Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence Paper

Emotional intelligence is the innate potential to feel, use, communicate, recognize, remember, describe, identify, learn from, manage, understand and explain emotions (Hein, 2007). This review will discuss what I hope to gain from this course, as well as discuss how this course will assist in applying emotional intelligence in my daily life.

Emotional intelligence is a way to improve social effectiveness. For me, it is about learning how to interact with others. By taking this course, I’ll learn to communicate with others as well as learn from my past mistakes. Many people let their emotions get the better of them. Emotions are funny in that way and they often occur without warning. We have all been in a situation where you think that if you do one particular thing, then everything else will just fall into place. We try to assume what will be the next logical step and then when we are wrong, we are shocked at how the results turn out.

Perceptions and stereotypes paint a picture in our minds of certain things. We assume that we will like or dislike something based on limited knowledge or limited experience with something or someone. Have you ever met someone that you really did not like right away, but after a while, you seem to enjoy his or her company? Could this be from a snap judgment or assumption made too quickly? It could be from a feeling of jealousy, maybe you did not care for what the person was wearing?

Many times people let their emotions make important decisions and this sometimes can cause more problems. Emotions can clearly cloud someone’s judgment regarding a person, topic, or just about anything. Emotions cause some people to make rash decisions and then more often than not, they are left wondering what went wrong.

We have all heard the expression; lead with your heart and not your head. This is because our emotions can take us down a different path than reasoning. I reasonably look at my checkbook and know that I need to save money to go on vacation, but my emotions get the better of me when I see something that I just need to buy to satisfy my happiness for that moment. My brain is rational and knows that I need to sleep a certain amount of time, but I can easily talk myself into staying up later to watch a good television show or finish my homework.

The key is to learn how to balance your thoughts and emotions. I need to learn the way to reasonably think things through