Emotional Intelligence: The Four Key Components

Emotional Intelligence is defined as “the ability to identify, use, understand and manage your emotions in positive and constructive way.” (Lewis, 2012). And is broken down into four key components. These components are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, all playing separate but equal roles in what makes someone emotionally intelligent. For example, self-awareness is someone being aware of their own emotions in a given situation, while self-management in the control of emotions while being socially aware. Similarly to self-management and self-awareness, social awareness is someone being aware of someone else emotions, while relationship management is the using knowledge of other’s feelings and attitude …show more content…
While noticed, people often turn a blind eye to stress themselves or to other’s normalizing extreme amounts of stress which negatively impacts quality of many others including ourselves. In an article titled “Stress in everyday life and its management” stress is broken down into 4 separate sources. The first being the environment around the person, the environment around someone dictates and demand for the person to change or adapt to their surroundings. One of the most obvious examples of this can be found in military camps were new recruits are placed in an area that is extremely stressful in order to mold the person to become more adept to the new way of life. The second source covered by the article are social stressors, which occur from demands in different and specific social roles such as parenting. Social stressors also include different hardships that are very common in everyday life, such as financial problems or deadlines. These stressors are the most relatable and has been experienced by everyone at least once and is the most related to the 4 components of Emotional Intelligence. Physiological is the third and is the most physical form of stress that someone may experience, and is caused by physical pain or bad habits such as sleeping patterns or smoking. Physiological stress is the source of stress we have the most control over and is often a matter of …show more content…
Examples of unhealthy stress reliever are “spending hours watching T.V, working obsessively, fighting, taking anesthetizing drugs, going on shopping binges, eating too much or too little, smoking excessively, gulping caffeine, or gambling” (Skip Downing , 2016). These are easy but very damaging ways for people to relieve stress and often making excuses around why they are taking part in such behavior. These are typical behaviors expressed by those with a victim mindset making impulsive choices rather than logical