10 mistakes that emotionally intelligent people don't make

Since, in 1995, Daniel Goleman published the now classic emotional intelligence (Kairós), the ability to recognize one's own emotions and those of others has been incorporated into the world of education and business. However, what does having emotional intelligence mean in our daily lives? Writer Brianna Wiest answers this question in her anthology 101 reflections that will change the way you think (Gaia). This young American author, who has recently been published twice in Spain, approaches the question from the opposite extreme: what are the 10 things that people with a high level of emotional intelligence do not do?

Assume that what they think and feel corresponds to reality. Each view of the situation that is being experienced is partial and subjective. Considering that “you are right” and that others are wrong is an insurance plan for suffering. As Joseph Nguyen recommends in his book of the same title: Don't believe everything you think.

Make emotional well-being depend on external causes. Blaming our unhappiness on others or on circumstances beyond our control leads to disempowering indignation, as we stop taking care of what depends on us and subscribe to passivity and resentment.

Knowing what would make us happy. People with low emotional intelligence tend to assume that what they do not have is what could give them personal well-being. However, every desire leads to another, like a carrot that is never reached.

Retreat from what we fear. In the words of Brianna Wiest, “fear means you are trying to move toward something you love.” Therefore, a person with emotional intelligence will assume fear as a door that invites them to cross it to reach another reality.

Understand that happiness should be permanent. This aspiration is illusory since life is made up of different experiences and we must learn to go through all of them naturally, relativizing what we are experiencing.

Get carried away by thoughts. What in Buddhism is called “monkey mind” describes the jumps of our own and other people's ideas that swarm through our minds. To free ourselves from this slavery, the first step is, instead of following the monkey, to become aware of our beliefs to disidentify from them.

Repress emotions. Emotional intelligence is not containing what we feel, but managing it properly to make better decisions and expressing it in the right way and at the right time.

Thinking that suffering will end you. According to the author of the aforementioned anthology, people with high emotional intelligence “have developed enough awareness and resilience to know that all things, even the worst, are transitory.”

Try to make friends with everyone. An emotionally intelligent person is empathetic and seeks to promote trust and intimacy, but not indiscriminately. He consciously chooses who he allows into his personal life, even if he is nice to everyone.

Confusing a sad feeling with a sad life. The first is due to a specific and, therefore, temporary experience. There is no need to extrapolate the current situation with a future to be planned. According to Wiest, people with true emotional intelligence “allow themselves to have 'bad days' because they are fully human.” Not resisting what the present brings us, in fact, is the key to personal peace.

This last point was a foundation of Stoic philosophers such as Seneca, who went so far as to affirm that “there is no one less fortunate than the person whom adversity forgets, since he has no opportunity to test himself.”

Reflections of this type can provoke those who are going through a bad time, but the Roman thinker born in Córdoba points out that many times we are “more scared than hurt”, in the sense that we suffer from catastrophic scenarios that will not come to pass. . To suffer before what is necessary is to suffer more than necessary, comments Seneca, and that would be the ultimate example of emotional intelligence, dealing with the good and the bad in due time, without anticipating life. Surrendering everything to today, simply doing what we must do with attention and naturalness, is the wisest way to walk through the world.

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