Self-reflection on Success, Emotional Intelligence, and Teamwork

Self-Reflection
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Self-Reflection
No one in this world attains success alone. Every successful individual in the past and today has had people guiding them with their comments, advice, and rebukes. It is incredibly difficult to attain success while ignoring other people’s contributions. Aside from other people’s contributions, it is crucial to self-reflect and objectively assess oneself. For students who are still in grade school, success is personal and has to be attained individually. I grew up with this mindset and therefore, I was focused on what I was doing and never took a step back to reflect on my actions or the many words people directed towards me. I was not aware of how crucial it is to know thyself and most of all learn from other people and listen to what other people are saying. Everything was about me and nothing else mattered. However, having dwelt on personal insight and development this semester, I have come to understand that to achieve any level of excellence, I have to know myself and seek answers from those who know me as well. I believe that what I have learned will help me climb the ladder of success with the utmost knowledge of myself and with a keen eye and ear for words coming from those around me.
Now, one thing that stood out for me during this semester is the topic of emotional intelligence. In class, we used the defection by Salovey and Mayer who described emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” Our emotions are indeed quite crucial in life and in the pursuit of success, it is quite easy to forget that our emotions could lead to our downfall as well. Mastering one’s emotions is difficult and takes a lot of practice. One thing I learned about myself after studying emotional intelligence was that often, I respond to questions with a lot of emotions. Responding emotionally or having my emotions get mixed up with the responses I give has interfered with my objectivity for a long time. I have been accused of being defensive and ignoring the use of logic at times because of my emotional inclination towards my opinion or my answer. Taking action on myself and learning how to monitor my emotions has helped me a lot. However, it has taken deliberate action or practice, something Zimmerman (2002) writes, about to slowly master myself and my emotions. He notes that “extensive experience and involvement in a domain is necessary for the select group of elite individuals who steadily increase their performance and reach very high levels.” He also warns that “the vast majority of individuals struggle to reach an acceptable level of performance.” In life, this is normal and many people end up being average on a lot of things. However, I intend to keep learning about myself and to understand my emotions better. My goal is to reach a place where my emotions are not a factor when I eventually start my career. I do not want to be the employee who refuses to work with others because my opinion is ignored. I want to be a person who objectively analyses a situation and comes up with r...