How can you identify an emotionally intelligent person? How do you know if you are emotionally intelligent?
Understanding what emotional intelligence is can make it a lot easier for us.
Emotional intelligence can mean so many different things depending on the given situation.
It is mainly centered on how intelligent your emotions fare in real-life situations. It is very beneficial to anyone who learns it.
If you want to know if you are emotionally improving yourself, or if your friend is emotionally intelligent then you might want to check out a few of the lists below to help you cross-examine…
When you begin to work on your emotional mind, you will find yourself:
- Loving self and others: You will learn to love yourself and others
Loving self is a very crucial part of achieving happiness in life. Also, loving others is also important for your own happiness and these two combined constitute a level in emotional intelligence.
This is because not having a personal love for self will make it difficult for one to actually work on other shortcomings in one’s personality. Loving self also opens the doors for one to easily learn to love others.
Being emotionally intelligent considers your attitude towards yourself and towards others.
This is why it is important to take care of yourself first before moving to take care of others as you can’t give what you don’t have.
You are considered emotionally intelligent if you learn to love yourself -this includes accepting yourself for who you are and learning to accept and love others.
- Guiding your thoughts during decision making: Trying to guide and balance your thoughts when making decisions
Emotions are powerful things and it is only the emotionally intelligent mind that can weld it.
As stated by Daniel Goleman, “we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.” The one that ‘feels’ has a very high tendency to blow up at any time given the situation involved which it may later regret once the moment passes.
It happens to us all. Sometimes out of anger you plan revenge in your mind and after fulfilling your desires you sit back to regret your actions.
All these happens when the emotional mind clouds the rational mind.
In other to escape allowing your emotions rule over you, you must strive to take charge of it so as to allow yourself to smile back to events happily.
Allowing your emotional mind to guide your thoughts benefit you in a great deal. It helps you to make sound thoughtful decisions, which is what emotional intelligence is all about.
- Managing actions and reactions: Trying to control your reaction when in the heat of a situation.
Heated up events don’t always occur in distressing moments, they also occur in a moment of excitement.
Sometimes you can get over-excited over an outcome that you begin to make promises that you might not be able to keep once you recovered.
And in another case, you can become over-excited that you begin to cry and shed tears while some persons may even be rushed to the hospital as a result.
What of situations where you rain abuses or out of anger you punch someone because they said words to you that you didn’t fancy, which you later regretted ever doing. This is your emotion controlling your reactions.
Another instance is when you decide not to laugh when a joke strikes you, it means you are controlling your emotions.
You will find yourself always trying to think before you make certain comments after weighing your thoughts.
Emotions often drive us to react before we even give thoughts to an event.
Taking charge of your reaction during the heat of an event is an indication that you are improving the intelligence of your emotions.
- Learning from criticism: You find yourself trying to pick lessons and make out the meaning from criticism directed towards you.
It’s usually normal that the mind when criticized begins to take offense or defense.
Somehow criticism tends to hit the emotional mind. But what you do with it is what is more important.
You should examine yourself in a time of criticism to know if it’s actually true. If yes, then you must be ready to adjust, but if false, then neglect it and continue.
This is your emotional intelligence coming into play which gives you an opportunity to get to know how other people view you in reality.
I have come to understand that people will always try to pull you down when they can’t outsmart you, often out of jealousy it begins.
The moment your pattern of reasoning switches criticism from being offensive to be thoughtful is you being emotionally intelligent.
- Being intentionally spontaneous: You will see yourself trying to be intentionally spontaneous so as to fit into different situations only for the events that call for such.
Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you reacted differently towards someone who is trying to fool you?
Yes! Of course, such situations happen to a lot of us
It happens that sometimes you may find yourself in a tight situation where things become so complex that you need to act differently from who everyone thinks you to be.
In some situations, some people wish to take advantage of you because they know you too well and believe that you won’t say No if they asked.
But then you respond differently from what they have always known about you. It is usually an act done to make people not feel you are too-good or too-dumb.
Your emotional intelligent mind would suggest such to you which can serve to prevent any further future reoccurrence.
And then you are back to who they take you to be, but now you have reduced their mind predictability setting about you. This shows a level in your emotional intelligence
- Developing unconscious awareness: You will find yourself being unconsciously aware of people who love to manipulate other peoples’ emotions for their own benefits.
Life is not so fair. There are persons who are cheats, others who are manipulators. They want all the gains for themselves.
They wish to use other peoples’ emotions for their personal gain without giving anything back in return. You might call them shred and cunny.
They are around us, they don’t care about other peoples’ emotions or how they would feel if they did what they intend to do.
Most times these kinds of people are hard to identify because of their level of smartness and intelligence.
