on how quickly they could solve logic problems.

Harvard professor Howard Gardner spoke about the fact that in addition to intelligence there are other equally important components of the mind (in English literature - intelligences). He states that intelligence should not be measured by IQ or any other single measure, but by seven. This is a penchant for linguistics, logical-mathematical thinking (what, to the detriment of the rest, is so valued in schools) and understanding own body, musical ability, spatial thinking and, finally, the ability to get along well with other people and with oneself. Later, Gardner added "the mind of a naturalist" (Neville Longbottom, hi) to them, and also admitted that competencies in existential and moral matters can also be useful categories in the analysis of personality.

So the statement in the title of Goleman's sensational book that emotional intelligence may be more important than IQ, although true (for some people in some circumstances), is more of a marketing ploy: emotions, unlike intelligence, are still a fresh topic on which to speculate effectively.

Why develop emotional intelligence?

Surely you have heard more than once about how easy it is for someone to move up career ladder. Or how well someone manages to communicate with their own children. The heroes of these situations almost certainly have highly developed emotional intelligence, which allows them not only to realize their goals more clearly (and therefore achieve them faster), but also to successfully build communication with people at different levels - at some point in their development, this becomes a necessary step in any area.

If productivity does not seem so attractive to you, think about the calmness with which you can perceive not the most laudable of your own and other people's actions and emotions - a developed emotional intelligence allows this. No one is in danger of becoming an insensitive blockhead - on the contrary, without unnecessary reflections, time is freed up to enjoy the pleasant manifestations of life and minimize the unpleasant ones (and draw all the necessary conclusions from them). Note that independent work with your emotions is not a substitute for medical care, so if you suspect you have urgent or serious psychological problems, you should not solve them yourself.

How to do it?

Curious people can first take an emotional intelligence test. At the end of this questionnaire, for example, they will give a very mild assessment of your emotional skill, which can be taken as a starting point. In addition, tests of this kind help to recognize oneself in the proposed situations (“being in a group of friends, can you always understand how each of them feels?”) And independently analyze their abilities. In general, there are many assessment systems (SASQ, MSCEIT, ECI, for example), but in order to delve into them, you need either really a lot of free time or the help of a specialist.

In any case, it will not be useless to read Mayer's articles with Salovey and the work of Goleman. The first two will give an academic perspective useful for general development, and Goleman's books can be consulted for more vital information. He gives enough of it to familiarize himself with the topic, and forces the reader to perform simple but demonstrative exercises like leading. If there is no time for articles and books, you can use proven methods for self-development, there is a good example. It is important to remember that the development of emotional intelligence, like any other restructuring, takes time and dedication, so do not worry if your personal life does not improve within a month or you do not take off on the career ladder (but probably even for this short term small changes in relationships with people and with oneself will be noticeable).

it's basically a kind of brain injury that's happened since you were born.

socially active people are not more developed in terms of emotional intelligence compared to those who prefer to be most time alone.

Every day we face the task of effectively managing our emotions - one of the most important for any person, since ours are designed in such a way that they always give priority to emotions. Here's how it works: Everything you see, hear, smell, and touch is converted into electrical signals that travel through your body. These signals are transmitted from cell to cell until they reach the end point of the journey - your brain. They enter the brain through an area located near the spinal cord, but then move to the frontal lobe (located just behind the forehead) and only then enter the area of ​​​​the brain responsible for rational, logical thinking. However, the whole point is that along this path, impulses pass through the limbic system - the zone in which our emotions are formed. Therefore, before your rational thinking comes into play, you evaluate what is happening with emotional point vision.

It is the connection between your emotional and rational areas of the brain that is the physical source of emotional intelligence.

In the next part of the article will be given practical advice to develop the 2 remaining social intelligence skills.

To date, everyone knows the role emotional competence in the success of any business, any person. Relationships in the family and at work, setting true goals, motivation for action, quality of life directly depend on emotional competence And that's just the first thing that comes to mind.

We all want to enjoy life, work, communication with people close and not so, and we all face difficulties from time to time, even crises, and how we cope with them depends on the quality of our life and our personal and professional growth. Often our behavior consists of small set patterns of behavior, patterns that are triggered by our emotions and it happens so fast that we don't even notice it.

