Emotional Intelligence

• The measure of an individual’s abilities to recognize and manage their emotions, and the emotions of other people, in both individual and group situations.
• Ties in with self-management, self-awareness, emotional-awareness, self-motivation, self-assessment and self-confidence

• Self-management: The ability to effectively regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations.

• There are five things involved with self-management:
• Self-control: Involves not making hasty decisions or over-reacting but can remain calm and rational. People with good self-control typically are calm even when stressed. It allows them to clearly think under pressure and can make good decisions.
• Trustworthiness: Ability to maintain integrity, respect commitment and can keep transparency during interactions.
• Conscientiousness: Involves being self-disciplined, organized and taking responsibility. People who are conscientious typically are proactive, have lots of goals and behave rationally rather than impulsively.
• Adaptability: It’s the ability to adjust to changes in environments. People with good adaptability can respond with flexibility and are responsive to new situations.
• Innovation: Being innovative allows for the application of new and creative methods to manage oneself. This concept promotes the idea of thinking outside the box, which shows continuous improvement and adaptability to different situations.

The concept of self-management is simply knowing your own emotions. This ties in with other skills, but it goes more in depth relating to self-control and taking responsibility of actions one’s actions. It’s necessary to maintain productivity, stress management and keep a healthy work-life balance. This is one of the key things to have good emotional intelligence

Self-motivation is one of the toughest things to do. It requires people to keep going even when faced with setbacks. We need self-motivation to complete goals, feel fulfillment and improve our quality of life by improving ourselves. A person’s drive for self-motivation can be based of many things, such as loving someone or doing something for money.

Self-motivation: The force that drives you to do things

There are two different types of motivators:

1. Intrinsic: Relates to what we want to do,
2. Extrinsic: Relates to what we must do

• When it comes to working for something, people are more motivated when they love what they’re doing.

Parts of Self-motivation:

1. Personal drive to achieve: Ambitions or personal empowerment to complete goals
2. Commitment to goals: Having a goal made is easier to complete than without one for our well-being
3. Initiative: Ability to take advantage of opportunities when they occur, combination of courage and risk taking
4. Optimism/Resilience: The ability to stay positive, and can bounce back from after a setback
5. Knowing these elements of self-motivation can make it easier for you improve it.

Here are some strategies to help improved motivation:

1. Create clear goals: Define specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) goals.
2. Make habits: If you start implementing positive habits, even if they’re small, it will make a difference in your motivation. They can start of tiny and grow more once you’re used to them.
3. Foresee obstacles: Try considering potential obstacles early on, so that if they occur you won’t be surprised and have already created a solution to solve it.
4. Reward yourself: Even if the action is small, a win is a win. Rewards can help improve motivation.
5. Change your environment: Sometimes it’s helpful to change your surroundings, this can also boost motivation. It can either be rearranging your desk or moving to a new study environment
6. Visualize success: If you can visualize yourself being successful, you can do it. Try imaging an image of yourself completing your goal every morning. This will help reinforce your goals and stay motivated.

Being self-motivated or improving self-motivation won’t happen overnight. The process can be lengthy for someone who doesn’t do it regularly or has clear goals defined. There are many skills involved with self-motivation and it’s necessary to be motivated to complete them successfully. Skills such as: Time management, self-management, and self-awareness need to have some kind of motivation put into them so they can be effective. Overall, if you can master self-motivation, you can set your mind to anything you want to do in life. There is nothing holding you back once you have found yourself.

• Self-awareness: Recognition of one’s own personality, feelings, motives and desires, so focusing on yourself.
• Consists of emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence
• To effectively be self-aware, you need to know your own emotions, personal strengths/weaknesses, limits and self-worth.

• Emotional awareness: Ability to recognize your own emotions and the effects they can have.

• To be emotionally aware you should be able to

1. Can differentiate emotions you are feeling at anytime and why
2. Understand how your emotions, thoughts and actions are connected
3. Know how your feelings can affect your performance and thought process
4. Can still uphold personal values, even when affected by emotions

• Self-assessment: Process of analyzing and evaluating oneself or one’s actions to gain insights into strengths, weaknesses and knowing your limits.
• People who are proficient at this can understand their own strengths, weaknesses, limits, and can keep a positive attitude.
• Sometimes It may be hard to admit to weaknesses and even be in denial because of this. It’s best to know what your own limits are, so you don’t burn out, set unrealistic goals, and be blinded by ambition.
• You can conquer this by seeking feedback from others, honest feedback is the best type to reflect on and act.

• Self-confidence: The ability to have a strong sense of one’s self-worth and not needing others to validate you.

• If you have strong self-confidence, you should be able to:

1. Strong self-presentation, you may be viewed as charismatic or seem to have a confident personality type.
2. Prepared to express unpopular opinions and can take criticism from others because of it.
3. Make decisions without being indecisive and can keep personal values in mind when making choices.

• Low self-confidence, it can be caused by: fear of criticism, the unknown, low self-esteem, lack of knowledge and fear of making mistakes
• Over-confidence can be an issue for some since you might believe that you can do anything. If you’re overly confident you may be seen as arrogant or egotistical and it’s likely people will pray on your downfall because of your arrogance.
• Keep in mind, self-confidence and self-esteem are not the same but are linked together.
• When completing a task, not making mistakes doesn’t equal confidence. Having confidence means you know what to do when mistakes happen and can work around them.

When improving self-confidence, it’s not an instant fix and you are likely to end up trying to appear more confident in front of others. It’s not bad as it can eventually lead to your self-confidence growing. Just understand it won’t happen overnight.

Here are ways to improve self-confidence:

• Planning and preparation
• Learning more
• Having positive thoughts
• Learn to accept criticism
• Accept compliments and try complimenting yourself
• Use past mistakes as a learning experience
• Look for a role model
• Try gaining experience and strive to become good at the things you do
• Set ‘confidence’ goals that will make you set out of your comfort zone
• Avoid becoming arrogant
• Keep calm, when you’re less confident you’re more likely to be stressed and not calm