With a high level of emotional intelligence, you will be able to spot these kinds of persons in action without much stress on your part, meaning that they won’t get to manipulate your emotions should they ever try to use their tricks on you.
- Preparing for Adversity: You will find yourself setting rules and boundaries that would help guide your emotional brain to avoid being hit.
An attack on our emotional minds is an attack on our immune system.
Emotional break down can come in different forms; heartbreaks, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, rejection, failure, etc.
Whichever it is, directly or indirectly, hits back at your emotional mind, which in turn gets back to your body system – down to your immune system.
Bad news tends to take away the rational reasoning for a period being.
You will find yourself become unnecessarily weak and transfixed and sometimes you may fall sick.
Training your emotions to be intelligent readies your emotional mind to absorb such hits, preventing it from getting deep down into your body’s immune system.
It doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be affected, you will, but not to the extent where you are unable to get up from the bed. This is because you have already prepared your emotional mind for the worst-case scenario.
- Helping others: You will find yourself trying your best to be of help to others
Emotional intelligence, if directed towards the positive aspect can be channeled into helping others become better.
You will find yourself being a motivator or an advisor to friends or persons around you usually when they run into an emotional notch.
The moment you become emotionally savvy, unconsciously you would feel like helping a friend out when s/he is faced with a situation that calls for emotional therapy.
Because you are calm when dealing with your emotional problems will make you want to calm your friend who might be going through an emotional problem.
You might never know what you have done for the person, people commit suicide out of emotional challenges usually because in their heads they could not find reasons to continue living anymore. S
o many sad stories. Your ability to increase the level of your emotions allows you to be able to feel empathy for others without much trouble.
- Keeping to commitments: You will find yourself hardly breaking codes, engagements, and commitment with yourself and with others.
Personal values, principles, rules, codes, beliefs are all held up in the emotional mind.
Emotional intelligence gives you a reason which transcends beyond your rational reasoning.
It’s reasoning which delves a little deeper trying to let you see reasons why being faithful to engagements and appointments are a significant aspect of life.
A good character and self-discipline are traits mounted in the emotional mind. You have to add a mix of your emotions to how you behave to be able to always repeat the same attitude every day.
And when you fail, you tend to feel bad inside you and tend to find a way to get back to your feet, and you keep trying and trying until the end.
The more emotionally intelligent you become, the more you take life events a little more serious than usual.
- Listening and Understanding others: You will find yourself to be a person who listens carefully to peoples’ words when they speak.
Words are very powerful because through words you can get a partial preview and overview into someone’s life.
Who he is, how he thinks, what he believes in, what she looks forward to becoming in life, the path he wishes to follow, how trustworthy she may be, how he treats others.
Words give you a piece of partial first-hand information into people’s past, present and future life.
Most times, you use them to benchmark a person’s follow up actions to see if it correlates with their words.
It’s only when you are emotionally intelligent that you can begin to give a good listening ear to the words of people you frolic with.
This will enable you to make certain that what you think about them is really what they are, preventing any possible future disappointment which can take you unawares.
Emotional intelligence prepares your mind for such, giving you an advantage so as to know how to handle different people in different situations.
- Forming your personality: You will find yourself setting rules and trying to control your penchant for such volatile things as money and how far you go to get it.
Anyone who says that s/he is not affected by money must be related to a god.
The problem of money is there for all men, big or small. The need and want for it causes men to do the unthinkable.
Its power is unimaginable as King Solomon puts it “Money answers all things” and he also went ahead to state that” the love of money is the root of all evil”
Humans are known better when the issue of money is involved. Though Solomon made it clear that it is the Love of money that is the problem, but not the money itself.
The mistake we make sometimes while interpreting that above statement is that we feel its money itself that is evil, we neglect the part that says ‘the love of money’, which means that we are the ones with the problem, not the money itself, which only the emotionally intelligent can control and fix.
The issue of money is an emotional issue and for a man to discipline himself towards money means that he has trained and raised that emotional part of his brain, making him not vulnerable to money charms.
Emotional intelligence is what gives you the advantage to take charge of your penchant for money starting from understanding the separation between ‘love for money’ and ‘money’
When you find yourself in control over such volatile things such as money, then you definitely are working really hard on increasing your emotional intelligence.
- Forgiving yourself and others: You will find yourself trying to forgive not only yourself but also others.
When you are emotionally intelligent, you will find ways by which you can let go of resentments that often pile up in the chest.
Emotional Intelligence allows you to get your freedom and emotional mind back to yourself.
This is because while the offender is moving on well with their lives you are busy biting, hating and carrying a heavy heart around within your heart which can even affect your body system.
Also, learn to forgive yourself for your past mistakes and move on with your life because you can’t go back in time to change events, but you can work on your present challenges.
