Within the following post I will address the area of Emotional Intelligence. In today's society, academic intelligence is prized above all. Students are pressured from a young age into taking standardised tests, and later on exams to determine their future career opportunities. There is often the mistaken impression that intelligence applies purely to skills of reasoning, planning, problem solving and logical thinking. due to so much pressure on achieving high grades and results in exams. We often have a tendency to only perceive intelligence as the ability to reason, plan, solve problems and think logically. We often discount the importance of emotional intelligence.
My experience, I felt behind my friends in school. I really had to work hard to do well unlike some others and started to believe that I was stupid. However it was only when it came to later life that I realised that I was extremely emotionally intelligent. I worked well with others and was well able to express myself to others. Learning more about this gave me a new perspective on my intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence is basically the ability to express ourselves, to work well with others and also to have the ability to cope with daily demands challenges and pressures internally. Although through the eyes of some it may be seen that these abilities do not make somebody intelligent, it is equally if not more important to obtain emotional intelligence as well as cognitive intelligence. This seems to be self-evident, as I'm sure we can all think of a person who is fully capable of planning, reasoning and problem solving, but without the ability to engage with others or temper their emotions would be of little practical use in a company where many different people have to work together. Both are essential for achieving best results.
So remember, just because you may not have the best memory or problem solving skills, that doesn't mean you are unintelligent, but rather that your intelligence might lie outside of the academic world. I also realised that without a degree of emotional intelligence, that traditional academic smarts wouldn't be very useful!
Thank you for this very helpful post nikitta. I had never reali understood the full meaning behind emotional intelligence but your post has been very informative for me. I found your first paragragh very useful and I have to agree as there is far too much pressure on children to get the highest in their exams at such a young age.
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