In the early 1990s, emotional intelligence, or emotional quotient (EQ), became incredibly popular. EQ is simply the awareness of your emotions and the maturity to know exactly how to apply that maturity in both your personal and professional life.

If you have emotional intelligence, you’re better able to overcome challenges, manage emotions even in challenging situations, and even learn how to defuse conflicts. To help you understand EQ a little better, below are some ways to apply it to your everyday life.

How to Apply Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life: 25 Ways You Can Tell That You Have Emotional Intelligence?

If you have high emotional intelligence, some of the things that will likely happen include:

When You’re in the Workplace:

1. Flexibility in the workplace. If you have high EQ, you can handle flexibility much better, which is especially helpful if you’re a supervisor or manager.
2. Better listening skills. Emotional maturity always allows you to be a great listener, which means you’re much more effective in business meetings.
3. You are creative. This is another much-needed skill in the workplace and allows for great ideas that can push your business forward and improve your bottom line.
4. A thicker skin. If a subordinate is being critical of a business policy, you can listen in a mature way and not get your feelings hurt, which makes it easier to do something about the problem.
5. Better resilience. Resilience is needed in the workplace because new initiatives are introduced frequently in any business, and you have to know how to accommodate them.
6. A more personable attitude. Emotional maturity allows you to lend an ear when someone who works for you needs it, and it can increase the number of times when you do things such as go out with coworkers after hours.
7. Better decision-making. High EQ always gives you the opportunity to make decisions faster and feel more confident that the decision is the right one. Much less second-guessing, in other words.
8. The ability to work with lots of different people. Working with people who may not be just like you can be difficult for the emotionally immature—but not for someone with a high EQ.
9. Helping others have the right attitude. A high EQ allows managers to instill the right work ethic in others, inspiring those people to do better and to remain motivated for a very long time.

In an Educational Setting:

1. Empathy. Whether you’re a teacher or one of the students in the classroom, having empathy for others is important and is more easily achieved by people who have good emotional intelligence.
2. Better communication skills. Communication in education is extremely important and is much easier for people who have a lot of emotional intelligence or maturity. Regardless of your role, learning how to communicate better is imperative.
3. Better sense of cooperation. To be sure, cooperation among teachers and/or students is crucial in an academic setting, but a high EQ increases cooperation every time.
4. Better at sharing. Kids are notoriously bad at sharing, but if the teacher has a high EQ, that person can help them understand sharing a little better so they can all get better at it.
5. Conflict resolution skills. Conflicts are bound to happen in any academic setting, but people with a high EQ have the confidence and patience to mediate a situation created by a conflict between two or more people.
6. Being a better volunteer. There are numerous tasks that require people to step up and volunteer, and a high EQ means you’re more likely to feel like doing this.

Examples of High EQs in Popular Movies:

1. The Pursuit of Happyness: Social skills, commitment, relationship-building, empathy, and self-management are just a few examples of high EQs in this movie. It also shows people who have low EQs.
2. Room: Some of the many high-EQ examples in this movie include self-management, resilience, and empathy.
3. Inside Out: This is an animated Pixar movie that shows high-EQ traits that are at the center of a young girl’s emotions at a difficult time.
4. Birdman: Personal growth leads to self-awareness in this movie about a low-EQ character who is trying to reclaim his former glory.
5. E.T.: This is a very popular movie that shows a lot of high-EQ traits, including social skills, empathy, cooperation, relationship management, and excellent communication.

More Generic/Miscellaneous Examples:

1. Self-confidence. When you’re emotionally mature, you have more overall self-confidence because you can trust your decision-making much better.
2. Self-control. Regardless of what you do in your personal or professional life, having more self-control can make you happier in many different ways. Self-control makes both your personal and your professional life a lot easier.
3. Better mindfulness. Mindfulness means always knowing where you are and how you feel about different things, which reduces the odds of your feeling overwhelmed or out of control.
4. The ability to apologize. Emotionally immature people do not admit when they’re wrong and have a hard time apologizing when they make a mistake. This isn’t the case with a person who has a high EQ.
5. The ability to spend time by yourself. Emotionally insecure people often find it difficult to spend time by themselves. With a high EQ, you’ll feel comfortable whether you’re alone or with other people.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence, also called your emotional quotient (EQ), allows you to grow and thrive in both your personal and professional life.

It centers on traits such as self-awareness but includes many others as well. It results in being more productive, more self-confident, better at communicating, better at working with a diverse group of people, and better able to handle conflict.