Keeping grudges in mind is like drinking a poison expecting your offender to die, whose health is at risk here?
Like the saying “Health is not just about what you are eating, it’s also about what you are thinking and saying.”
So, if you dedicate your time thinking of what someone did wrong to you then be ready to have health-related issues. It will surely get down to your body.
Do your best to stay in charge of your emotions no matter what, this enables you to safeguard your immune system from emotional harm.
- Overcoming Ego: You will find yourself doing such things that pride and ego wouldn’t let you do like using words like ‘sorry’ or apologizing even when you are right.
Using or saying words like ‘sorry’ is not an easy task for some people and much more difficult when they have to say it when not at fault.
Pride and ego happen to take its turn when issues that require we apologize comes up. When you are emotionally intelligent, you will know that such is a weakness that you will try your best to overcome.
When you increase your Emotional intelligence, you will learn to apologize easily when even at times when you are not at fault.
It’s not foolishness as some people may see it, its wisdom beyond the common reasoning.
Also saying thank you to people will always become your normal everyday word which you will learn to use without thinking much about it.
- Celebrating others: You will find yourself working hard to appreciate other peoples’ efforts and successes even when you have not to achieve so much like them.
When it comes to commending other people’s efforts, it tends to be a little difficult especially when we have not reached the same stack or height.
Envy and jealousy cloud our emotional mind. At this point the rational mind is dormant.
Emotional intelligence teaches us how to overcome such situation and in time you will find yourself appreciating other people’s successes regardless of whether they are before or behind you on the ladder.
- Setting personal boundaries: You will find yourself being mindful of the people you frolic with and how they affect your thoughts when in their midst.
Setting boundaries around your life is protecting your life from negative people. Emotional intelligence teaches you how you can take charge of your environment.
Emotional Intelligence teaches you that a lack of boundaries may invite disrespect.
Most emotionally intelligent people are selectively social. This doesn’t mean that they don’t associate with others, they do, but a selected few whom they very keep close.
Emotional intelligence can give the idea of how the scarcity of your presence can create more value for you by increasing the need for you.
When you create boundaries, it sends a message to people of how you want to be treated, thereby allowing you to set the tone of the interaction even before any conversation is initiated by them.
It helps to scare away the non-confident, the negative personalities from trying to contaminate yours.
- Not Judging others: You will find yourself not judging other people at every slightest mistake, you begin to understand and see reasons as to why they act the way they do.
This is where empathy comes in. When you have a high Emotional Intelligence you will learn to understand other peoples’ thoughts and feelings easily, flow with them easily without much problems.
Their mistakes don’t come as a shock to you but as something that is likely to occur.
You will somehow be sensitive to their feelings and thoughts not because you have passed through the same situation in the past but because of a deep understanding which transcends beyond common reasoning.
Instead of you judging, shouting, and scolding them all the time you will see yourself correcting, advising and teaching them how to do it right and better next time.
You just have that inner understanding of life and that makes you exceptionally great when reacting towards other people.
- Not comparing self and others: You will find yourself not comparing other people to yourself at every opportunity you get, you begin to see the reasons why it is unnecessary.
Comparison is one of the factors that cause people to go out of their way to do things they wouldn’t on a normal day. Some out of comparison go into depression and it may take them a very long time to recover from it.
In a relationship or marriage, it is a fast killing pill that can turn things from 360 degrees to 0 degree in a matter of time.
Being emotionally intelligent will help your mind be contented with whatever you have, and instead of comparisons, it will allow you to take things the way they are or instead work harder or smarter to get to where you want to get to depending on the situation.
Comparison drains away energy from the mind for a lot of people and being emotionally intelligent allows you to put your emotions in check.
- Less concerned about other peoples’ opinions about you: You are less concerned and not very much bothered by what others may think of you.
Being emotionally intelligent will give you the wisdom to learn to deal with the effect of other people’s opinions about you.
Most times, other people’s opinions can put pressure on a person to do things you don’t want to do sometimes making them feel pity, regrets and depressed.
Some even go-ahead to kill themselves because of what people are saying about them. Being emotionally intelligent gives you that sense to remain calm and less concerned about what they think about you.
Bottom line
As the saying goes “You got to train your mind to be stronger than your emotions, else you will lose yourself every time.” -Anonymous
Build your inner self today by increasing your emotional intelligence. You might not be good at all the points listed above, it’s possible for you to fail at some and be good in others, it’s normal.
What is important is for you to continue improving on areas you are lagging behind.
No man is perfect. Practice optimizes personality. Begin today to work on your self, practice and if you have to, repeat your mistakes until you get things right.
How do you identify emotionally intelligent people? Let us know in the comment section.
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