Success and Emotional Intelligence

After we graduate from school Emotional Quotient, not Intelligence Quotient is the most critical factor in our success.

In 2016 World Economic Forum in its report "The Future of Jobs & Skills" it was highlighted that emotional intelligence will be one of the Top-10 most required skills by 2020.

Emotional intelligence is about understanding and at the same time managing our emotions. It is the ability to accurately perceive our emotions and stay aware of them as they happen. To use this awareness of our emotions to positively change our behavior. To pick up on emotions in others and understand what is really going on. It enables us to use our emotions and the others’ emotions to successfully manage interactions.

Intellectual intelligence is not learnable while Emotional intelligence is learned and is learnable by everyone. The day to day practice of doing emotional labor is what blooms our emotional intelligence. In the beginning this practice often requires a ‘leap of faith.’ Later, this leap is rewarded by better results.

The energy we choose to surround ourselves with has a reasonable effect on our emotions and results. Billions of neurons in our brain work simultaneously to generate a conscious experience and not just any conscious experience. Our experience of the world around us and of our self within it. According to a study conducted by neuroscientist Anil Seth, an individual is hallucinating all the time. It is this hallucination which when we agree upon becomes "reality."

Whether positive or negative, emotions are contagious energy virus which spreads throughout an organization. The mirror neurons in our brain are able to resonate with the energy of the people around us who are actually having the experience. We experience their emotions just as if we were the ones having that experience. Our emotional system depends on external sources to manage itself. This is how we are able to ‘catch the feelings’ or mood of the others in the group.

Brain plasticity or neurogenesis refers to the brain’s ability to change and develop new habits, beliefs and behaviors at any age. Our brain reorganizes itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons).

Every day the brain generates 10,000 stem cells which further split into two. One of them becomes the daughter line that continue producing stem cells and the other migrates to location wherever it is needed in the brain and becomes that kind of cell. Quite often that location is where the cell is needed for new learning. For next 4 months that new cell forms about 10,000 connections with others to create a completely new circuitry. The brain is continually reshaping itself according to our actions and experiences. When we try to overcome an existing habit, we are up against the thickness of the circuitry (neural network pathways) of something we have practiced and repeated thousands of times over the years. This is the unconscious default option we do automatically.

It is important to realize that our unconscious habits, attitudes and beliefs are thousands of times stronger than our conscious goals and desires. In order to develop new habits, attitudes and beliefs we must be committed to practicing new and better actions. This is how new neural network pathways are created. As we start to form a new habit the new pathway is competing with the old habit pathway. To make the new habit strong enough to win these internal battles we need to practice the new behavior over and over again. Mastery is achieved when the new habit becomes the brain’s default way of responding. Connections strengthen as we practice these new habits.

As we learn and practice the habit of mindfulness we become less resistive, judgmental and attached to outcome. This is the key to our emotional intelligence and success.