How to develop emotional intelligence: Social skills they didn't teach you in school?

At school we were taught history, geography, mathematics and other subjects. But few people paid attention inner world, namely how to correctly identify and cope with emotions. And this is no less important than science.

American explorer Daniel Goleman determined that success depends on the ability to manage your emotions to a much greater extent than from mental abilities.

For example, there are many entrepreneurs who have gathered and organized around them people many times smarter than themselves. It's all about emotional intelligence - the ability to recognize your feelings and emotions, use them and manage them to your advantage.

There is no scale that measures a person's emotional intelligence, but there is individual characteristics, by which personality can be assessed. These components make up emotional intelligence.

What is emotional intelligence?

Self-awareness

Self-awareness includes understanding own feelings. It’s important to pay attention to how you form your thoughts and what you feel. This assumes the presence accurate assessment what you are capable of and when you need help.

Self-government

This is the ability to keep your emotions under control. In this case, a person can calmly discuss disagreements and avoid actions that may arise out of feelings of pity or panic.

Motivation

A person should be motivated not only by monetary reward. He must do something to have fun, satisfy curiosity, or simply be useful.

Empathy

Social skills

There are certain rules, according to which emotions arise. For example, understanding the reason why your interlocutor is now irritated will allow you to first calm him down, and then get what you wanted from him.

Social skills will help you be persuasive, find common language with others and manage them in the work environment.

How to develop emotional intelligence

Keep a diary

At the end of each day, write down what happened to you, how you felt, and how you dealt with it. Periodically look through the diary and draw conclusions.

Ask others

Ask your loved ones questions about your strengths and weaknesses. Write down everything they said, compare it with your perceptions and look for patterns.

Take a break

Before you react to something, pause. You only need two or three seconds to think about whether you are doing the right thing. That's why communicating online is always easier.

Channel your emotions in the right direction

For example, if something doesn’t work out for you, you get angry. Direct this anger towards achieving results and never give up.

Determine what you really want from life

Do not pay attention to the generally accepted model in society successful person. Think about what exactly you want.

Choose someone you can consult with difficult situations. This person will support you and will not let you be lazy and feel sorry for yourself.

Flexibility

During a conflict, be interested in the other side's point of view. If you remain locked in the cage of your own opinion, not letting anything in, then you will leave no room for compromise.

The ability to manage emotions is sometimes more important than using the mind. Develop your emotional intelligence and you will see yourself succeeding in life.

“Emotions lead to delusions and this is their value, the value of science is in its unemotionality.”

"The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Have you ever noticed how emotions distort or transform reality? In psychology there is special term“Emotional intelligence” and it has a special designation - EQ. People started talking about him again at the beginning of the 2000s. Let's talk about what this concept is and how to develop emotional intelligence.

Managing emotional intelligence became of interest to me long before I heard this term. It was an intuitive understanding that the development of the situation, or the lack of results, is influenced not only by my thoughts, but also by my reaction to them, emotional state. Rather, it is emotions that shape thoughts, and not vice versa. Negative thoughts appear precisely because a person does not have complete information about current events, worries, experiences fear, resentment, anger and certain expectations. Agree, most conflicts arise because our loved ones do not behave the way we expect them to. Psychologists note that clarification of relationships, or who is right, occurs because a person does not receive strong, bright, positive feelings from reality and the struggle is designed to compensate for this deficiency.

Stressful situations become a goldmine for a certain circle of people. This includes fortune tellers, magicians, and psychics. Various sessions act like morphine; they remove negativity for a while, leaving positive experiences and a feeling of relaxation. As a result, the client comes again to receive not the prediction itself, but the confidence that everything will be okay. This is the best case scenario.

Some psychics and magicians deliberately increase the level of anxiety in clients in order to instill even greater fear and, in this way, lure out large sums of money. They cling to what is important to a person: relationships with a loved one, health, and so on. Emotional intelligence exercises helped me move away from constant feeling fear and anxiety, think soberly and look for constructive solution problems without turning to third parties for help. I will tell you about several effective techniques.

Concept of emotional intelligence

Psychologists Kahneman and Smith conducted research in the field of behavioral psychology, for which they were awarded Nobel Prize. They managed to prove that most people, when making decisions, are guided by emotions, not logic.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to see one’s strengths and weaknesses and accept them in other people, the ability to separate personal feelings and facts. There are low and high level emotional intelligence. A low level of emotional intelligence is characterized by the following emotions:

• envy;
• criticism;
• condemnation;
• tunnel vision of the situation (a person sees only one possible option developments and, most often, in negative tones);
• suppression of feelings;
• a high level of emotional intelligence is characterized by:
• flexibility of mind;
• variability of thinking (a person can find many options for the development of events and work through each of them in detail);

EQ - intelligence helps to find a common language with people of different social groups and ages. Managing emotional intelligence is useful in business, sales, and any team work that requires organizing and inspiring people.