For example, there are people who plan their day in great detail, but if someone or something violates their plans, they get very annoyed and even angry, while taking out their anger on others. And only after a while they ask themselves the question: Why is this so?

To understand where this behavior comes from, it is important to ask yourself the question: “Why do I have plans to do more, move towards my goals, or is there something else that I do not notice? And what did I feel right before the anger? Most often, such behavior is demonstrated by people whose leading need is safety, the plan for the day gives us an understanding of what will happen in the next moment and, accordingly, be ready for it.

Thus, they satisfy the need for security, but when they do not have such an understanding, anxiety arises (low intensity of fear), and the more unknowns, the less the need for security is satisfied, the higher the intensity of fear. This is a stressful state that takes a lot of energy, which we so lack to achieve our true goals.

Want to know what your driving need is? Where are your powers going?

If so, then there is only one way out! Learn to be aware of your emotions, understand what triggers them, and hence the usual ways to satisfy them.

Emotion is not a reason to indulge in all serious, it is information, maybe even the most valuable information in our life. Each person has leading psychological needs, on the degree of satisfaction of which our happiness depends, and emotions are a compass that tells us how far we are approaching or moving away from satisfying our leading needs.

It's not easy, we don't know what we want, what makes us happy, our parents didn't teach us to feel, and their parents didn't teach them. Only the iron conviction has come down to us that feelings interfere, there is a lot of pain in them and it is impossible to control them.

As a result, we are lost. Today, many are looking for themselves, and you can find yourself only with the help of feelings. Start feeling!

But that's not all, but only the first step of development emotional intelligence. And there are 4 of them in total:

1. Understanding yourself
2. Self management
3. Understanding others
4. Managing others

These are 4 EQ competencies that are developed only sequentially one after another. Since it is impossible to control what you do not understand, just as it is impossible to understand another without understanding yourself, just as it is impossible to understand another without being able to control yourself, because in the captivity of our states our view of another person is distorted.

Well, to manage the states of other people is highest degree actual development emotional intelligence.

It so happens that EQ is often associated with the ability to influence people. In fact, his role is wider. Developed emotional intelligence is a useful "background" skill that improves life in almost all areas. By investing in working with our own emotions, we care about our well-being and success.

What is emotional intelligence

Sales people joke: “Ordinary intelligence will help solve the problem. Emotional - will help convince others to solve it for you. In a broad sense, intelligence can be described as our competence in something. If we are good, freely operate with abstract quantities, think with formulas and algorithms, we have a well-developed mathematical intelligence. Emotional intelligence is also competence, but in the field of feelings and their expression.

In the 20th century, psychologist Richard Lazarus came to the conclusion that emotions are involved in the process of knowing and evaluating everything that happens to us.

The raw data from the senses that we receive “at the input”, the brain processes into sensations, and then evaluates what they should mean. John Meyer and Peter Salovey later described this system as "emotional intelligence".

If our internal “logistics” are clearly organized, we get an adequate picture of the world and our own reactions as a result.

If not, we get confused in our feelings and desires, ascribe fictitious intentions to others and behave inconsistently. Not the most pleasant situation, right?

The Importance of High EQ

Imagine that you work for a small company. The number of clients is still small, but things are going well, and the management decides to expand. New divisions are opening, deals with major partners are pecking, and all processes are organized in the old way. Problems begin.

The same thing happens to a person when he tries to take on more responsibility, but does not work with emotions. Constant communication is exhausting, stress and unresolved issues keep you awake at night, conflicts constantly flare up at home and at work.

The flow of tasks has become more intense, the experiences associated with them have intensified, but they are processed in the old way.

“A person with high emotional intelligence knows how to regulate his state - let go of emotions that take energy and hold on to those that give energy,” explains Elena Mechetina, psychologist, coach and founder of the Center for the Development of Emotional Intelligence in Children “D-A “. - This does not mean that he avoids conflicts and tense situations. But he quickly returns to a state of equilibrium and does not succumb to provocations.

“Showing emotional intelligence means focusing not on the cause, but on the goal,” adds business coach Elena Sidorenko. - Emotional intelligence is directed to the future - as, by the way, rational intelligence. Do you want to change distrust or dislike towards you into curiosity? So, you should not do what your emotions tell you, but what will lead to the desired result.

Can EQ be developed?

In a certain sense, the level of intelligence is a given, determined from birth. This reality is superimposed by upbringing, life and professional experience, one-sided knowledge about the world. Is it possible to change the emotional “firmware” that dictates certain reactions to us at a conscious age?

What matters here is the belief that we can change. Psychologist Carol Dweck and her followers argue that our results are influenced by the initial setting - stability or growth. If we believe that we can change (and in any case we change perceptibly under the influence of new experience), then we actually change.

“The style of emotions, like the style of thinking, is largely a matter of habit,” says Elena Mechetina. - The main charm of our body is that it can adapt to the loads that we give it. I can’t sit on the twine now - I’ll be able to after six months of training. It's the same with emotional responses. Change is hard to believe because we are not used to purposefully working with ourselves.”

EQ Exercises

1. Review your beliefs

Recall Lazarus and his colleagues: feelings are formed after we have evaluated the event. This can happen at lightning speed, because there is a habit of thinking and feeling in a certain way. And it is formed by beliefs.

Misunderstood, out of touch with reality, or outdated beliefs can become an emotional trap.

“I had a client - a doctor who had been building up a database of contacts for a long time,” recalls Elena Mechetina. - Her professionalism also developed for a long time. The problem was that patients called her constantly, even at night, and she could not refuse: “I took the Hippocratic oath!” But does it say that a doctor should help patients at the cost of his personal life? This conviction at first helped her, but then - in the new conditions - it became a brake and a source of suffering.

An important part of working with emotional intelligence can be psychotherapy, where a specialist teaches us to be aware of our beliefs, understand the reasons for their appearance and relevance to our lives. And - if necessary - to revise these beliefs and abandon them.

2. Keep an emotional diary

Research by psychologist James Pennebaker has shown that those who have mastered the habit of regularly writing down their feelings find the solution to a complex issue faster and easier.

Here is one way to do it. Step 1: Set a timer for 20-30 minutes. Step 2. Describe how you feel this moment or what you experienced during the last week (month, year).

Write whatever comes to mind, disregarding style, mistakes, and other imperfections. Leave the entry or delete it - it doesn't matter.

The very process of writing will teach you to systematize emotional thinking, to “unstick” feelings that have stuck together in a lump and more accurately find their causes.

3. Practice Expressing Your Emotions

Who is the most masterful in controlling their emotions? Theater actors! Of course, this statement is not undeniable, but consider: it is work for these people to demonstrate a deep range of experiences. The skill of an actor has a lot to do with the ability to let in a certain emotion and let it out without being imbued with it.

Elena Mechetina advises everyone who wants to develop their emotional intelligence to read the book by Konstantin Stanislavsky "The work of an actor on himself". The writer or journalist owns the word as a tool, just as the actor owns the emotion. A developed emotional intelligence just implies the ability to own an emotion, and not surrender to it.

4. Expand your emotional vocabulary

Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Emotional Flexibility, advises not only to listen to yourself, but also to expand your emotional vocabulary: study the nuances of emotions, name them, and find a range of uses for each.

The language has amazing magic - it sets emotions a certain development scenario, and it obeys it.

When you have chosen a suitable name for the feeling, try to find at least two more words to describe its shade. What is experienced as sadness can be disappointment, depression, emptiness, or regret. Unwinding these threads woven into the common fabric, you will reach the causes and foundations of your reactions.

5. Remember the goal

According to Elena Sidorenko, the ability to manage one's feelings is associated with such a quality as self-denial. If we are willing to surrender to the mercy of an outburst of anger or irritation, then we allow these emotions to control us. We follow the lead of those who evoked these emotions, without thinking about their own interests.

While inside the situation, develop an inner observer who matches intuitive reactions with goals. For example, if someone draws you into a conflict, think: “What are the goals of this person? What are my goals? What emotional response would be more in line with my goals?” This is a difficult exercise because it requires good practice of mindfulness and the ability to switch quickly. But over time, you can master it.