Children and Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is the best parameter for success in professional and personal life. This work in every walk of life. We create problems due to emotional compulsions to act in a certain way. Emotional skillfulness free us from emotional compulsions and we can act in more rational ways than others. Sharpening and deepening your emotional competencies gives you an extra edge over others and can take you from better among the good ones.

Too much emphasis given on Intellect or Buddhi

We are dependent too much on Intellect or Budhi quite often. Intellect or Budhi – Too much importance is being given to intellect these days. I would like to ask you a question – How do you like your intellect to be – Sharp or Soft?? – Yes…. Sharp. So intellect works like a knife. It usually DISSECTS. So for example, you love flowers. If you want to know about a flower – you take a flower and dissect it. Of course it gives you knowledge about flower and its inner sections but you won’t have the flower after that. We assess our relations also on the basis of intellect. Our School education is mostly based on how to sharpen our Intellect or Budhi, which is wrong. So….

We must encourage to develop our other emotional faculties as well. A study has been done by Martin Seligman, who is a pioneer of modern positive psychology, shows that emotional competencies are twice as important as technical Skill and pure intellect. People like software engineers and techies think that they will get success only due to their intellectual prowess….Which is wrong !!! Emotional skills are not inbuilt competencies but can be acquired deliberately with practice.

How to deal with Emotional Intelligence

You dont foster it through a logical interference but you let it flower on its own. What it needs is just an enviroment which helps it to emanate from within. A peaceful environment, association with nature, small and doable yoga practices for children will be able to help your child attain it. While you do it for your child also remember that the child imitates whats been carried out by his/her parents. Hence you would also have to constantly evolve with your child!