Emotional Intelligence Compared

How to be smart in the most useful way

STRAWBRIDGE image with Image Creator

How we think

Intelligence is a loaded word. It is hard to begin a conversation about it without many folks feeling uneasy. There is lots that we do not understand about intelligence, and the experts cannot even agree on the many ways one can be smart.

Maybe History is to blame. More specifically, intelligence testing has been extremely discriminatory in the past. There has been a bias based on race and other things. Although, I am not focusing on the unsettling and unfair aspects of grading intelligence. In fact, I really am opening a conversation about mental health and the way people think.

In my travels, it seems that most do not interpret mental health the way I do.

I combine more than divide. Generally, I think the impulse to separate subjects must stem from a human need to compartmentalize. The modern world, too, plays a part. It might be that so much information out there forces us to sort it all like a librarian, according to some retrievable pattern.

Intelligence is certainly part of mental health, and understanding its different manifestations furthers the cause of knowing ourselves as a world-community and as individuals. Learning who you are, as in how you think, is the most consistently usable method to confront and improve mental health.

Common Sense

I seek to describe a few types of intelligence while admitting that my list is incomplete. I believe there are twelve official categories, but opinions vary on every topic that is consequential. My thoughts have led me to separate intelligence into four, very broad forms. They are not all equal.

Common sense is something that everyone recognizes and believes they have. In my opinion, it can be defined as knowledge that each person assumes everyone else possesses. The problem with common sense is that variations of cultures and experiences causes false expectations of what constitutes obvious stuff to know.

In general, common sense is old-fashioned and is not to be taken ultra-seriously. We joke about that guy who is very smart in one way but is clueless as to the basics of living. That is common sense to me — realizing the things to do and not do in order to make life easier and more efficient.

Street Smarts

Street smarts has many names and is the less-likable cousin of common sense. Both are based on lived experience to some degree. One can find wisdom in both forms of intelligence, but more so with common sense.

There is an inherent danger involved with street smarts, as the mere mention of it suggests that people are hostile and deceitful. Being street-wise assumes that plenty of folks in the world hope to do you harm. You have something to protect away from your comfort zone, then, and this form of intelligence provides the defense. At its core, street smarts is competitive.

Street smarts does not have to be logical or even make sense separate from its real-world application. It has to do with survival and little else. If one is intelligent in this way, he or she anticipates danger before it is too late. A definition lives somewhere in my last few sentences.

Okay, I will try. Street smarts is best conceptualized as intelligence that is directed toward self-preservation, without concern for the long-term benefits to any person or the world as a whole.

Acquired Knowledge

The next category requires a sizable leap from the first two. I settled on the term “acquired knowledge” to designate what is more often called “book smarts.” We have an anti-book bias in this country, and I had rather not add to it. So, that is part of my reasoning behind the name.

However, my definition of acquired knowledge includes all that is learned in an intentional and systematic way that may or may not derive from a book. Acquired knowledge comes to a person after he or she chooses to seek it. It is the type of intelligence that is most profitable but the form popular culture deems the least important.

Emotional Intelligence

The last one is the hardest to explain: emotional intelligence. It can be picked up along someone’s life journey, but not very easily. Without a doubt, it is there at birth for some folks more than others.

Awareness and interpretation are the key words, but especially the first one. It is a form of awareness that emphasizes “taking the temperature” of a person or situation. If you have never heard it put that way, I refer to gauging what is going on, establishing who is content and who might be upset, forecasting the causes and potential effects of various outcomes, and realizing how to navigate all variables to reach a goal, given any set of circumstances.

To be strong in this area, one must interpret signs and then act appropriately. Highly sensitive and empathetic people will likely be very emotionally intelligent. Such a person gathers what is the wrong and right things to say.

Then, most of all, someone with emotional intelligence understands their own emotions and the real cause of them. This is a great advantage in the thing called life. Any human being who is skilled in this way will recognize their anger, or envy, or whatever, and will not feel dominated by how they feel.

Emotional intelligence is the most essential kind. It is a factor in every interaction and non-interaction that composes this existence. It is a constant. Lacking it will make every kind of goal much more unlikely to attain. Maintaining EQ promotes states of tranquility, and not having it invites disorder through the door.

Of all these groupings, emotional intelligence is the one most likely to signal a person others portray as mature and stable. It might be the most challenging variety of intelligence to maintain. Also, and I say this without any reservations, EQ is the most crucial as far as mental health is concerned.

Something as important as the manner in which we distinguish and assess moods and feelings all around us surely is integral to mental health. To reiterate, the backbone of emotional intelligence is being an expert on yourself. In turn, in my humble point of view, evaluating your emotions and what creates them is the entryway to self-actualization (being your best self).

Becoming fluid in reading emotions is like learning a new language. It just so happens that it is a universal language and the most vital one to master.

Rarely do people let down their guard and open up to others what really bothers, inspires, or motivates them. From the outside looking in, the world is in a constant state of layering one false façade on top of another. We cover our true emotional state with one exterior, and then create another to conceal that exterior, and continue on and on this way to protect ourselves. What is left is a series of deceptions based on what we believe the world expects us to be and feel.

The Hidden Benefits of EQ

As you might be thinking, dear reader, all of this pretended reality frustrates authentic communication. It is easy to stop trying. When we take a person’s anger or jealously only for what it appears to be, no problem is ever addressed. The shortcut is to boomerang those bad emotions back to them, which results in the endless arguments and grudges we know as everyday living.

Emotional intelligence produces a higher plane of consciousness. Also, it is a contagious thing, because a person will notice and eventually desire to join in the sharing of something soulful. Well, that is not going to always happen, but it will when a mind is open.

If a human being is in touch with their emotions, needs, wants, and boundaries start to fall into place. People are less apt to be tossed here and there by the storms of confusion and paranoia that are emitted from those fake layers of human defenses.

All I have said about emotional intelligence and its centrality to our well-being also happens to be a discussion of mental health. I am of the opinion that “to thy own self be true” is a self-help truism that can be as easily filed under mental health as philosophy or literature.

To say again, I am not trying to classify every way one can be intelligent. Instead, I have four expansive forms of intelligence that I think covers lots of ground. These are not bad at all and can begin conversations about the more specific types.

I hate to keep using the word intelligence. The word carries a judgement about the mental capacity of some to be more than others. Instead, in the context of this story, I view my categories of analysis as methods of working on our state of mind that are more like blueprints for the construction of sound mental health. All of the forms are important, by the way.

Primary schools should be teaching emotional intelligence. We live in a lonely society of widespread isolation. Furthermore, proper socialization is what folks need and is what seems to be in short supply.

How we engage with others is all about emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, poor social skills is a leading factor in all kinds of tragedies. It makes people feel alone and hopeless. In turn, angry outsiders begin to look at civilization and innocent people as scapegoats for their inner turmoil.

Personally, I wish emotional intelligence had been part of some curriculum as a confused and unhappy young person. Is it not time we finally start balancing out acquired knowledge with practical forms of intelligence? I will let you decide, dear reader.

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THANKS FOR READING. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS. I ALWAYS LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR POINTS OF VIEW AND NEVER CLAIM TO HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS.