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Emotional Intelligence Reflection Paper

Emotional intelligence lends itself to self-awareness, growth, and prosperity; its absence

brings naivety, misunderstanding, and frustration. I have always appreciated the notion of being

in tune with one’s emotions. I am typically drawn to those who have a grasp on what they are

feeling and why they are feeling it. I have not always been good at it, but it is a skill I have

consistently worked on improving. I began my journey of emotional intelligence before I even

learned what it was. This emotional intelligence unit has provided me with the terminology and

concepts that I have unintentionally been seeking for most my adolescence.

Prior to taking the EQ Assessment, I had high expectations for the results. In my time at

Gonzaga, I have taken many personality and skills assessments. Yet I have never taken a 45-

minute-long assessment that cost $75 and requires a subsequent debrief. Most of the ones I have

taken pertain to my professional and personal characteristics, none have specifically examined

my emotions. The seriousness of the EQ Assessment set my expectations high.

When I first received my results, I was delighted to see a colorful rainbow appear on my

circle. Prior to the debrief, all I knew was that more color meant more access to my emotions. I

was interested to learn that the results are much more complex than that.

My fitness profile indicates that I am optimally fit in access to range of feelings, positive-

negative orientation, and empathy compassion and I am very fit in empathy accuracy, self-other

orientation, and balanced reliance on thought-wants-feelings. In addition, my fitness profile

shows that my self-other orientation skews toward self. I also tend to rely on my wants first, then

my thoughts, and finally my feelings. My debrief instructor explained that my results reflected a

relatively high level of emotional intelligence.

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For this portion of the profile, I was most interested in the empathy compassion and

empathy accuracy components. I have always felt that I am an empathetic person; for instance, I

am easily upset by a lost dog flyer or seeing a person in pain. My 85.7% rating in the empathy

compassion category underscores my level of empathy. Nevertheless, I was unaware of the term

“empathy accuracy”. The idea that empathy can be accurately directed toward an individual is an

idea I had never conceptualized. I think this is a skill that coincides with a general understanding

of emotional intelligence. The more in touch with my own emotions I am, the more I recognize

those emotions in others. When I can do this, I can notice where there is malintent or where an

individual is truly suffering. Empathy accuracy is especially useful to determine the motivations

and intentions of others. For this reason, I want to continuously improve my empathy accuracy.

In analyzing my feelings distribution, I am slightly above the population in my access to

fear, love, and sadness and I am slightly below the population in my access to anger and shame.

In addition, I am significantly under accessing anxiety and over accessing joy. These results were

the most insightful from the profile as they highlighted how I currently cope with my emotions in

stressful situations.

My low access to anxiety was the most surprising result I received. I was diagnosed with

anxiety disorder several years ago and have been actively coping with it since high school. For

this reason, I have developed many healthy techniques to care for my anxiety, especially in

stressful situations. As my debrief instructor reminded me, the EQ profile underscores our

emotional reactions in stressful situations. Therefore, my low access to anxiety demonstrates my

effective coping mechanisms in stressful situations and affirmed that I am making progress on

managing my anxiety.
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My over access to joy is another indication of how I cope in stressful situations. I favor a

positive approach as tend to look for the silver lining and seek solutions when put under stress. I

think this is a result of growing up in a negative environment where the bad was always

emphasized over the good. I could not understand why we never focused on the good as I found

this much easier than fixating on the bad. This experience from my upbring sheds light on why I

choose joy in stressful situations. Another emotion that I over access is sadness. This one

initially surprised me but made sense upon further reflection. Although I have been fortunate to

not have experienced significant sadness in my own life, I have had many loved ones suffer

through sorrowful situations. For this reason, I have an intimate relationship with sadness.

Overall, this part of the profile showed me that my go-to emotions are joy, love, and sadness

when placed under stress.

Regarding my self-management relationship strategies, I rely heaviest on my

interdependent relationships and I rely least on disconnected relationships. These results align

with the average population. I am above the ideal amount in my reliance on interdependent and

independent relationships and below the ideal amount for dependent and disconnected

relationships. This portion of the profile showed me what types of relationships I currently rely

on and what types I should seek in the future.

I learned that I have a lot of trust in myself from my self-management relationship

strategies. In addition, I rarely put myself in relationships where I do not trust myself or my

abilities. I have a strong preference for interdependent relationships where I trust both myself

and the other person. In reflecting on my current relationships, I can think of several that fit this

category. For instance, one of my best friends is my favorite person to work with on school

projects. I trust her opinion and her abilities just as much as I trust my own. I can also think of
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many independent relationships where I trust myself but not the other person. I often like to

mentor and advise people and I feel like these relationships fit well in this category. The

relationships that I am under accessing are dependent relationships where I trust the other person

but not myself. I think it would be beneficial to seek out these relationships as I think I can learn

from people I trust more than myself. This part of the profile encouraged me to work on finding

more dependent relationships in my life.

After receiving my results and debriefing, I was able to identify several aspects of my

profile that I intend to work on. For instance, I want to continue to improve my empathy

accuracy and seek more dependent relationships. I also think I could have a better balance

between self and others as well as between my thoughts, wants, and feeling. When selecting my

journaling exercises from the EQ Fitness Handbook, I chose to focus on exercises that would

improve the balance of my EQ profile. As was previously noted, the EQ profile measures my

emotional reactions when placed under stress. I kept this in mind while journaling since daily

journaling does not always involve stressful scenarios.

The first journaling exercise I selected related to my anxiety which I am severely under

accessing. Although I have significantly improved my anxiety-management skills under stress, I

am still working on managing my daily anxiety. I knew anxiety was an emotion I wanted to

exercise to better understand why someone with anxiety may be under accessing it in stressful

situations. The exercise I chose aimed at providing a heightened understanding of anxiety and

encouraged me to identify my unique triggers. To do so, I picked out one situation from the day

that caused me anxiety and journaled about it. I then ranked my anxiety level, described my

thoughts, ranked how much my anxiety was based on the present or the past, and then described

my subsequent actions. After completing this exercise, I was able to reflect on what types of
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situations sparked my anxiety and learned what to look for in the future. I observed that much of

my anxiety was based on the past and I tended to take actions based on my wants and thoughts

over my feelings. This conclusion led me to select me second journaling exercise.

For the second journaling exercise, I worked on analyzing my balance between thoughts,

wants, and feeling. I tend to act on my thoughts and wants significantly more often than my

feelings. I intended to learn more about this with an exercise that required me to identify and

name my thoughts, wants, and feelings every day for one week. Each day, I wrote down the

overarching feeling from the day, what I thought, and what I wanted. I then ended the journal

entry by describing what actions I took that day. After completing this exercise, I noticed that I

never acted on my feelings. I also identified several moments where it would have been

beneficial for me to act on my feelings. From this exercise, I learned that I need to give more

attention to my feelings and allow myself to act on them more often.

My key takeaway from the emotional intelligence unit is that emotions must be studied in

the same way as math and history. Emotions are a shared human experience and understanding

them can make you a better family member, friend, coworker, and leader. This unit was

transformational in my self-awareness. I now feel equipped to talk about my emotions and

understand why I react in certain ways. I have new strengths and weaknesses to add to my

understanding of myself. Most of all, I am excited to improve upon some of the pain-points I

identified in my profile. My emotional intelligence allows me to be a more effective and

wholistic leader that can understand and empathize with the emotions of others. I appreciate this

new opportunity for self-discovery, growth, and to become a better leader.