Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand emotions and base your own actions on that general understanding. With training and practice this can be a powerful tool in controlling stress and emotions.
The idea of emotional intelligence has been around since the 1930’s in different forms. The power of EI is to not only identify and assess your own emotions but also to be able to evaluate the emotions of others.
One of the early forms of EI was social intelligence that was the ability to understand and manage other people’s emotions. Then understanding one’s own emotions and desires along with others emotions build a strong foundation to today’s EI.
John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey are the 2 leading researcher of emotional intelligence. They have developed a model with 4 abilities.
The ability to perceive emotions in others by looking at their faces or hearing their voices,  also to perceive one’s own emotions. This ability opens the door to the other abilities.
The ability to use your emotions to accomplish what ever you are trying to do.
The ability to understand the history of emotions and act accordingly to that.
The ability to use emotions to fulfill your own tasks
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The real power in emotional intelligence is in the ability to perceive other’s emotions and to use that intelligence to your advantage.
What it all seems to come down to is to be able to guess how people are going to react to certain environments and situations. This knowledge before hand is very powerful.
