Emotions can give us access to the deepest levels of consciousness or hold us locked in mindless reactivity. In a fit of rage, we only see a target for our anger. In depression, we can see either despair or deeply into our soul. In compassion, we can feel a loving connection extending beyond our limited personhood. Emotional intelligence allows us to be a participant in our emotional life, not merely a passenger.

Emotions shape our actions, desires, motivations, and very sense of reality. Emotions are not just feelings, they direct our conscious orientation, and changes in our emotional homeostasis are experienced as shifts in our state of mind. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to remain aware of this emotional impact on us while we are actually under the influence of our emotions. Having this ability helps us maintain perspective on the shifts in states of mind evoked by our emotions. For example, when we are angry we are in an anger reality, when we are sad we are in a depriving reality, when we are compassionate we are in a beneficent reality. Emotions shape our consciousness. Remaining aware of the power emotions helps us utilize our feelings to understand our circumstances and not to be controlled by them.

The first area of research in emotional intelligence focused on how we regulate our responses to basic emotions such as fear and anger. Research by Joseph Ledoux revealed how emotions can act as powerful triggers that overwhelm our thoughts and behaviors. Specifically, Ledoux’s research revealed that neuronal activity in the amygdala would automatically trigger anger in an individual unless there is a nearly instantaneous inhibiting influence generated in the frontal cortex. Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence, popularized this research and resulted in an emphasis on developing the ability to enhance the inhibiting influence of the neocortex. These valuable insights have subsequently evolved as research has expanded our understanding of the nature of emotions. We now know that emotions also act in sublet ways affecting our global states of mind. With this knowledge, we can expand our emotional intelligence beyond basic impulse control over our coarse emotional responses and develop the capacity to manage our general well-being.

Emotional intelligence helps us manage the impact emotions have on our motivation and reasoning. Emotions interacting with our motivations is where thinking, feeling and acting all come together. The foundation of emotional intelligence is understanding and accepting that no matter how rational we may think we are, when it comes to judgment and motivation, emotions are powerfully engaged in the process. With increased emotional intelligence, we can remain aware of the power emotions have over our motivations, as well as our needs and desires.

Emotions and actionable beliefs are closely related, and tied to complex, motivational patterns. Emotionally-fueled beliefs profoundly affect our judgment and can be highly motivating. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to reflect on the actionable, emotionally-charged belief in the context of other competing belief systems. Without emotional intelligence, we are often unable to have a perspective on any competing belief systems.

Understanding the nature of the link between thinking and action has long been a focus of philosophy and psychology. Philosophers have struggled for millennia to understand how our passions and our thinking determine our action in the world. David Hume, in the seventeenth century, concluded that only our passions could evoke action in the world. Contemporary neuropsychological research has generally supported the view that feelings, not reason, fuel our action in the world. Although we may think we are acting based on rational analysis, emotions appear to underlie all actionable belief, perhaps subtle, but emotional nonetheless. Although we may feel we are merely asserting an objectively-true fact, our passion to push, fight, argue, persuade, as well as our inability to listen to a conflicting perspective, is the result of the emotions that shape all our actions in the world. The passion we feel when called to act on a fact we believe to be urgent or pressing is an emotional event, regardless of any objective veracity of the fact. Whether we are pursuing a passionate belief or a subtle preference we are being emotionally driven. The power of emotions to motivate us is more apparent when the emotions are strong; however, this difference is one of degree, a gradation of subjective experience.

Complex emotions are often experienced as beliefs or moral truths. Our beliefs and values, as well as moral judgments, are impacted by our emotions. Emotions are the foundation of our moral judgments and actions in the world. Just as simple feelings clearly evoke action in the world, complex moral judgments also call for action in the world. The linkage between emotions and thinking is the hallmark of motivation and judgment and is the same combination behind our actions based on our moral judgments.

Through our appreciation of the link between emotions, motivation, and moral judgment, we can develop Moral Intelligence in order to guide us to action in the world. By working to integrate our capacities for feelings, action, and judgment, we can develop purpose and ultimately flourish.