車干軒

這次這些文章是紀錄我在美國讀書的進步路程,所以可能有些部分寫得很糟, 請多包涵, 假如有看到錯誤的地方,還請你們幫忙指證

Hsuan Pi

Kristin M. Smith

English 88

9/26/17

The Most Important Element in Our Life

How does emotional intelligence influence our life, and what is it? Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one's own and others’ emotions, and discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately; it plays an important role in our life, even more important than IQ. Nowadays, people are focusing on how to complete their work more quickly. However, if we want to complete the work more efficiently we need to cooperate with others. This means we need the ability of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, managing one’s own emotions, empathy and handling relationships to guide us and improve our interpersonal relationships.

The keystone of emotional intelligence is self-awareness: to feel one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions. In every minute that we are struggling with our emotional life, it is imperative to recognize our feelings. We need to know our feeling when we are making some difficult decision like what career to pursue, whom to date or marry or where to live. It will become a disaster when we lack feeling. For instance, as a freshman in college, the first thing I have to decide is what major I should choose. If I don't know what to study, then it could be a disaster when I spend a lot of time and power in the wrong major. Just like what Sun Tzu's (a famous Chinese military strategist, and philosopher) said in his book: The Art of War “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” Luckily, most of the people can recognize what they feel but the feeling we know is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of feelings of unconscious emotion. Unconscious emotions can have a powerful impact on how we perceive and react, even though we don’t notice they were working. As a result, we have to learn more about how to recognize our emotions in order to bring our unconscious emotion to conscious and bring intelligence to our emotions.

Building on self-awareness, it is also important to manage our emotions. In our emotional life, to know what we feel is not enough. Knowing our emotions is only half the battle, if we want to win the battle, we need to learn to manage or redirect our disruptive emotions and impulses and adapt to changing circumstances. We all have had bad experience when our emotional minds overwhelm reasonable minds. Especially when we are angry. As Aristotle said before “anyone can become angry, that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy” (ⅩⅠⅩ).  When we were angry, our brain cannot work appropriately. For example, my sister is very annoying when I’m studying for the final exam. After several times of telling my sister not to be so annoying, I became so furious and started breaking things. Even though, I’m angry for the right purpose and with the right person, it is still not appropriate because I do it in the wrong way. To avoid losing our mind, we have to slow down our pace and wait or do some active exercise to relax our moods, and then rethink about the situation before the damage is done.

When we can recognize and manage what’s inside of our heart, we can take another step: putting our emotions into interpersonal relationships. Empathy is the fundamental personal skill which means to recognize, understand, and consider other people's feelings especially when making decisions. Daniel Goleman had pointed out in his book Emotional Intelligence “90 percent or more of emotional message is nonverbal” (97). the nonverbal message will show on the face or by the body language. If we cannot notice this kind of message, we will probably have a terrible relationship in our life and put ourselves in to the danger situation. In the Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence provide us with an example that “the first monkey touch something has electricity and being electric shock, and the second monkey seeing the fear on the face of the first one, so the second monkey will avoid touching that thing” (103). It is showing that some act of empathy is kind of alarm system to protect us from danger. Therefore, we have to use our empathy to detect other people’s emotions and protect ourselves.

To handle relationships, we need every skill of emotional intelligence. The first ability to handling relationships is listening to others’ opinions. We need to use our empathy skills to build up the connection with others. Just like a good team player. Recognize, understand, and consider other people’s decision and follow the leader or cooperate with teammates. Secondly, negotiate solutions. It is easy to communicate with someone, but it is not easy to negotiate solutions with someone. Daniel Goleman had explained in his book Emotional Intelligence that “negotiating solutions-the talent of the mediator, preventing conflicts or resolving those that flare up. Like the middleman or manager.”(pg.118) in our life, to become a great middleman, we need to have two abilities which are managing others’ emotions and empathy. We need to help them recognize and understand others consider and help them to manage one’s own emotions, in order to let them compromise and make the right decision. Last but not least, persuade others. It’s needed for the abilities of self-awareness, managing oneself emotions, empathy, and handling relationships. Just like the leader. We have to recognize our feelings and decide what point I should stand with, and then using empathy skill to detect others feelings, motives, and concerns. Finally, managing others’ emotions, let our opponent compromise, and persuades them to follow the decision. When we are excelling in these social skills and interacting perfectly with others, we can change our destiny.

Emotional intelligence is the most important element in our life, in every moment we need emotional intelligence to interact with others. Especially to cooperate with others, we need the fundamental skill of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, and building on self-awareness, we also need the ability of manage one’s emotions and empathy to guide us and handling our relationships. Our life is just like a big machine and every gear is like every skill of emotional intelligence. If we lack any ability of emotional intelligence, the machine won’t work appropriately and it will become a disaster in our life. In contrary, when we require every ability of emotional intelligence, the more opportunity we can reach higher achievements and live better quality in our future life.