Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Some Notes on Emotional Intelligence

I have been thinking about the subject of 'emotional intelligence' and think that maybe it might shed some light of self-knowledge.

I realise this term 'emotional intelligence' itself is poorly defined but i approach it as that internal ability to *listen* to what our feelings are telling us and then the ability to bring those feelings under rational analysis without suppressing them or judging ourselves for them.

At the extreme where there is perhaps little or very limited emotional intelligence perhaps the expression "bitter and twisted" comes to mind. I don't like to go there because it assigns a value judgement to a person's inability to listen to his or her emotions in a healthy and liberating kind of way.

I hope to think through some of these aspects and hopefully reach some helpful conclusions in which case i may post some of my thoughts on this later, God willing.

UPDATE : Kansas Bob has a series of posts HERE which speak around the subject of "emotional intelligence" from a Christian perspective.

1 comment:

Timothy V Reeves said...

Hi Celal!
Do you think that some participants in the evolution vs ID debate display very much emotional intelligence?!! (Probably not!)

'Emotion' to me is 'motivation' and our motivations act is the kind of fuel that flows into our 'cognitive' engine, making it work.

Trouble is different emotions can work against one another: anger has its place, but it can disrupt more subtle long term emotions that are seeking some distant goal.

It's the old bomb disposal thing again: fear might work against the desire to defuse the bomb!