Emotional literacy is an urgent capacity in today’s unrealistic world. Higher Educational institutions have to come up with preventative programmes where one can educate the management and students about affective, cognitive, and behavioral skillsets.
ROSELINE FLORENCE GOMES
As an educator, counselor, and community worker in the 2022 Indian system, I substitute the emotions of all my students, my clients, young, old, and all others who are part of my integral social system. Let me start with some contexts with hypothetical names depicting real-life emotional struggles. Ravi Mehrotra, a 19-year-old aspiring engineer jumped off the building as he was heartbroken after a breakup. Monisha V, a 22-year-old took an overdose of substances to cope with mental health concerns. Sunil, a 14-year-old battles with discriminatory remarks by classmates, teachers, and family as he is a special learner and is unable to think like others. Deepak a 53-year-old is given two meals a day as he is unable to provide for the family. Shilpi a 35-year-old is invisible in her workspace as her department thinks she is not worthy to be a part of the system. Prarthana an 80-year-old experiences sexist remarks and is age-shamed whenever she goes on a pilgrimage trip from her church. Yes, these are some of the lived experiences of the members of our community. The question is how could someone with emotions, thoughts, and feelings create situations for another irrational individual. Thus, are we all emotionally intelligent residing in the 75th year of Independence? What is our EQ, Emotional Quotient? Are we able to motivate ourselves and sail through our conflicts? Can we control our impulses? Can we regulate our emotions and work on distressing thoughts that stop our ability to think?
Emotional Intelligence revolves around all our cognitions, which are the processes of understanding oneself and others through motives, habits, insights, and nonverbal communication. It then interlinks with our feelings and finally our actions. There are a few steps in understanding whether we are emotionally intelligent:
Do I know my Emotions? The pathway to self-awareness is where we can recognize our feeling as it takes place. It provides a skywalk towards the ability to monitor these feelings from every moment that enhances our mental insights and personal knowledge about ourselves. When we are unable to notice our affective state, we become uncertain about our past, present, and future. This further lowers our skillsets of decision-making and problem-solving.
Am I able to Manage my Emotions? We need to be able to handle our feelings whenever it's inappropriate which strengthens our self-awareness skillset. The capability to soothe one’s frustrations by overcoming distress through resilient thoughts, feelings, and actions will evolve self-sufficiency.
Can we Motivate Our Self? Marshaling feelings through a goal-centric vision is needed for developing creativity, attentiveness, and mastery. Emotional self-control is the capacity that needs to be grown. The process of delaying one’s gratification and impulsivity generates accomplishment. The ability to get into a state where we can flow with all the activities that we undertake helps in improving our performance. This evolves our power of productivity and self-efficacy.
Are we able to identify others’ emotions? Is the concept and action of empathy known to us? Can we take the perspectives of others? If yes, then we can put ourselves in the lens of our social comrades which will create altruistic actions or acts of kindness. The more we are inclined to the needs of others we can recognize their gestures as social signals. It grows the seed of nurturance in our professions. Thus, we will be able to nurture a team if we are empathetic.
Can we handle relationships? The ability to be socially competent and have leadership skills. The need for interpersonal efficacy and capacity to interact with others by negating all the differences of others as personal strengths.
All of the above is a need of an Independent India and as the main protagonists of a Higher Educational system, we need to expand these skillsets. India stands as a majestic superpower with its structural educational principles and the newer generation of dynamic thinkers that emerge as world leaders. We need to create schooling on emotional intelligence where it becomes part of our experiential curriculum both for staff and students. Improvisation, recognition, and naming of individual emotions need to be normalized in Higher Educational units. Every stakeholder has to be taught the ways of identifying the dynamics of emotions and their outcomes. The workshop-based model of educating tolerance of conflicts, time, and anger management capacities would lead to lowered disruptions. This will expand greater self-expressive skills and curb self-destructiveness, anxiety, stress, and other mental health concerns. We need to be more socially responsible by being able to mindfully pay attention to our tasks which will further help us in self-control and lower impulsivity by increasing accomplishment. The ability to read others’ emotions will increase our social sensitivity and listening power. We will then be able to develop our capacity to analyze and define our relationships. It will help in resolving conflicts and empower problem-solving abilities, assertiveness, communication, friendliness, prosocial acts, and peer relations.
Emotional literacy is an urgent capacity in today’s unrealistic world. Higher Educational institutions have to come up with preventative programs where one can educate the management and students about affective, cognitive, and behavioral skillsets. Affective skillsets will guide our people in defining their emotions, participating in self-expression, analyzing their intense emotions, experiencing self-control, managing impulses, and battling stressors by also differentiating between emotions and actions. Cognitive skillsets will teach self-appraisal where every individual will have a personal dialogue with themselves to help themselves cope with environmental stress and reward one’s actions. This will flourish abilities to view social signals and develop empathy and a favorable outlook. Behavioral skillsets will educate about both verbal and nonverbal interactions. Therefore, social-emotional learning for Higher Education systems is a practice in making our youth leaders more socially responsible, assertive, helpful, and most importantly independent in their own emotions, thoughts, and actions. Let’s all remind each other to empower the needy who lack the emotional skillsets that are needed for our holistic growth.
∎
