EI: Emotions and emotional intelligence
Do emotions matter?Emotions are at the very core of emotional intelligence. Understanding the role that emotions play in our lives, both negative and positive, is therefore fundamental to our understanding of emotional intelligence and why it is important.Yes! Even though many of us have been brought up to believe that emotions get in the way and need to be controlled or pushed to one side, emotions do matter. In fact emotions drive our lives whether we realise it or not. Emotions are important sources of information and influence our behaviour, our memory, our thoughts, our focus and our relationships.
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How can emotions influence our behaviour?
Take exercise for instance. Do you know that exercise is good for you? Have you heard that a normal person needs to exercise regularly, say three times a week? You probably do know this information - there have been so many health promotion advertisements it is hard not to know. This means you have the knowledge you need to exercise regularly. However, the important question is: do you exercise regularly? If you do, why do you? What drives you to exercise? If you don't, why don't you? What stops you? If you exercise it is likely that you enjoy it, or you are frightened of getting sick if you don't. Enjoyment and fright are emotions. Emotions motivate you to do things. If you don't exercise, it may be because you can't be bothered or are apathetic towards it. Maybe you don't like it or are bored when you do it. Or maybe there is something else that you are happier doing, such as watching the television, reading a book or having a glass of wine. These reasons all contain emotions. "Enjoyment" is an emotion. "Apathy" is an emotion. "Boredom" is an emotion. "Happiness" is an emotion. Those of us who don't exercise usually don't do so because of our emotions. Of course, it's easy to excuse ourselves from exercise by saying "I'm too busy" or "I don't have the time". However, if you were determined to get fit or loved playing sport or were scared you'd get sick without it ... you'd find the time. "Determined", "love", and "scared" are all emotions or related to emotions. Emotions DO matter.
It is our EMOTIONS plus knowledge that most often determine our behaviour. If all we needed was knowledge, (and our cognitive intelligence), then no one would get drunk, speed their cars, smoke or eat high fat foods. We are all bombarded with information about these things, yet some of us still do them. Why? Because of our emotions. |
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What determines the type of influence that our emotions have?The type of influence that emotions have on our behaviour depends on our emotional intelligence.
Emotions can be an enormous benefit to us.
Emotions can also lead us astray, if we let them.
How we relate to our emotions, and the extent to which we benefit from them, depends on our emotional intelligence. |
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How can emotions provide us with valuable information?Let's use another example to show how emotions can provide us with valuable information and help or hinder us. If you are about to hand in an important report to a senior manager, or an assignment to your lecturer, and you feel a twinge of anxiety, you may pause. The anxiety contains information telling you to be careful. Thus you go and check the report and find an error. You correct it and hand in a perfect report. Thus, the feeling of anxiety was a valuable warning to you. Had you ignored the anxiety or pushed it to one side, you might not have looked at the report again, and handed in a dud report. Had you felt complacent or confident and had no twinge of anxiety you may not have looked again, and handed in a report with an error. Thus, in this instance, the anxious feeling, when you acted on it, was valuable to you. In contrast, the feelings of complacency and confidence weren't helpful in this circumstance. (They may have been in a different situation though.)
Rather than ignoring emotions, or "keeping them under control" we can relate to them in a positive way. We can acknowledge their importance in our lives, cultivate beneficial ones, and respond to all emotions intelligently. How well you do this depends on your level of emotional intelligence.
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