Me up on the clouds–literally
Did you know that nowadays, emotional intelligence counts for 80% of your personal and professional success? Yes! Time has changed, and now, the almighty, omnipotent IQ is losing its lone glorification in the living world. IQ needs—I mean, it needs emotional intelligence to survive.
Emotional intelligence is not a one-size-fits-all-rubber-finger-tips. Your perception, experiences, and mindset are CRITICAL to your emotional, logical reasoning, hence, becoming emotionally intelligent.
So, to learn emotional intelligence, you first need to understand what perception is because your emotions (for the most part) are triggered by your conscious and unconscious perception.
But before I continue, let’s keep one thing clear, emotion is involved in ABSOLUTELY everything you do. Even when you feel emotionless, dispassionate, unexpressive, or unresponsive, those are different types of emotions.
Generally speaking, your perception is aroused by the stimulus of the senses. Think of your perception acting as the messenger that delivers the information into your central nerve system, pushing your neurons to react to those external stimulations entering—and sometimes overcoming—your senses. When you miss one of those senses, your mind’s cognitive nature conditions your other senses to adapt to your environment. A few samples that come to mind: vision-impaired people. They have a higher perceptive sense within their hearing, more so than those who use both senses at the same time, which allows them to adapt to their environment and miss nothing because they can perceive what we, with both working senses, cannot. A person with a terminal illness perceives things differently than those who have never been sick. Or those who have had a traumatic experience have a different perception than those who have lived a relatively standard life.
The challenge with perception is that it is almost always a determining factor by only that, things as you perceive them. We almost always take perception at face value rather than digging a little deeper and understanding the facts behind the scene. It is hard. Mainly because most of us find a sadistic pleasure in letting go of our emotions—especially the angry ones—even if we regret it soon after, which we usually do. I am talking based on experience here.
Perception is powerful. It is probably the most intoxicating and powerful trigger to your behavior, dominating your senses and every single ending nerve on your body. And, of course, your emotions. Think about this, your emotions are a complex pattern of reactions involving your behavior within your physical and physiological elements.
What you perceive as essentially important might be a flick of ginger without meaning for someone else. Nothing. Nada. However, that is a fact that you must always keep in mind because perception is a crucial element for emotional survival—personally and professionally. You should never forget that everyone deals with their perceptions and emotions in their very own personal way, regardless of those emotions representing a threat, or fear, disapproval, happiness, love, shame, and so on. There, emotional intelligence becomes essentially handy.
Emotional intelligence uses your emotions to help you guide and trace your behavior, actions, and decisions. It can train your brain to work together in conjunction with your perception. Think about it as a vinyasa-yoga-flow where you place things in an extraordinary flow following their natural pattern to fit in their time and place without forcing its course. Emotional intelligence is a culture. A way of living. And like anything else in life, it needs to be learned, acknowledged, cultivated, practiced, embraced, and developed for emotional intelligence to work.
Emotional intelligence involves many abilities and competencies, including perceiving emotions and using emotions to facilitate thoughts, understanding, and managing emotions. This concept is known as the emotional intelligence ability model, which I will explain in my next article.
Thank you for reading and until next time.
Dr. Iberkis Faltas
Naked Emotional Intelligence 
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