The Missing Piece

 

“The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.” -Donald Calne

After a conversation with someone dear to me, I realized that so many people go through life missing an essential piece to the puzzle of life. I learned about the piece as an undergrad student and as a postgrad student, but for some reason — I was still struggling to understand and use it in my day-to-day life. The missing piece to the puzzle is emotional intelligence.

To be intelligent emotionally is to have the capacity to be aware of your emotions and to control them. To be emotionally intelligent is also to be aware of the emotions of other individuals. 

Why is this important?

Emotional intelligence is important because it is the key to personal and professional success. It’s not uncommon to see something on the news about someone harming someone else because of their own emotions. People operate on emotions like fear and anger without realizing how dangerous that is. 

A few of my posts have been about self-love and self-care, but as we walk into 2019, I think this post is needed. We do all kinds of things to get stronger or to become smarter. But, we don’t try to get smarter when it comes to emotions.  If we are operating on vibes and telling people to match our energy, we need to make sure that our energy is right. As people we must learn how to stop and think. We must learn how to move on. We must learn how to be empathetic. We must also learn how be free of all of the things that could possibly cause us to harm ourselves and those around us. 

It is sad to see young children commit suicide for being bullied. It is sad that as friends and family we don’t pick up on the emotions that are building up inside of the people that we say we love. I know some of you might be reading this saying “I’m not a mind reader.” Truly, I understand that. But we have to practice emotional intelligence in order to function properly in life.