Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month

October is Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month!
This month-long campaign provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the helpful and harmful reactions to emotions and other related topics. For those unfamiliar, emotional intelligence is a self-governing initiative to make healthy assessments about how our minds influence quality behavior. Such assessments help us to better understand our minds and reduce emotions harmful, yet natural effect on our thoughts and behavior.

In today’s world of disturbing turmoil it’s easy to realize that the number one consideration of a civilized society is the quality of human behavior. This fact underscores the importance of our developing an adequate understanding of the mind’s emotional characteristics and troubling natural tendencies. Learning to identify, understand, and manage our feelings through the prism of emotional intelligence can make a significant difference in the way we apply the mind to any particular situation.

Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month brings attention to the significance of emotional literacy. This year’s campaign poster theme highlights “Identifying Nature’s Unhealthy Impact,” a graphically health-oriented hi-tech look at managing emotions. Understanding our emotions will carry a far greater impact on our health and well-being — and our relationship with the world — than we may have ever imagined. Emotional intelligence is truly the secret to building healthier minds, getting the best out of life, and developing a behaviorally safer world.

According to Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s book, The Growth of the Mind, “Refining what we mean by intelligence is a most important issue . . . Intelligence reflects the mind doing its most important work . . .” The author goes on to warn us that, “Our definition of intelligence should focus on the general process whereby individuals reason, reflect and understand the world . . . Emotions, not cognitive stimulation, serve as the mind’s primary architect.”

In Dr. Daniel Goleman seminal work, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, (1995) the author/psychologist first introduced the concept of EI, and in just seven years his treatise became the most widely read social science book in the world. Accordingly, “Researchers now know that emotional literacy can help prevent and solve myriad problems that we experience in our personal and professional lives.”

Such training enhances the most valuable assets we have as individuals —namely, our emotional stability and intelligence, our physical health and overall security, as well as our ability to treat other people and other things in a healthier and more meaningful manner. By increasing our understanding of emotional intelligence, we are capable of obtaining meaningful rewards and satisfaction far beyond what we would otherwise expect from life! A greater understanding of emotional intelligence on a world-wide scale would surely result in a less behaviorally stressed planet.