Written by Edgar Luna

We live in a world filled with millions of people, with millions of ways of thinking and millions of different opinions, and everyday we share and are exposed to people in some way, maybe at home, school, work or as we navigate through life.

With all these different ways of thinking, of course that it’s likely that you might interact with someone that does not agree with you on certain things and might confront you and question your way of thinking and does not agree with you.

Just turn on the news and you can see many examples of people not agreeing on certain things and their decisions having negative consequences.

So when someone disagrees with your point of view and passionately confronts you,

• What do you do?

• How do you react? 

• How do you respond?

In my line of work I have experienced many instances where people respond to certain situations in a manner that sometimes are not very nice and only add tension and make for a very uncomfortable situation.

This is where Emotional Intelligence comes into play.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to manage your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. 

If you do a little research, there are five characteristics of emotional intelligence.

1. Self- awareness

2. Self-regulation

3. Motivation

4. Empathy

5. Social skills

Making an effort to develop these skills is the key to increasing your Emotional Intelligence, and depending on where you currently are in each of these skills it takes work to improve on them.

Digging a little deeper into each one here are a few recommendations.

1. Self-awareness.
   • How do you feel when confronted with an uncomfortable situation, maybe you get mad, shut down and stop listening and then your pride kicks in and you want to prove that you are right no matter what.
   • Instead you can acknowledge those feelings and choose to respond to them in a constructive manner.
   • Trying to control your feelings is very hard, however choosing how to respond to those feelings is much easier if you are willing to try it.
2. Self-regulation
   • How are you going to respond to that uncomfortable feeling? You are capable of listening, even if the message comes to you with emotion and feels like an attack to you, try to focus on the ultimate goal, don’t let emotions take over.
   • Try to focus, breathe and understand what the other person wants to communicate or needs.
   • Learn to manage those uncomfortable feelings and let them go, make an effort to not take it personal.
3. Motivation
   • Try to understand the why?, the ultimate goal, the target.
   • Why is this person so emotional or animated about this?
   • Normally I find that the person that is upset, needs your help and might not know how to ask or is getting pressured by another thing.
   • Try to understand that motivation and focus on resolving the problem.
4. Empathy
   • Try to put yourself in their place, they might be going through some difficult situation and might not know how to deal with it.
   • Mostly people want to be heard and seen and we should make an effort to truly listen and understand them.
5. Social skills
   • Developing skills such as communication, willingness to learn, asking for help, in summary getting along with others. There is great material online, books and training to develop these skills.

Taking the time to improve your Emotional Intelligence is a great investment in your future, doesn’t matter where you are, it will come in handy and will help you resolve issues much more effectively.

We have to recognize that we share this world with many humans and will have to interact with them at some point and time, and sometimes those interactions will conflict with your way of thinking.

However with Emotional Intelligence you will be able to have a happier and healthier life and maybe help someone as we journey through this life.

E.Luna.