Emotional Intelligence And Positive Psychology: Discovering The Keys To Success
Emotions are perhaps one of those spheres of personality that we rarely value and that in Western culture tend to continue to be considered something like irrational: mere outbursts of our animality that distance us from the ideal of logical quasi-machine men.
Although it is also very true that this vision is no longer as strong as it was in the times of the Enlightenment, The truth is that a dualistic vision that separates reason from the “heart” continues to exist and continues to permeate or rather, of emotions.
Two essential concepts: positive psychology and emotional intelligence
This conception of the human person, which falls more within the scope of philosophical study and discussion, has had repercussions beyond the merely theoretical. Indeed, at the time the Enlightenment vision led to important political and social changes attested in any history book and along with them an enormous scientific and industrial advance that in a few decades advanced by leaps and bounds and whose benefits and consequences we continue to experience today.
It is enough to observe life always fast and moving in any large city, especially in industrialized countries; the need for efficiency and effectiveness as well as success on both a personal and social level, the transformation of social relationships based on new technologies and social networks where a deep thought does not have more than 140 characters or last more than a few hours at most or where A person’s vision changes depending on their Facebook status ; the need to overcome separateness by entering the market game of supply and demand in love based more on sentimentality and, unfortunately, on sex appeal; the change in the way of understanding the traditional term equality that supported the Christian vision of the world to one where equality It is no longer being equal in nature but with intrinsic differences that made us different and was sought unitbut where equality It has become synonymous with identity.
Numerous authors have studied and written about the consequences of contemporary society: Frankl, Fromm, Goleman, among others.
“Know yourself”
Now, faced with this reality that the world we live in faces, Psychology has chosen to return, in fact, to a very basic principle: Know yourself As old as the Oracle of Delphi from where legend says it arose and always important because man is always the same regardless of the change in his social and historical circumstances. This old and always new saying has been translated today into the so-called emotional intelligence, which could be broadly defined as “the capacity or ability to know how to perceive, understand and manage one’s own emotions” ((/emotional-intelligence-and- positive-psychology-a-philosophical-look/).
Emotions are thus conceived not as something extrinsic to the human person, but as an integral part of the whole capable of entering the realm of reason and, consequently, to be channeled for the good of the person and society. This means that emotions are not enemies that must be oppressed or controlled, but rather a way of developing, capable of being formed and apprehended so that the person can use them, bringing out their full potential, having not only a longer life. healthy and harmonious, but also the ability to face the adversities that arise in it.
The path to emotional intelligence
Bringing out the best in human beings is perhaps one of the most laudable and noble things that Psychology is doing today. Since psychological science began to take shape as such, special emphasis has always been given to what was wrong with human beings: mental disorders, the unconscious and Freudian theory The vision we still have of psychology is still that of a kind of shrink in many places and in some way promoted by the mass media.
Emotional Intelligence is just one of those new trends in which the focus, without forgetting the weak side of Man, looks more at what we actually do well: The positive assessment of emotions, the search for happiness and its achievement, love, strengths and virtues, Being able to achieve the goals set are some of the new areas in which psychology wants to help human beings.
Positive Psychology: the foundations of the perfectible being
This new approach is what we call Positive Psychology It is not just a matter of accusing man of fatalistic determinism (psychoanalysis and classical behaviorism), but of seeing him as a be perfectible always open to improving and, above all, not like a sick being who must be diagnosed.
This is perhaps one of the most essential things in this century full of noise, ever-changing information, social and electronic networks, and a market eager to have professionals who fit their molds on the one hand, and, on the other, consumers of increasingly perishable items.
What emotional intelligence and positive psychology give to the world is the ability to be a person: Not losing my self in the face of everything that surrounds me (objectification) and, above all, giving the tools to be able to live fully
