Coaching is a discipline created to develop strategies that allow us to face challenges with personal and professional development, and a good part of this has to do with being able to manage our emotions and modulate them appropriately when relating to others.
This area of life is one that is dominated by a set of skills known as emotional intelligence ; Let’s see why it is fundamental in the work of coaches.
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher, said that “the heart has reasons that reason ignores” almost four hundred years ago. The sometimes conflictive relationship between our cognition and feelings has been the subject of interest of different disciplines throughout history.
Today, we know that Our emotions are adaptive and universal internal experiences that have helped the human species survive the natural and social environment Without anxiety, there would be no one to alert us that we should devise a future strategy to obtain food; Without love, we would have no warning about the need to reproduce. As time went by, as a result of the evolutionary developments of our brain and the increase in the complexity of our language, the possibility of developing increasingly abstract conceptual relationships opened up. This allowed great advantages, such as the fact that we could anticipate hypothetical events based on our thoughts, but it also led us to make erroneous interpretations and trigger emotional responses even in circumstances that do not pose a literal risk to our lives.
On the other hand, in our daily lives, in a world permeated by communication massmedia, hyperconnection and consumption norms, the stimuli to which we must adapt have changed drastically. So much so that it is not strange that, suddenly, we feel that we are being deceived by them and we lose sight of what is happening inside us, specifically on an emotional level. The psychological construct of emotional intelligence is one that states the value of being able to perceive our emotions and thus act accordingly And, despite being an abstract concept, having greater emotional intelligence has concrete repercussions in our daily lives; as we will develop in this article.
Emotional intelligence is a psychological concept that has acquired unexpected popularity in recent years. Emotional intelligence is talked about in the media, magazines, social networks and by word of mouth as well. This does not have to be problematic in itself, since through these channels there are many professionals who spread their knowledge to share it with the community. However, the information density can be overwhelming and, at the end of the day, many people could end up not knowing what emotional intelligence is.
The concept of emotional intelligence was popularized with the best-selling book by Goleman, emotional intelligence, but the expression had previously been used by many other authors such as Payne, Beldoch and Leuner. Among them, Meyer proposes a definition for precise emotional intelligence, conceiving it as the ability to perceive, assimilate, understand and regulate one’s own emotions and those of others, promoting emotional and intellectual growth. Therefore, according to this definition, information from our emotions can be used to guide our thinking and behavior.
Emotional intelligence allows us to articulate thoughts and emotions
Emotions have immeasurable power over our thoughts; also vice versa. Being emotionally intelligent gives us the virtue of being able to reflect on our emotional states, interpret them, and act accordingly when we consider it necessary. In turn, some processes used in some psychotherapies, such as cognitive restructuring in cognitive-behavioral therapy, seek to modify biased thoughts and beliefs in order to change the way we feel and behave, giving proof of this articulation between thoughts and emotions. This reciprocal relationship is possible, at a neurobiological level, due to the neural connections between our amygdala—responsible for providing rapid emotional responses to information from the environment and for assigning an emotional component to the information we store in our memory—and the prefrontal cortex—the which functionally houses the activity of thought, and manages, controls and inhibits the behaviors it carries out consequently.
Blaise Pascal’s phrase with which we introduced the article does not have to apply in every situation. In truth, the fact that our reason is permanently opposed to the emotional states we experience (and even opposed to feeling them) can cause high levels of discomfort
Emotional intelligence operates like a magnifying glass, since it allows us to broaden our vision towards what we carry inside and that, no matter how unpleasant it may feel, can bring a valuable message to us. Ultimately, being emotionally intelligent allows us to take control and be the ones who decide what to do with what happens to us, instead of being guided by automatism and ignorance.
The effects of the importance of emotional intelligence in everyday life
Daniel Goleman proposed some areas of daily life in which the implementation of emotional intelligence is key. For example, at work, emotional intelligence would allow us to fully feel the pressures and frustrations we endure during work hours. In the short term, approaching emotions can be very unpleasant. However, it is an attitude typical of an emotionally intelligent person, since only by feeling what happens to us can we determine if it is convenient for us to tolerate that pressure or take a different direction at work. Again, here it is possible to notice the swing that exists between thought and emotion when there is high emotional intelligence.
Another area of daily life in which emotional intelligence is key is the area of interpersonal relationships This ability allows us to understand the feelings of those around us, empathize with them and their pain. Adopting this attitude will give us greater possibilities of living with others in a harmonious environment; also to accentuate our ability to work as a team. This is essential for work, but also academically and in family, friend or partner relationships.
Finally, the area that shines most when we develop high emotional intelligence is intrapersonal, since it allows us to make wiser decisions. Emotional intelligence gives us the ability to discriminate when it is necessary to act based on an intense emotion that we feel and, conversely, when it is better not to do so. There is a mythical phrase that states that “we are the sum of our decisions that we make every day”, and although it is possible to argue that we are much more than that, without a doubt being in contact with our inner world will fill us with much more experiences. consistent with the life we wish to undertake.
Do you want to know more about Emotional Intelligence?
As we have seen, emotional intelligence has become an important point in the field of behavioral psychology and more and more people are interested in knowing this concept in depth.
Due to the high demand it presents, training courses that include Emotional Intelligence have emerged in recent years, such as the Postgraduate Course in Emotional Intelligence and Self-Knowledge for Leadership or the Advanced Course in Emotional Intelligence to combat stress. Mediterranean School of Psychology
In addition, the Master in Coaching, NLP, Team Leadership and Decision Making, one of the most complete at the Mediterranean School of Psychology, has recently been updated with a new Emotional Intelligence module. Mediterranean School of Psychology has more than 50 online training programs for master’s degrees, postgraduate degrees and courses and a wide catalog specialized in coaching. Become a professional in Coaching and Emotional Intelligence with the Mediterranean School of Psychology training.
