Recently in PSE, we have been learning about emotional intelligence and the traits of emotionally intelligent people. Today, we were tasked with setting goals for ourselves, in order to develop some of these skills. We were first asked to identify traits in people that we admired, and the traits of people that we disliked, and list them. We were to then use them to set goals. Here is my chart:

This year, I would like to develop the quality of being assertive. This is important to me as I often apologise when it isn’t appropriate, but at the same time, I find it hard to be direct without coming across as rude, and I think developing this quality will help me with that. I think this is especially important in leadership roles, and since I am taking part in many leadership activities this year, it will be useful to know how to be assertive. In addition, I believe it is an important quality to develop for the future when I start to work.

I dislike people who are disinterested, and who don’t seem to empathise with other people around them. I see this in myself sometimes, however, especially when I am tired or socially drained. This bothers me because I know how annoying it can be to work with and talk to people who don’t seem like they care about what is going on. I think I can overcome this by working to recognise when I am tuning out, and either inform the people around me that I am low energy or try to check myself out of the situation and recharge a little bit. 

Overall, I have been enjoying these sessions about emotional intelligence, since I have realised that I am not that emotionally intelligent at all! For that reason, I would like to work on building emotional intelligence and becoming better at understanding the emotions of myself and others.