Learning how to put yourself in the “right” mood to handle different situations is part of developing your emotional intelligence. Handling emotions involves both perceiving them and managing them.

Perceiving emotions involves the capacity to monitor and label feelings accurately (nervous, happy, angry, relieved, etc.) and to determine why you feel the way you do. It also involves predicting how others might feel in a given situation. Emotions contain information, and the ability to understand and think about that information plays an important role in behavior.

Managing emotions builds on the belief that feelings can be modified and even improved. At times you need to stay open to your feelings, learn from them, and use them to take appropriate action. At other times it is better to disengage from an emotion and return to it later. Anger, for example, can blind you and lead you to act in negative or antisocial ways; used positively, however, the same emotion can help you overcome adversity, bias, and injustice.

Developing an awareness of emotions allows you to use your feelings to enhance your thinking. If you are feeling sad, for instance, you might view the world in a certain way, whereas if you feel happy, you are likely to interpret the same events differently. Once you start paying attention to emotions, you can learn not only how to cope with life’s pressures and demands, but also how to harness your knowledge of the way you feel for more effective problem solving, reasoning, decision making, and creative endeavors.