How to use emotional intelligence to progress your career

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The dictionary defines emotional intelligence as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” Essentially, it is deploying empathy in situations to understand & evaluate a solution. But how can it be applied in the music industry? That’s what we’re going to cover in this article.
Whilst emotional intelligence (EQ) covers gratitude & empathy, Intelligence quotient (IQ) focuses on the intellect of a person. IQ isn’t really that relevant in this article. After all, EQ isn’t quantifiable and so it’s fairly hard to measure within a person. That said, emotional intelligence can be the most amazing resource at your disposal when it comes to making business deals in the music industry, and connecting on an emotional level with your audience. So without delay, here are some ways in which emotional intelligence can sufficiently benefit you:

Current Trends

By having a good grasp of the current trends within society, it can allow you to be practical and get ahead of the entire music industry. For example, if you notice a new social app in the top 100, you should be downloading it and understanding why people are paying attention to that application. By developing relationships with the early influencers of a platform, it can set you up to have an extremely good network in the future. eg. Jake Paul was one of the most famous stars on VINE. By developing a relationship with him in the early stages of his career, one could be in an advantageous position to have their music featured in his videos (as an example).

Connections

Also, if you spend enough time with somebody, it can allow their truths to come through. This may be beneficial if there is an issue suppressing them from doing their work. This could include artist managers, producers etc going through something within their personal life. My point is simply by generating relationships with colleagues, you can provide emotional support towards them – and thus decrease the time it takes for them to come back to work.

Value

By understanding the emotional psychology of an influencer, it can allow you to provide them value – making you an important person in their life. Essentially, you want to play chess… not checkers. After all, if you’re regularly helping them out, there’s a good chance that they’ll want to return the favor in the long-term. A good example of this is the relationship between a YouTube channel and a music producer. If the channel is regularly promoting the producer, then the producer may want to help promote the channel via social media posts. It’s a simple long-term value exchange that can be used to benefit both parties.

Empathy

Despite all the above being extremely important, empathy is undoubtedly the driving factor within emotional intelligence. After all, it is the ability to understand others within a social situation. If you are a producer receiving criticism for your music, ask yourself why you’re being told that. Is the song good? Is there something you can improve upon? Would you purchase this song yourself? Why are they saying this to you? Basically, put yourself in the shoes of another person. After all, our views of our own creativity are often extremely biased. By listening to the messages and feelings of others, it can help one to understand the mindset of the recipient within the conversation, and how they may perceive the music. Even if you disagree, acknowledge and respect the feelings of others so that you can understand both perspectives, and adapt your approach to the conversation to that.

That’s the basis of emotional intelligence within the music industry. But in order for you to understand this topic better, let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say that you are a producer with 10 million total YouTube views, and have an upcoming release of a new song in a few weeks. Besides the typical Spotify promotion etc, our first suggestion would be to contact influencers that may wish to promote your music within their content. eg. trap music is often great for gaming videos. Next, take a few minutes to study their profile and find out what they like, the type of linguistics used in their posted social media content etc. Develop a profile of what this influencer loves. If they love pizza, drop that as a side note in the pitch that you really love it as well.
Essentially, you want to find out information so that you can create a personal connection with them from the initial message. By doing this, you are understanding the influencers’ emotional psychology. If you are able to do this 50-100 times with influencers, your music will easily generate several million views per song via placements within their videos. Simple.

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"As you travel on your journey, you'll have to learn how to distance yourself from negative people, situations, thoughts, and habits that are keeping you limited and stuck in an unhealthy cycle. The more you become aware, you'll start to realize how crucial it is to live your life on the path of positivity. Nothing is more fulfilling than this state; start choosing it. . Negative Thoughts: Start eliminating negative thoughts. Most of the time, we allow our thoughts to just keep going without any aim or purpose. A purposeless thought, invites gossip, doubt, worry, negativity, and chaos. When you choose to direct your thoughts, you'll be making choices that are more positive, more focused, and more purposeful. So next time a negative thought tries to creep in; stop it in its tracks and replace it with positive thoughts. This will give you full control of not only what goes on in your mind, but also what stays there too. . Negative People: To lead a more positive life, you have to learn how to distance yourself from negative people. There's no love lost, but you have to start caring about your own wellness more. You can't expect to get far in life and keep around people who don't believe in you or even themselves. You can't keep around people who don't have moral standards, who are constantly in drama, or have no real purpose or goal in life. Learning to distance yourself from people who are always creating negativity in their lives will save you from losing yourself in the mix. . Negative situations: Negativity doesn't only come from our thoughts and the people around us, but also from how we use our senses everyday. The things you decide to expose your eyes, ears, and mouth to, determine how you feel internally. The more you watch violence, or negativity on the media; the more fear you have, which leads to negative thoughts. The more you listen to negative music, or conversations that are draining, you're affecting your mood and emotions. What you put into your body also affects how you feel. The more you consume low vibrational foods, the more it weakens your body's energy which makes you susceptible to dis-ease." – via @idillionaire #riskhappy

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