Intrapersonal intelligence is the least form of the intellect but highly sought once.
What we feel about ourselves and talk about ourselves play a significant role. If you are filled with self-doubt, you lack confidence and self-worth is diminished. To combat this comes into the role of intrapersonal intelligence. Interpersonal skills and intelligence allows you to regulate your own thoughts and attitudes. It helps you to analyse your emotions and the impact of what you are feeling.
What Is Intrapersonal Intelligence?
Interpersonal intelligence is the identification of your intrapersonal skills. It is one’s capacity to explore the inner thoughts and feelings to plan and manage your life. It helps you continuously evaluate and reflect yourself and regulate your thoughts and attitude in a better way.
In short, intrapersonal intelligence is how you communicate with yourself. It provides you with the understanding and compassion towards yourself. It defines motivation and allows you to grow.
Intrapersonal intelligence is about self-awareness and introspection.
Difference Between Intrapersonal And Interpersonal Intelligence
Many times interpersonal and intrapersonal is used in conjunction with each other. However, there is quite a difference between both. Interpersonal intelligence is about communicating and interacting with others, whereas intrapersonal intelligence is about interacting with your own emotions and thoughts.
A Few Examples Of Intrapersonal Skills
A few examples of intrapersonal skills include:
- Introspection
- Intuition
- Independent thinking
- Self-reflection
- Looking for ways to improve self
- Express oneself with creativity
- High level of self-awareness
- Apply learnings and experiences of life
- Aware of own strengths
- Highly independent and work well on their own.
- Strong morals and values.
- Inclined towards entrepreneurship.
- Avoid repeating mistakes. Learning from mistakes.
- Understands self and their wants and needs.
- Very initiative
- Self-motivated
- Spend alone time for reflection
- A person with intrapersonal personality possesses most of these traits.
To some extent, we all possess some degree of the above traits. What makes the difference is how well they are developed.
What Is The Need Of Intrapersonal intelligence In Life And The Workplace?
Intrapersonal intelligence is not about self-absorption, but it is about self-knowledge and accepting yourself as you are. When you are in sync with yourself, you understand what you need and how to achieve specific goals or react to the changing circumstances.
No doubt people with Intrapersonal intelligence are good in intrapersonal communication. Most of us do self-talk, but we usually take it on a very negative tone. Our self-talk is mostly about past mistakes and lack of self-belief and low self-confidence, which makes us doubt ourselves and our decisions, and ends up to conflict or inaction. Intrapersonal intelligence involves self-kindness. It checks the self-talk and diverts it towards positive thinking. It helps us to accept the criticism and consider it as a valuable opportunity to improve. It helps us to understand who is giving helpful feedback and who is acting maliciously. When you know yourself, you know others and look upon them without judgment, and respond without anger, fear or defensiveness. All these qualities make you a better team member, colleague, partner and friend.
Once you are in tune with your needs, wants, likes and dislikes, you can recognise others. Intrapersonal intelligence helps us move from fear-based thinking triggered by lack-based mind set or survival mode. We become more receptive and calm to external events and factors. This enables you to connect to your partner and friends in personal life and team members in professional life.
Ways To Develop Intrapersonal Intelligence
1. Combat Negative Self talk
We are our own critic. Our inner critic constantly guide and motivate us to do better. Nevertheless, if unchecked it starts creating a pressure and becomes a nuisance. Below there are some tips to combat negative self-talk:
- First of all, do not catastrophize and better pay attention on the best possible results instead of the worst.
- Assess the situation but do not make assumptions. Accept the reality of the situation and ask yourself what exactly is happening.
- Never, be afraid of the feedback as it helps you to improve. The feedback is not the end. You may seek feedback from your trusted peers who are able to see the situation more objectively.
- Never, take feedback personally. How you handle the feedback effects the self-talk. If feedback is negative, better focus on how you can improve or how it can help you to grow. Remember one thing you cannot improve if you do not know where to start so take the feedback as the tool to grow.
2. Be kind to yourself and practise self-care – It is imperative to take care of yourselves before taking care of others. It would be best if you prioritised yourself. If we will not take care of our physical, mental and emotional health, we cannot help people around us and will not be useful as a leader or team member. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to practice self-care regularly. Simple tips for daily self-care include:
- Eat a balanced diet and get enough rest. Nourish your body throughout the day.
- Exercise daily. Move your body. Motivate yourself by giving credits for any exercise you do. Try to spare at least 10 to 20 minutes from your busy schedule to walk around.
- Learn to say no. You don’t need to do everything for every person around you on a priority basis. Say yes to the things only if they do it not add any undue stress.
3. Effective multitasking and mindfulness – Focus on the things that matter most. Not everything can be a priority, or else nothing is a priority. To become an effective multitasker, you need to prioritise your task and organise them into your effort and impact level. Better say no to the tasks that have the least role in your overall goal. Saying no makes you less busy. Always remember doing a lot doesn’t mean you are productive. If required, seek help from your peers. It will help if you handle the assignment to people who can appropriately manage or to those who have experience performing the particular task.
4. Improve interpersonal communication – To boost intrapersonal intelligence, it is essential to improve the interpersonal communication skills as it allows you to articulate your wants and needs better. Interpersonal communication skill does not develop overnight but requires lots of introspection. To become an influential team member or a leader, it is important to share your ideas and thoughts. You should be able to articulate your needs and relate to others, and for this, you need to be aware of yourself and how other people around you perceive you. For the growth of intrapersonal intelligence seeking feedback from your peers can be useful. By asking your peer group their perceptions, you can understand the growth opportunities and the areas you can excel in. Ask the following questions to your peers:
- Are my suggestions, instructions and verbal communication clear?
- Do you feel that I understand and hear all your instructions or suggestions well. This question is important because communication is a two-way process. We should never forget that just like you, other people also want to be heard. When will listen to each other; we develop empathy as well as rapport.
- What do you feel about my contribution to the team and let me know if you perceive my blind spots?
5. Embrace a growth mind-set – If you want to improve intrapersonal intelligence, it is imperative to learn and grow. Believe that we can achieve things with tenacity and resilience. Understand that failure is never the end but gives the path to a better future.
It is imperative to develop intrapersonal intelligence because it makes you completely aware of what you are and what you want. You embrace your feelings, motivation and fear without any hesitation and appreciate yourself completely. You are confident and able to apply the growth mind set to become a better leader and efficiently communicate and contribute your ideas to the team.