Why is this necessary?

Not everyone understands why it is necessary to develop EQ - intelligence. There are several reasons for this:

1. Adequate assessment of one’s own capabilities, acceptance of strengths and weaknesses of your personality, efficient use internal resources.
2. Understanding the causes of certain emotions.
3. Understanding and respect for the feelings of surrounding people and family.
4. Understanding the needs of other people and building a line of behavior based on them.
5. Acceptance and understanding of the conditions of objective reality.
6. Managing emotions, quickly finding solutions in a given situation.

You will receive not only emotional stability, but also respect from other people, both in the team and from management. A person who can understand others can grow into a good leader. You can, for example, write your own book on managing emotions, or become the head of a company, or maybe in the future you will conduct personal growth training yourself? Today this direction is very popular, the experience of people who, without special education, were able to understand themselves and rise to the occasion is especially valued. new level welfare.

Such masters include, for example, Joe Vitale, who became a multimillionaire after several years of living on the street, or Niko Bauman, who wrote a series of books about the power of mental focusing without any special education. The young author founded his own online school, conducts webinars and intensive courses in which he teaches people to control their attention and direct emotions in the right direction.

Stages

Experts distinguish 4 stages of development of emotional intelligence:

1. Communicate clearly and clearly with others, listen well, and communicate expectations. The ability to motivate people to take active action, teamwork, leading a small group of people, the ability not to get involved in open conflict.
2. Feeling comfortable among large group people, regardless of whether you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, the ability to understand the emotions of other people, rare cases of misunderstanding with someone.
3. Knowledge and acceptance of all positive and negative aspects their personality, a comfortable existence with them, understanding their emotions and their influence on current events.
4. Skillful management of emotions, limiting their destructive influence, ability to fulfill promises and responsibilities, maintaining long-term relationships, acting according to circumstances.

Development methods

Let's look at 7 main ways to develop emotional intelligence in adults.

1. Refuse to share feelings. From an early age, we are taught to divide things into categories: this is good, this is bad, there is black and white. But such a division is very subjective, because in general you do not know what prompted a person to commit a not very good act from the point of view of society. Maybe if you found yourself in such a situation, you would do worse. What I mean is that there are halftones in the world. Anger, for example, is considered a bad emotion, but it contains a hidden desire for everything to become better than it is, and this is already a positive side. For many people, during an attack of anger, a source of inner strength opens. Refusal to divide emotions into “good” and “bad” helps to understand the reason for the occurrence of those that are commonly called negative.
2. Write down the emotions you experienced during the day. By keeping notes in a journal, you can easily track what triggered the experience. In addition, over time, you will be able to track how your reaction to a similar situation has changed. Write down without limiting yourself and you will understand what makes you worry, how you react, for example, to fear, and what makes you move on.
3. Observe people and situations that make you feel a wave of strong emotions. Describe in your diary the physical sensations of the emotions you experienced.
4. If you find it difficult to track and write down your emotions, observe your preferences: what you prefer to watch, listen to, what you read about, what fills your mind day after day. What songs or films do you feel an inner connection with, and why did you make this particular choice? Which characters do you have an inner sympathy for and why? Answering these questions will help you start tracking your emotions.
5. Sometimes our emotions and words are spoken by other people, in the lines of a song, in a performance, in a film. They experience the same emotions as you, which makes you feel a kind of euphoria. You can remember several catchy episodes.
6. The most proven way to understand another person is to put yourself in their shoes. Think about how you would feel in those circumstances or if another person said to you what you said.
7. Think through the worst-case scenario, what will you do in this case, how can you get out of the situation? This will help you calm down.

Own your emotions, don’t let them control you, you are the masters of your life. Even the most unpleasant situation can be changed simply by looking at it from a different perspective. By addressing what makes you uncomfortable, you can become strong personality, because the internal state does not depend on the money in your pocket, or on your position, or on the presence or absence of a partner nearby. You are the creator of everything that happens; you have the power to fly or fall.

We want ourselves and our children to be successful and happy. But we often forget that it is impossible to put an equal sign between these concepts. You can be successful, but still feel unhappy all the time. Or you can constantly experience difficulties in your studies or career, but treat them not as a tragedy, but as a step forward.

