Manage Emotions
The ability to regulate moods and emotions in oneself and in other people constitutes the fourth domain of EI. When managing one’s own feelings, people must be able to monitor, discriminate, and label their feelings accurately, believe that they can improve or otherwise modify these feelings, employ strategies that will alter their feelings, and assess the effectiveness of these strategies. If emotions contain information, then ignoring this information means that we may end up making a poor decision. At times, we need to stay open to our feelings, learn from them, and use them to take appropriate action. Other times, however, it is better to disengage from an emotion and return to it later. For instance, anger, like many emotions, is a misunderstood emotion. Anger is not necessarily a bad thing to feel. In fact, it is anger which helps us to overcome adversity, bias, and injustice. Anger arises when we feel frustrated, cheated or taken advantage of. Yet, anger, if left to itself, can blind us and cause us to act in negative, or antisocial ways.