Lack of emotional intelligence is holding you back.

Many times, we are dragged backward because we are not emotionally intelligent. You have a degree but you are afraid of how you are going to nail a job interview. You have a talent that you want to harness but you don’t know how to believe in yourself again after all the rejections you have received.

It feels like your education and experience should help you get along with everybody quite well. But you have a hard time communicating with your co-workers. It seems to you that communicating and understanding each other is a privilege that only a few people are blessed with.

You have a hard time adapting to a new environment — be it a new job, a new position or a different city/country. It takes you lots of time to get the hang of things and you envy others who easily adapt to their environment.

And you have made life so much difficult to navigate because you are letting your circumstances define and control you. You don’t believe that you can do it, so you are walking on your path while you are carrying this chip on your shoulder that keeps on dragging you down.

You’re usually envious of others who have tuned in to themselves because you find it hard to tune out everything else. You are not self-aware.

Do you have a plan to fuel your performance both in the workplace and in your personal life? Do you have a goal of accelerating success in all areas of your life?

If so, I want to share these simple, yet powerful ideas with you in this article.

I learned from many of my emotional intelligence trainings that everything starts with you. No matter what professional field you are in, whether you manage a team of 100 or 10 people, whether you have a large family or a small one, whether you are a man or woman, whether you are young or old, realizing how effective you are at controlling your own emotions is the greatest thing you could do for yourself.

Emotional intelligence gives you, life skills.

If you are passing through a difficult time, you say “life is teaching me a lesson” rather than “What did I do to deserve this?”

If at the end of a long day someone on the way home makes you lose your temper, you brush it off saying that it is an unworthy battle.

If you are conversing with someone and you are tempted to not listen, you pause and try to be a friend — by listening.

You don’t say horrible things to people. You don’t wish to.

It’s not so much because life is full of sunshine but because you choose to believe in the sunshine and in the fact that the sun always comes in the morning.

Emotional intelligence helps you to respond to criticism instead of reacting.

Emotional intelligence will set you free. It will restore your mind which belongs to you. Not to those who criticize your work. You can focus on listening, if possible, as a third person to what others are saying to you.

The criticism of others can break us and shatter our mind if we let them.

Emotional intelligence makes us adaptable.

Emotionally intelligent people are the most adaptable people on earth.

Maybe I was afraid to make new friends or I was still missing my old friends but I had a hard time connecting with others — when I changed jobs.

Maybe it’s that my fear of coming out of my shell was protecting me like a shield.

This protection felt safe. It deluded me into thinking that I was safe in my own shell by not participating and living life fully.

It took years before something inside me clicked and wait a minute Banchi why on earth are you so willing — no eager –to live life in a shell and call it life? This is painful as hell and no one is better equipped at coming out of my shell, looking out for myself, and learning to adapt to situations and new environment than myself.

Even after this awareness, even after recognizing that I needed this lesson, even then, well it took me years to adapt to situations quickly.

It is tempting to call this pattern my destiny. But it would be wrong. It is through repeating the same mistake over and over and kept learning so very much from the exact lesson that I learned to be open-minded and adaptable.

“Adaptability is not imitation. It means the power of resistance and assimilation.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Emotional intelligence makes you empathize.

You can get along with your boss in a better and healthy way if you try with all your heart to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

Assuming the other person has the best intentions is the best practice you could do for yourself. Because it makes you suffer less when you communicate with others.

Empathy is the antidote to selfishness, to pettiness and to taking things personally.

Even though you don’t agree, you can understand. You can empathize.

People can disagree with each other about things, even important things, and still like each other very much.

Emotional intelligence helps us in communicating assertively.

Up until recently, I considered silence as a way of communication. I actually considered that I was communicating when I remained silent — when I wanted to say something.

I know others out there do this, too. They either remain silent in conversations or they give the cold shoulder as if it is an art. It is not.

Communication needs clear words, words that are not vague to interpret. Communication needs you to say what you need to say. Not expecting the other person to read your mind.

Communication needs a healthy environment. It does not need shouting for the message to be received. It does not need arguing. It needs healthy conversations — not battles that one is fighting to win at every cost.

Emotional intelligence helps us to be self-aware.

I write a lot about this. Self-awareness will not wake us one day and tell us, “Here I am, be me.” You have to cultivate it. Every single day.

And being able to do that is really about being in the present moment than anything else. Whether that moment is a good one or a bad one.

If it is the former, you get to appreciate the moment. Like the sound of your lover’s voice. Like the beauty of your breathing. Like that warm feeling you get when you hug someone, you care about.

If it is the second one, you get to catch negative emotions before they destroy you. Like, anger simmering to make your life hell. Like, hurt thriving to make you as small as possible.

You get to catch emotions as they appear. You get to be in control. You get to decide to let those things in you or outside of you.

Emotional intelligence helps you in maintaining a positive attitude.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but rather your estimate of it — and that you have the power to revoke at any moment.” — Marcus Aurelius

Even if you still haven’t gotten your dream job, you can still maintain a positive attitude. Because a positive shift in your perspective can change your life.

Life is so much easier to navigate when you believe that you can do it.

Even if you have discovered your talent and found challenges are blocking your way to pass through, you can still maintain a positive attitude. Because having it will make you suffer less on your way to achieving your dreams.

Regardless of your circumstances, you can choose to see yourself as somebody who is going to beat the odds, or you can see yourself as somebody who is too broken beyond repair.

To your inspirations,

Banchi