Why are emotions so important?

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

Charles Swindoll, writer

The modern world is full stressful situations, which are difficult to cope with even for adults, not to mention children. They do not understand and do not know what emotions they experience at one time or another, or how to manage them, so they have a distorted idea of ​​what is happening. This leads to neuroses, apathy and other depressive states.

The inflated demands of teachers, instilling in a small individual the importance of victory and superiority (many want to be the parents of winners) - all this is too heavy a load for fragile children's shoulders. The heavier this load, the more important it is to deal with the child’s feelings and experiences.

Already in adulthood, we see that people who cannot control their emotions have troubles in all areas of life, including in their careers.

When a man is covered negative emotions and cannot objectively assess his feelings, desires and capabilities, a destructive effect is guaranteed.

Relationships with others deteriorate, a person withdraws into himself, loses faith in himself, his strengths or his professionalism, becomes irritable, and becomes even more confused in his feelings. And then the question arises: “What level of emotional intelligence does he have?”

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is responsible for recognizing and correctly interpreting emotions. It is he who gives a person psychological flexibility and the ability to effectively interact with the world around him.

That is why the concept of “emotional intelligence” was first voiced in relation to career building and self-realization. However, psychologists immediately caught the infantile subtext in this, because the fundamental development of personality occurs precisely in childhood.

For a child, the development of EQ is an opportunity to create an established and understandable system of perception that will allow you to effectively interact with people around you, correctly perceive criticism, recognize the feelings of adults and peers and adequately respond to them.

Aggression, apathy, bad dream, absent-mindedness, inability to establish contacts with peers and other alarming manifestations in a child’s behavior are obvious signals that indicate the need to develop emotional intelligence.

How to develop emotional intelligence from childhood?

The most important thing in the life of any child is parental love. Love your child, show him tenderness and care. Tactile communication between mother and child does not lose its significance for children older than infancy.

Love allows every person to feel protected and confident. This is a reliable foundation for the development of a successful personality.

In addition, it is very important to create the right associations with different emotions. Show your child the real example what is joy? Perhaps it's the smell of cake? Maybe the ringing of a bell? What about friendship? Do you associate friendship with hugs? If not, then what does it look like in your mind?

Create a colorful and vibrant world around your child, in which every feeling and sensation has its own color, aroma and taste. This way you will not only open the doors to the world of emotions for your child, but also get closer to him and further strengthen the trust between you.

A similar method works with . Don't just read, but play fairy tales, tell them to children magical stories through a game or a small performance. Act out a scene in front of them, use tactile sensations, aromatic oils, appropriate intonation - this will allow the child to feel the whole gamut of sincere emotions that a magical story evokes.

Each of these methods is well described in our book “Monsiki. What are emotions and how to be friends with them.” Ours, because we created it together with my son Gleb, based on our own experience. It can be safely called detailed instructions for parents, where one of the most effective methods EQ development is shown through interaction with fairy-tale characters Monsikami. Each one represents a specific emotion and has skills that will help children understand and cope with those emotions in a variety of ways. Monsies are kind fairy-tale creatures, and fairy tales are best perceived by a child.

Working on emotional intelligence in childhood is the key successful development and well-being in the future.

Most likely, such a child, as an adult, will be able to avoid most of the psychological problems that modern society faces us with today.

Children are more receptive to everything new, their psyche is like plasticine - flexible and ingenuous. But what will be molded from this plasticine often depends only on the adults. So let's start with ourselves.

Simple exercises to develop EQ

The methodology for developing EQ is simple and straightforward, but requires care and regular implementation. Here are the simplest and most effective exercises.

Mindfulness Exercises

Emotional diary

To learn to be aware of yourself here and now, write down every three hours the emotion you experience in at the moment. At the end of the day, identify the dominant emotion and think about what you need to work on.

In a couple of weeks you will learn to feel yourself in real time without any difficulties.

This exercise will be made more effective by a kind of checking - an analysis of the physical state when experiencing a certain emotion. This practice is also good for improving health.

Stop!

How often are our actions accompanied by ? We don’t think about what we are doing, but simply perform some familiar, regular manipulations. Exercise “Stop!” consists of abruptly interrupting any action in order to get rid of inertia and allow yourself to think about the situation. This is the only way to feel yourself here and now, to begin to control your reality.

Exercises to improve self-esteem

What luck!

