Emotional Intelligence: Do You Have It

Yes, Emotional Intelligence can be taught and is being taught, though not enough. It should be taught in all schools here and other countries as well. I am and have been an advocate for this kind of teaching and thinking for some time now. It surely is needed in the Black community for the young, and adults alike. We are too easy to anger, and just as hard to calm down.

We know some of the reasons while others are not so clear. But indeed we do let our emotions get the best of us. And this is what causes the hypersensitivity we see much too often among our people. Just a hint of an offending word or action is enough to set us off. Not all of us, but you could say it is one of our traits as a group of people. The pressure of being whom we are starting from the time we are conceived, and that could go on until we take our last breath, is enough to rock the best laid foundation of emotional intelligence.

We must though, learn how to be emotionally intelligent because we are now seen before we get there. This means that we have come to be known for being easy to rile; therefore, more easily manipulated. Unfortunately, this can be on or off the job, in church, in families and among spouses. It is not easy to learn how to be emotionally intelligent when most of your time is around family and friends who are not so themselves.

The school is not the home or family, this is where it must began. And here is the thing with us, many Black parents and single folks as well, think that how they think and act is just fine and they fail to see and understand why they are so angry most of the time and so easily set off. Now for sure, emotional intelligence benefits us all no matter the race, age or gender. Again, as with most things when we don’t have them and need them we suffer more than others do until we get them that is if we ever do.

I know that my life would have been much different if I would have been more emotionally mature growing up, and even as an adult there were problems. As with most things, if it doesn’t start right it is much harder to get it right after it has already started.

There are some of you who may not agree with me, but do not turn a deaf ear. Many of the problems we see up close and around us, as well as those from afar, are caused by a lack of emotional intelligence. Do not be thrown off by the word intelligence. When used in the context of emotional intelligence it takes on a meaning of its own.