What Does it Mean to be Intelligent? Part 2

This blog is continued from Blog: What does it mean to be Intelligent? Part 1.

Self-awareness has first to do with recognising and controlling your own emotions. Research shows that only 36% of people can accurately identify their own emotions as they occur. Unidentified emotions can be misunderstood, leading to counter-productive actions and poor choices. Specifically identifying our emotions means we know how we are feeing, what caused that feeling and what we should do about it.

Recognising our strengths and weaknesses follows on from identifying our emotions. Who or what annoys you? Who or what can enable you to succeed? Keeping your weaknesses from holding you back, and knowing how/when to call on your strengths can move you and your project/people ahead at a much quicker pace.

I have heard it said that failure is good for future success. Dwelling too long on mistakes can make you anxious and inclined toward safety first in future. Forgetting mistakes almost certainly means you will repeat them. The key to benefit is to use your mistakes to improve your performance. Using failure as a learning experience gives it a positive rather than a negative value: Very desirable indeed!

Finally, under “self-awareness”, I include taking regular time off. We all need time to relax and enjoy ourselves. Don’t work 24/7, eventually it’s going to run you down. Find time to relax daily: One day off per week is good for our well-being. God even prescribed it for himself after creation. Make sure you do something you enjoy and live in the here and now.

Now, my final category: “Looking after others”. Whether you are a natural extrovert or introvert, being curious about others is a must. And curiosity is the product of empathy – a very important gateway to Emotional Intelligence. The more you care about other people and what they are going through, the greater your empathy with them will be. This leads to thoughtfulness, doing something spontaneously for someone with no expectation of anything in return. This can leave a powerful and positive impression. Build strong relationships by constantly thinking of others.

Social awareness is the ability to read other people and understand where they are coming from. With most of us this takes practice, but it’s a skill worth working on. Understanding peoples’ motivations, even hidden ones, can be so helpful.

The final two qualities are really about our ability to forgive. If you have a firm grasp on who you are, it will be difficult for anyone to offend you by what they say or do. You can let others make jokes about you. You can even laugh with them. You don’t take yourself too seriously, because you feel secure.

Since you are at ease with yourself, you don’t feel threatened and you don’t hold grudges. Holding a grudge means holding onto stress. Let it go; do yourself a favour, forgive.