Teach yourself to think positively when reacting even to unpleasant events with the phrase: “What luck!” Such a reaction will be a surprise to others, but this fact will also benefit you, because then you will find even more advantages in the situation. To enhance the effect, you can use the phrase: “This is so great because...”. Why? Think about it.

Sell ​​your weakness

An effective technique that allows you to interpret even negative aspects of personality in a positive way. Tell the audience about your shortcoming in other words, give it a different color. For example, can caution be considered cowardice, and courage - recklessness? But it all depends on which side you look at it from. The synthon approach is based on a positive approach to development. He says: you have no shortcomings, you have features.

It is necessary to develop your strengths and work on your weaknesses.

With this approach, you can sell any of your shortcomings. For example, sell uncertainty. Tell the audience honestly and truthfully how, having this quality, before taking an important step, you consider all options for events, look closely at various solutions and only after that you take the most beneficial step for you.

Exercises to develop motivation

Openness to new things

To develop this valuable quality in yourself, you can use a simple, but very effective exercise, which is to find as much as possible more options application of the most ordinary things. Let it be an ordinary towel, an old bucket or just a piece of cardboard. Come up with greatest number options for how to use these things. It's not only interesting, but also fun. Therefore, practice this exercise with your family and children. They will have a great time and work on their imagination and ingenuity.

Two random words

Open any book or magazine, randomly select two words from the text and try to find something in common between them. Compare them, analyze, reflect and make connections. It's effective and fun.

Exercise to increase adaptability

Finally, the well-known Elevator Pitch method is a presentation of your business project in 30–60 seconds. Imagine that you are your own business project. Start presenting yourself as brightly as possible, while remaining honest with yourself.

To get started, use this template:

1. Profession.
2. Hobby.
3. How am I changing the world for the better?

Each of these exercises will help you become a better person emotionally and psychological sense. However, emotional intelligence should not be perceived as universal key to success. Life is quite multifaceted. So improve your mind, body, soul and love yourself. After all, the only thing we have control over in this world is ourselves.

it is essentially a type of brain injury that occurs from the moment you are born.

Socially active people are not more emotionally intelligent than those who prefer to be alone most of the time.

Every day we are faced with 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 transformed into electrical signals that travel throughout your body. These signals are transmitted from cell to cell until they reach end point travel - your brain. They enter the brain through a zone located next to spinal cord, however, they then move to the frontal lobe (located directly behind the forehead) and only then enter the part of the brain responsible for rational, logical thinking. However, the whole point is that on 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 from an emotional point of view.

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

The next part of the article will give practical advice on the development of the 2 remaining social intelligence skills.

Emotional intelligence is a phenomenon that, at first glance, contains a contradiction. Intelligence is commonly understood as thinking, cognitive sphere a person, and emotions are something irrational that cannot be controlled by reason.

But emotions and feelings can be controlled by the individual, fully realized, and controlled by willpower. Ability to understand and manage your emotional experiences, as well as the experiences of other people, are determined as"emotional intelligence".

Developing emotional intelligence is useful for both inner harmony personality, and for harmony in relationships with other people, in the family and at work. Developed emotional intelligence helps maintain physical and mental health.

Emotional intelligence needs to be developed because it:

• promotes awareness, understanding and self-acceptance, without self-flagellation and soul-searching,
• develops intuition, the ability to understand non-verbal signals in communication,
• balances emotional reactions in stressful situations,
• develops stress resistance,
• teaches you to better understand other people, their emotions and feelings,
• helps resolve communication difficulties, find compromises,
• promotes conflict resolution through cooperation,
• protects from manipulation, does not allow the individual to become a victim of a manipulator,
• promotes making thoughtful rather than impulsive decisions,
• prevents emotional burnout at work,
• increases sensitivity to signals from your own body, develops understanding of the psychosomatic aspect of the development of diseases,
• develops the ability to relax and rest, turning off the “internal dialogue”.

Ways to develop emotional intelligence

For some people, emotional intelligence is quite developed already in childhood due to the characteristics of their upbringing, while other people experience significant difficulties and need tips on how to develop the ability to understand others and themselves. Emotional intelligence develops in the process of personality development, during socialization and the accumulation of life experience.

To develop emotional intelligenceyou need to systematically work on yourselfin the following directions:

Widespread simple technique control over emotions called “count to ten”. A person, before expressing his opinion and emotions to another individual, mentally counts from one to ten. The essence of this technique is not in counting, but in the fact that you should think first, and then speak or do!

The wonderful proverb “Measure twice, cut once” perfectly characterizes developed emotional intelligence!