Being emotionally intelligent means understanding feelings - both our own, and other people’s.
As much as we like to think we’re rational beings, the reality is that humans are inherently emotional. Our emotions are the lens through which we perceive and interpret the world. We react emotionally to people, places and events instantly, and then recruit our rationality to justify our emotions afterwards.
At some point in our lives, most of us come to the realisation that school hasn’t really prepared us for the outside world. For some, that realisation comes while they’re still in school, leading to disengagement and alienation from the education system. For others, it comes when we’re sitting in our first salary negotiation, or at home, wondering why it’s so much harder to make new friends as an adult.
