Emotional intelligence is one facet of our personality that includes our ability to respond appropriately to our emotions and the emotions of others. Due to the work by Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence, experts now agree that aside from our intellectual quotient (IQ), emotional quotient (EQ) is a relatively large determinant of how successful we will each be in our personal as well as career life.

Yes, we all make decisions and learn new things based on our intelligence. That is what we use in our brain for analysis and storing information vital to creating the solutions to problems and issues we face everyday. For long, many considered that a person’s IQ was the only factor that determined success in life.

The problem with this line of thinking is that people were neglecting to consider our emotions and how we handled them as maybe playing an even greater part in our ability to create crucial decisions and solve problems. They even have regarded our emotions as none essential to living life fully. Thinking of them as irritations in our ability to think, learn and create.

But times change and new people with new information are always coming along to change our views and redirect our thought processes. One of these pioneers brought forth some important changes to our views on emotional intelligence, psychologist and author Daniel Goleman.

Some of his innovative research points out that we’re in constant interaction with the people we come into contact with. In the process of these everyday interaction, many skills are needed to determine if these encounters will be successful or detrimental to the people involved.

We need social skills, careful analysis, skills to communicate appropriately and effectively and the capacity to channel out things into productive mediums of interaction.

All these aside, there are other crucial parts of living that we must learn. Failure to do any one of these will create a domino effect on how well we live our lives and in our ability to create harmonious relationships with ourselves and the people that we are closely related to.

These are the skills that make up our emotional intelligence.

People with high emotional intelligence are seen to standout even when competing with individuals of equally higher IQs. There is no harm in being intelligent it’s just much more useful to you to combine it with a high EQ. Through both of these forms of intelligence, IQ and EQ we look to find balance and harmony.

Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence

For long, the only determinant of happy, successful living was considered to be the ability to think well. But now due to the studies brought forth by Daniel Goleman and his publication of Emotional Intelligence, the views on what is necessary in order to be successful in life were radically changed.

Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence diverted our focus from higher IQ as the only determining factor to higher EQ as a very important determining factor that had never even been considered until he came along. Experts have now realized that people who perform well are not only those that have book smarts. In fact, there are numerous cases where those with street smarts and emotionally intelligent are actually the ones reaping the gifts of success.

We can determine emotionally intelligent individuals through their display of various behaviors that set them apart from those who have higher intellect but unbalanced emotions. It appears now that those with even super high intelligence can fail miserably in life if they don’t have the ability to regulate their own emotions or deal appropriately with the emotions of others.

People with emotional intelligence are those who have the ability to persevere, empathize and control themselves. They’re people who can solve problems using their best judgments and have the capacity to interact well with others. They’re also those who can control impulses and develop well established relationships. They appear in many shapes and forms and each of them has characteristics different from one another.

All these abilities stem from their capacity to become aware of their own emotions and the emotions that others feel and their ability to handle them appropriately. They also have the realization of the reasons behind their behavior and how they react the way they do under various circumstances.

They, in a way, also have higher intrapersonal intelligence as well as social intelligence that helps them in making judgments and awareness of themselves and the people they are interacting with.

Thanks to the work by Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence we now understand that while we all don’t have superior IQs, all humans have an equal chance to develop emotional intelligence since this is a very dynamic aspect of personality that we each have control over changing and improving.