Employing Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life

It is a natural thing to communicate emotionally. We all do it! It's unavoidable to not communicate emotionally. Our emotional communications come out in three ways. Those ways are: the language we choose to use, the tone of voice and intensity we employ, and through our body language. Each of these has emotional messages that we sometimes attach to our words, often without realizing it, and other times are sent without words. Emotional expression influences what others perceive in what we are saying or not saying. Moreover, these three are the underlying expressions that come from within our subconscious. Everyone knows when you are happy or sad, even without you saying a word to them.

Emotional intelligence is about how we apply our emotions to our interactions. Emotional intelligence, as indicated, is partly about the language we use as we talk to other people and it's often dictated by those we are communicating with. If we are familiar with that person our language will be different from when we just met them. As we become more comfortable with a relationship we loosen up and our language changes. It changes in the security of that relationship. This is part of emotional intelligence.

Emotionally intelligent language is language that is non-offensive and appropriate to the situation. Cursive language in any situation is not intelligent language, even though it is almost always emotional. Cursive language can often offend the other and, because an offended person will generally always go on the defensive, in a variety of forms, this is not an emotionally intelligent way of communicating with anyone. The use of such language also only slows the extent of one's ability to communicate effectively.

However, emotional intelligence is much more than verbal language. In fact, there is a hidden language to emotional intelligence. That hidden language is not conveyed through words but through our facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice along with voice intensity. For example, a couple can read each other's mood by interpreting their body language and/or facial expression, without speaking one word to each other.

Our body language is a factor in our emotional intelligence. Body language is a very natural thing among all living creatures. Body language is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of our human communications. It is perhaps the beginning of language. Body language sends messages in very subtle ways, some of which we do unawares.

The body language we use speaks volumes about ourselves to everyone we come into contact with. Even from a distance we can use body language to send a message to another person without saying a word. We can all recall an encounter of seeing someone across the room and sensing a type of an attraction or distaste. If we are attracted to them in some way we might send a pleasant and approachable facial expression for example.

Emotional intelligence is sometimes about combining verbal language with non-verbal language, but it's more about the non-verbal messages we send to others, or read from them. Moreover, emotional intelligence requires us to get into touch with ourselves. Once we are in touch with ourselves we can then take responsibility for ourselves and achieve effective emotional intelligence.