>>Emotional intelligence has to do with the way that we see, the way we’re feeling,
and the way other people feel. When we think about ourselves sometimes we use the term
self-consciousness, and sometimes that has a negative connotation: I’m overly self-conscious.
But people who are emotionally intelligent actually have self-consciousness. They are
conscious about what they themselves are doing and about what they’re feeling. When we
become self-aware, we’re able to ask ourselves questions about how we’re feeling when we’re
experiencing an event. Why do we feel this way? How are other people responding to how
I’m feeling about this event? We call this introspection, and it’s an important process
of becoming emotionally intelligent. We want to be able to understand ourselves. Now you
can drive yourself crazy being too self-aware, being overly self-critical, thinking about
everything you did during the day. I do this all the time. I—I lay in bed at night thinking
about all the interactions I had sometimes, and about if I said something or if I reacted
somehow and how people responded to my reactions. You have to be careful about being overly
critical of yourself.
So while you don’t want to be too self-critical, it is useful to take stock of what’s going
on around you. How did you respond to a situation? How did others respond to you when you were
responding to that situation? Do you think you handled it the best way you could have?
Can you think of ways you might have handled it differently? The signs of an emotionally
intelligent person is they understand themselves, they understand how they react in certain
situations, and then they learn from those situations and correct their behavior. So
taking stock is really important. What you want to avoid though is being so critical
that in, in—in time you start engaging in something we call “stinking thinking”:
Where you’re thinking that everything that’s happening around you is the worse possible
thing that could happen, that there’s no way out of this. There is a way out of this.
Things that seem bad right now in retrospect aren’t bad at all. Think about the worst
thing that happened to you in high school, and think about where you are now. How did
that thing affect you today? Probably not very much. But while we’re in the middle
of a situation we tend to think that this is the worst possible thing that could happen.
So think about the future (how you’ll be a year from now?) while your going through
something difficult.
While emotionally intelligent people are self-aware, they’re also other aware. In sociology we
use the term “the other” to refer to people outside of our own self. Reminds me of a story
that I think about a lot. I remember being a young child and going to a grocery store
and seeing my teacher there, and just being shocked that Mrs. Robinson was there. Because
she didn’t belong there, she belonged in school. And she should be just waiting for
me to show up, because that’s all I knew about her—her whole life was revolving around
me. I didn’t have any appreciation that she had a life outside of my life. As we grow
older, we tend to understand better that other people lead their own lives. Emotionally intelligent
people understand that other people have feelings and they are struggling with things, and they
are experiencing the same thing that we’re experiencing, and that our job is to be as
responsive to them as we hope they will be responsive to us. So how do you become emotionally
intelligent?
First, pay attention. Pay attention to what’s going on inside your own head. Think about
how you’re reacting in situations around you. Think about why you’re feeling that
way, and think about if there are better ways to handle that situation. Second—look and
listen. How are people responding to you when you’re engaged in a situation? Are they
looking at you with disdain, are they rolling their eyes? Those are signals to you that
they don’t think you’re acting the right way. Look, listen, pay attention, learn.