Defining Emotional Intelligence & Discovering Its Importance in Student Life

Emotional intelligence is the ability of people to identify emotions, of others as well as their own, distinguish between feelings, use emotional information to navigate their thoughts and actions, conform emotions to get accustomed to circumstances or accomplish an objective.

In his book, Daniel discussed the significance of this concept in our lives under five major characteristics with which I will be establishing context of the role of emotional intelligence in our lives in this blog post.

The first one i.e. ‘self-awareness’ refers to one’s tendency to introspect and recognize his emotions as per the circumstantial developments around him. It’s crucial in helping a person get back to his usual efficiency of performing tasks. If someone isn’t able to figure out the cause of his detrimental work-rate, it’s more likely to be due to a lack of self-awareness than anything else. His emotional self might not be able to keep up with his daily routine. Knowing one’s emotions can be difficult because as students, we go through a lot of phases. Moments of introspection play a key role subconsciously. When one is aware of the various feelings prevailing over his mind, it becomes easier to adapt to the situation shaping up and improvise accordingly. Playing around our strengths in student life also requires us to be conscious of our sentiments after all.

The second characteristic is the management of our emotions. However, to be able to manage our emotions, we need to know and understand them first, which is exactly the objective of the first characteristic. Managing our emotions refers to the way we handle them as we carry our mental self across the various phases we encounter as a student. The significance of this attribute in our lives stems from the fact that it enables us to maintain a distance between our emotional and professional lives as students, as in it not only shields the outputs in our projects or studies from the dips and variations which occur in our emotions, but if done more efficiently, can also help us improve our results to a great extent.

Self-motivation, the third factor helps us recover from setbacks in life. It primarily refers to our persistence or the ability of completing a task which needs to be done. It is also responsible for the desire which arouses within and drives us forward toward our goals. This aspect acts as our sustainability while we’re engrossed in the pursuit of our ambitions.

The fourth one, empathy refers to our ability of interpreting the emotional state of the people around us. Just as the popular saying goes, “Do to others as you wish to be done by” – we are responsible for the behaviour and actions of the people around us which makes it extremely vital for us to possess empathy. Miscalculation of the emotions of people we interact with, in our life can be disastrous for either of us. A good example of empathy is offering constructive criticism to a colleague rather than simply criticizing his work. Constructive criticism involves being specific to the problem being faced, offering an alternate solution and making the other person realize the reason why his idea or resolution is flawed.

The final and the most important aspect of emotional intelligence is “handling relationships” which focuses on interpersonal effectiveness. Our way with the people we interact with, daily in our college lives, sets the tone for our personality and image in the environment. As relationships develop, we feel more stable mentally and don’t feel short of people to reach out to, in times of issues.

The establishment of a healthy working or college environment depends entirely on this characteristic. It helps us the most when it comes to getting recommendations and catalyses our performance too. Being around people helps add a sense of belonging and makes it easier for us to adjust to surroundings. 

I did my best explaining how emotional intelligence affects students. Hope this blog post helps you :)

Have a good day!