The art of regulating feelings to be in control of your emotional responses
CAIRO: Do you often lose your temper with your irresponsible colleague? Can t you fight the urge to help other people although you always feel frustrated when they don t return the favor? Are your spouse s irritating habits threatening your future together? Is your demanding boss driving you crazy?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you need to work on your emotional intelligence. The two-decade old term refers not only to your social skills but to recognizing and regulating your own feelings. Emotional intelligence doesn t only aim at creating peace of mind and better integration with the community, but it also leads to success in professional and personal lives. According to Dr. Khaled Haddad, research has found that success requires 20 percent of IQ and 80 percent of EQ, or emotional intelligence.
Haddad, who gave a two-session workshop, last month on emotional intelligence at the Egyptian Center for Human Development, says that the term emotional intelligence first emerged in the 1980s, when an American company was assessing its employees with IQ tests. Later analysis found that scoring high on these tests doesn t necessarily translate to professional achievement or success.
Researchers later discovered that employees with emotional intelligence were the most successful. Thus, case studies were carried out and the science of emotional intelligence emerged based on modules of successful cases in the workplace. Later on, the field expanded to include personal life with case studies on families.
Now models exist to help people recognize their feelings, adapt to difficult situations and people and evade the unnecessary temperament. It isn t anger management, Haddad notes, it is love management. Emotional intelligence also doesn t mean being extra nice or submissive, he continues. No one forces you to be angry or trigger your temperament, he explains. Emotional intelligence is to act by will, not respond to actions. Know how feelings formulate inside you, he says.
The idea is not to change your surroundings but to learn how to be on top of it and adapt to it.
Thus the key, as Haddad stressdx, is changing the mind set. Without the will and the persistence to change yourself, acquiring the necessary skills won t do you any good. Once you have the will to change your mind set you are on the right path, says Haddad.
This is why, he continues, only very few are truly successful. Only few have the will required for emotional intelligence.
So if you have the habit of getting angry easily or you are being pushed around by your friends and peers, then you need a module to change these habits first. The module, Haddad explains, starts with adoption, which is realizing the bad habit. He warns against skipping to the next step of the module.
If you start practicing right away, you can t change . You need adoption [then] instructions, he explains. If you skip to learning the instruction and the skills before completely changing the mind set, he continues, you will return to old habits as soon as a crisis happens.
There are exercises to strengthen the will, he notes. For some people it is physical effort, for others it is emotional.
For example walking for a kilometer every day would break a certain weakness in a person s will, paving the way for the will binding to be more receptive to change. After the long walk, a person might be more willing to communicate and empathize with a character that was initially perceived as irritating.
With the will and ability to change, instructions follow. Haddad stresses the term experiential learning, meaning quitting the habit according to module and a time plan. I never advise someone to quit smoking in a week, he says.
There are over 20 soft skills for people to acquire in this stage, he adds. There are both self and social competence models. Personal competence models include self awareness, which is to know one s internal states, preferences and resources; self regulation, which is to manage disruptive emotions and impulses and self motivation, which includes optimism. Social competence model include social awareness, which means empathizing with others needs, and social skills which covers leadership, effective communication and conflict management.
I believe there is a way of doing things but people don’t know how to piece [together] the puzzle, Haddad says. After the instructions comes role modeling and direct experience. You get to be happy when you mingle with happy people, says Haddad. He points to the importance of recognizing the objective and the steps to reach these objectives. He advises people to compare themselves to their objectives (for example, which step they have realized within the monthly action plan) rather than to their peers.
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