AsianDate: Mental Strength Or Emotional Intelligence, What’s More Important?
Mental Strength the Emotional Intelligence are both relatively recently coined terms that people tend to confuse. AsianDate helps you understand the difference.
What’s Preferable: A High EQ or Being Mentally Strong? AsianDate Helps You Decide
As with all psychological terms, people tend to simplify them as much as possible in order to comprehend them. This is not necessarily bad, but in the process, some significant nuances do tend to slip through the cracks.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Although the term Emotional Intelligence (“EQ” for short) first became used among psychologists in the 1960s, it took 35 years to become used by the layman, thanks to the best-selling book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ”, written by psychologist and science journalist, Daniel Goleman.
The Oxford Dictionary defines Emotional Intelligence as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”, but this, of course, is a very general definition. Goleman went into more detail, describing some characteristics possessed by those with a high EQ:
Self-awareness: the ability of a person to recognize and understand their own emotions and desires, as well as correctly predict the way they will affect others.
Empathy: one’s ability to understand the emotional makeup of others and his/her willingness to treat them accordingly to avoid causing hurt.
Internal motivation: a drive to work that goes beyond money and status, a person’s deeper understanding of what’s important in life, or the capacity to just do something for the joy of doing it rather than for some kind of profit.
Self-regulation: controlling your own disruptive impulses, being able to think rationally ahead of acting.
Social skills: a person with social skills can maintain good relations with other and build rapport by focusing on his/her common ground with others rather than differences.
What Is Mental Strength?
Despite common misconceptions, being mentally strong doesn’t mean a person acts tough. Being mentally strong means being aware of your emotions, using past experiences to learn and improve yourself, and leading your life according to your personal ideals and values.
The 3 main characteristics of Mental Strength are the following:
#1. Being able to control your emotions: A person who can honestly recognize their own emotions also has a good insight to how they influence his/her behavior. Taking control of your emotions can be about accepting some uncomfortable truths (like the fact you do feel envy or resentment sometimes), or acting contrary to how you feel if you recognize that doing otherwise will harm you.
#2. Regulating your thoughts: this means that you must find the ways to train your mind to think in a way that is beneficial to you. This is a whole process that might involve swapping self-doubt and brutal self-criticism for self-esteem, confidence, and self-compassion.
#3. Behaving in a productive way: simply put, this means that you will be able to preserve your efforts and energy for actions that will improve your life and offer you mental and emotional stability, even in cases when you may lack self-motivation or when you know that gratification from your actions won’t be instant.
Should you choose between one of the two? At AsianDate we don’t think so. In fact, you should consider Emotional Intelligence as part or Mental Strength. The latter, however, is less about the way you feel and more about the action you take to improve the quality of all aspects of your everyday life, including taking control of your love life.