Emotional Intelligence and Anger Management
Managing your Anger using Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence has many possible definitions. One of them is the rational way of channeling your emotions into the correct channels instead of venting them randomly on the first victim you find.
For instance, if someone had a bad day at work while driving back home and then yelled at a driver on the road only because he was driving slowly, it’s not an emotionally intelligent action.
The driver’s pace is the apparent reason for that person’s anger, but the real reason behind it is that he had a bad day and just wanted to get some of his suppressed emotions.
By understanding how to take emotionally intelligent actions, you will control your anger in a much better way.
Managing your anger using emotional intelligence
When you think in an emotionally intelligent way, you will realize that the driver wasn’t driving slowly on intention, but instead, he might be afraid of moving too fast.
Once you start to create excuses for people using this intelligent way of thinking, you will manage your anger in a better way.
Here is another example of using emotional intelligence to manage your anger. Suppose that you had a terrible day and then the same situation happened (another driver was driving slowly)
The first thing you should do in such a case is realizing why you are feeling frustrated. As soon as you know that you were angry because of the fight you had with your boss, it’s time to remind yourself that the person driving his car in front of you carries no blame and that becoming angry is a bad practice.
How a lack of emotional intelligence can affect your life
Lack of emotional intelligence doesn’t only affect your anger management abilities, but it also affects your ability to recover from a breakup. Confusing emotions such as guilt, insecurity, or lack of self-confidence with love can prevent you from forgetting about someone.
For example, if you loved someone to compensate for your lack of self-confidence, you may first need to teach yourself how to become confident before you forget about him. In this case, emotional intelligence would have helped you realize that the problem was with self-confidence and not love.
Many people send me emails describing their problems. Some say that others hate them; others say that people want them to fail, while a third group says that people are mean.
Sometimes those people are right, but in many cases, I find that these concerns result from perception problems. In other words, the lack of emotional intelligence can let you see a twisted reality instead of a real one.
Being emotionally intelligent won’t just help you get over your anger, but it will also help you avoid these perception problems, which are the root cause of many psychological disorders.