6 Steps to improve your emotional intelligence

In this Ted Talk, Ramona Hacker elaborates six steps in order to improve emotional
intelligence. She introduces the topic by talking about herself. At first, she was a logical
person, and she usually didn’t rely on emotions, as a result she suffered a burnt out at work,
and had to quit her job. She was struggling, and that's the reason why she learnt about this
field.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage emotions. It is necessary

to be emotionally aware, to know how to deal with emotions, and how to regulate it.
However, emotional intelligence is not the same as being emotional. In that case, people
might not be conscious about their feelings and emotions, and don’t have the abilities to cope
with situations that emotional intelligence demands.

Nowadays, kids and teenagers are facing their problems with an aggressive attitude
caused by fear, and loneliness. The main problem is their lack of emotional intelligence.
Society has to provide a safe space, where kids can learn to deal with emotions, and not just
focus on good grades, sports, or languages. Nevertheless, the future generations won’t make
it if they don’t have a role model to follow. As a consequence, they will face similar
situations like the speaker’s example, in which her parents didn’t teach her the value of
emotions, and she was clueless about managing her own feelings.

On top of that, preparing society to have emotional intelligence will help to reduce
judgment, bullying, racism, etc. Ramona Hacker explains that the reason for many of these
issues appears because of the hard understanding of the different emotions that everyone has.
She points out that it is extremely difficult to connect on an emotional level with someone
unless you have the emotional intelligence that provides you the ability to empathize with
them.

Taking into consideration the introduction of this topic, Ramona explains the six
steps. As it is said, people must be conscious of their incompetence in emotional intelligence,
therefore, people will be able to acquire this skill. Firstly, acknowledging emotions will help
us in our daily life, for example, it would be easy to make rational decisions. Secondly,
people need to be familiar with the types of emotions, and analyze them as a way to handle
their emotions. That step must be followed by the acceptance of emotions, it doesn’t exist
either good or bad emotions. Furthermore, the speaker recalls the importance of knowing the
origin of our emotions, in order to realize how things, and situations make us feel, and how to
work on it. Finally, the last two steps are linked, they are handling your emotions, and others
too. Despite the fact that everyone has emotions, there is not a universal way to manage our
emotions. Some people can find it useful to write down their feelings, others prefer to talk to
friends, or to practice meditation.

To sum up, she mentioned the need to implement emotional education in school. She
believes that if society has emotional intelligence, we could live in a truly inclusive world,
where conflicts, bullying, and racism, among others, could disappear. From my point of view,
having emotional intelligence is one of the key skills that future generations need. Even
though in recent years people are more self aware about emotional intelligence, it still has a
long way to go. Moreover, I think that emotional intelligence is beneficial not only for
interpersonal relationships, and society, but also for our own growth and relationship with
ourselves.