Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Explain Emotional intelligence and its components.
• Give a definition of happiness.
• Explain how emotional intelligence help in a person’s achieving happiness.
• Give way forward or conclusion.

Introduction

• Oscar Wilde: "I do not want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them and to dominate them"
• Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
• Emotional Intelligence comprises of 4 steps:
  
  • Self-awareness
  • Self-management
  • Social awareness
  • Relationship management
• Happiness is that feeling that comes over you when you know life is good and you can't help but smile. It's the opposite of sadness. Happiness is a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment.

Emotionally intelligent people create their own happiness by

• They don't let what they can not control affect what they can:- emotionally intelligent people don't let things outside of their control hijack their happiness. Instead, they choose to focus on the positive impact they can make now. Eg. A civil servant should focus on his good work without being worried about the ideologies of ruling parties.
• They live and die by their values:- Emotionally intelligent people understand that happiness is worth short-term sacrifices.
• They believe that life is a learning process:- They accept their failures and instead of getting depressed, learn from that failure.
• They can de-personalize themselves from the anger of others.
• They can handle conflicts constructively hence save themselves from the sadness of the aftermath of conflicts.
• Negative emotions are the number one enemy of happiness. Emotional intelligence helps us to deal with them.
• Emotional intelligence helps us to cope up with changing social values, eg modernity vs traditionality like in case of Sabarimala, Triple Talaq, etc

Conclusion

Dalai Lama had said that happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. Emotional intelligence allows us to take action which is favorable for us in the long term hence providing us with long term happiness.