Gill Hasson - Emotional Intelligence

This edition first published 2014

2014 Gill Hasson

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To Andy and Daniel, for their continuing
interest in my writing and all my books.

What is emotional intelligence? It's being intelligent with your emotions.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage emotions.

It's using your emotions to inform your thinking and using your thinking to understand and manage emotions.

Although regular intelligence the ability to reason, rationalize, analyze etc. is important in life, emotional intelligence is the key to thinking clearly and creatively, to being able to manage stress and challenges confidently and relate well to others.

In this book you will learn how to understand and manage your emotions your own and other people's in a way that is helpful and can make a real, positive difference to your life.

Emotions are part of being human; emotions are the glue that connects you to other people and gives meaning to life. Whether we're aware of them or not, emotions are a constant presence in our lives, influencing everything we do.

Emotions cause us to feel, think and act in different ways in different situations. But emotions can be complicated. This can make them hard to understand; difficult to make sense of and grasp the meaning of.

Understanding emotions involves:

• Recognizing and understanding the three aspects of emotions physical feelings, thoughts and behaviour and the connections between them.
• Being aware of the differences, transition, variations and degrees of intensity between emotions.
• Understanding what, how and why you and other people experience certain emotions in certain situations.

starts you on the road to understanding emotions by looking at the nature of emotions the inherent aspects of emotions; what all emotions have got in common.

You will see that emotions are made up of three parts; thoughts, physical feelings and behaviour. Any one part of an emotion can trigger and influence another part. Take, for example, anxiety. Suppose you were anxious about an exam, an interview or a social occasion. Anxiety might start with a thought (I'm dreading this) which might trigger physical feelings (stomach turns over, tense muscles, dry mouth) and then behaviour (unable to sit still or relax).

But your anxiety could start with the physical feeling of dread (stomach turning over etc.) which reminds you and makes you think of the upcoming exam, social event etc. (I'm dreading this) which results in the behaviour of pacing up and down. And of course, the anxiety could start with the inability to relax, which triggers the physical feelings and the thoughts that go with them.

No wonder so many of us find emotions difficult to understand and manage! Although we do see some emotions as positive, there are plenty of other emotions that we regard as negative or wrong.

However, as you develop your understanding of what, exactly, emotions are and why we have them, you will see that judging emotions as positive or negative, good or bad isn't very helpful.

The fact is, all emotions have a positive purpose to keep you safe, to help you make decisions, to develop and maintain social bonds, to experience happiness and enhance creative processes.

helps further your understanding by looking at specific emotions; their levels of intensity, the differences and similarities between them and the relationships between them.

Understanding, for example, what envy and jealousy are: envy is wanting something that someone else has got, you feel envy when someone you know gets a promotion. Jealousy on the other hand, is a feeling of resentment that another has gained something that you think you more rightfully deserve: feeling jealous of a promotion that you feel you should have received instead of the other person. Knowing the difference between those two emotions can help you have a clearer picture of what you're feeling and why.

You will learn that disentangling what triggers an emotion from the thoughts, feelings and behaviour that are part of an emotion can also help you to understand an emotion and see it as just emotion, rather than getting caught up and overwhelmed by it.

Of course, we all feel and experience emotions; they're part of being human. But an important part of emotional intelligence is understanding and accepting that emotions are experienced differently by different people. Not only that, different people have different ideas and beliefs about emotions their purpose and intent and how to respond to them. Understanding this helps you start managing other people and their emotions more effectively.

Once you have a clearer understanding of the nature and purpose of emotions, you are in a better position to manage them.