“People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought.”

 – Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence

Growing up being bullied, I would like to believe that my emotional intelligence developed at an early age. Like many individuals out there, we all deal with stress that comes with our social and work relationships, however if we don’t understand our emotions, we are unable to manage the stress that comes with life which could lead to so many different mental and physical health issues, making us victims to the most common mental health issues like depression and anxiety. This is why emotional intelligence is an essential skill to acquire, it helps us better understand, identify, and express our emotions in various encounters.

Daniel Goleman, an author and science journalist on behavioural sciences, made the elements of emotional intelligence accessible to society. He made society recognise that emotional intelligence is just as important as IQ.

Emotional Intelligence is one’s ability to understand their own emotions in order to use, and manage these emotions in positive ways in order to relieve stress, handle conflict, communicate effectively with others around them, and empathise with others, and to overcome challenges that you face in your daily life. I think that the youth struggles with emotional intelligence because we are so focused on what others think of us and how can we make them like us. We are too busy looking to the outside world for validation about our lives and our self-worth that we forget to consider our own feelings.

Various research studies have found that emotional intelligence helps us connect with our feelings, helping us obtain more informed decisions about important things in our lives, allows us to build stronger relationships, and even helps us archive our personal goals both at school and work.

Why is emotional intelligence such an important skill to have and to learn, you may ask? A good/high emotional intelligence will help you in your physical and mental health, your work, and social relationships. Good emotional intelligence can help one deal with the social complexities they face in different environment.

Daniel Goleman identified five components which can help you improve your emotional intelligence:

• Emotional self-awareness: Being knowledgeable of others feelings at any moment, and understanding how those feelings/moods can affect others, and being alert to your feelings
• Self-regulation: controlling or managing your own feelings
• Motivation: utilising emotional factors to achieve goals and persevere
• Empathy: understanding how others feel (putting yourself in someone else’s shoes)
• Social skills: knowing how to handle your feelings during interactions with others

I think as the youth, we need to work on acquiring these five components so it works hand in hand with our intelligence. We need to be more mindful, learning to focus our attention on the present moment and not letting stress hinder our performance at school and work.

I have seen so many of my friends prepare so hard for exams and assignments but receive bad results because the moment it’s time to write a test anxiety gets in the way hindering their performance which is an example of self-sabotage because of the inability to control emotions. I too have been a victim of this and I think so many other people have too. The moment I learned to control my anxiety after reading Daniel Goleman’s ‘Working with emotional intelligence and Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ’, I have learned to manage and better understand my feelings and how it affects my school life, and I think it’s good to share what you learn to help others reach their full potential and be more mindful too.