by Jenna Pope

Created on: July 18, 2009   Last Updated: July 20, 2009

* What is Emotional Intelligence? *

Although there are different opinions on the definition of emotional intelligence, they can be distilled into one: Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions.

* But What Does That Mean? *

On a typical day, we are presented with countless choices of how we are going to think, rationalize, communicate, react, and behave. A person with reasonably high emotional intelligence proceeds through the events of his daily life relatively unscathed. He experiences and then dismisses the setbacks and irritations of his daily life as a normal part of living. He is basically the same person arriving home that night as the one who left for work that morning. His state of mind remains intact.

* How We Use Emotional Intelligence in Day-to-Day Life *

Our emotional intelligence controls our self-control, our emotionality, our well-being, and our sociability. Let's look at emotions.

Some people have deficiencies in understanding, processing, and describing their emotions. In our society, men are conditioned to either suppress or repel emotions, and supposed "unemotional" men think that they are behaving normally when they are able to hide how they feel.

Last night, my husband, son, and I were on our way to a Dodger game, when our son received a call on his cell phone. It was his best friend, informing him that a mutual friend had passed away. When my husband and I tried to find out what had happened, he revealed almost no information about the situation. Later, when his dad asked about the friend who had died, our son snapped at him, accused him of taking the matter too lightly, and insisted that his dad had been sarcastic. None of this was true.

Our son's behavior was indicative of a deficit in how he processes grief. Although his emotional intelligence is very high in some areas, it is low in the way he deals with negative feelings. It is normal to have high emotional intelligence in one area and lower emotional intelligence in another. My husband could have responded negatively to our son's accusations but - instead - told our son that it was obvious that he didn't want to talk about it, and he accepted that. My husband illustrated high emotional intelligence in self-control and sociability.

*A Social Butterfly *

I have often said that I can talk about any subject, for an unlimited amount of time, with absolutely no information whatsoever. I am a social butterfly

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