Transiting from an evasive and irritable person to an equanimous being has been a great feat for me. Retrospectively speaking, a classmate of mine borrowed my phone one day, and upon returning it, I discovered she had borrowed airtime on it to call a friend of hers without my consent. Guess what!! Her calls were not answered, so I was to pay off her debt while she walked free. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? That was one of my vexatious jabs from social relationships, I have had cherished moments likewise. Well, the society is dynamic, hence, if you must thrive well in the society, and have stable and healthy relationships, your Emotional Capital needs to be activated, and for it to be activated, you will need Emotional Intelligence. In business, capital is a large sum of money which you use to start a business, or which you invest in order to make more money. Same way in relationships, Emotional Capital is the reservoir of accumulated emotional ties and strength which keep relationships going, Social Relationships is the market while Emotional Intelligence is how adeptly you run the capital in the market. Emotional Capital (EC), Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Social Relationships (SR) are one inextricable trio which will be explicitly discussed in this article.
We all get involved in social relationships with different people; from our relationships with family members, colleagues, classmates, neighbours, friends and to other significant acquaintances. We cannot all live by ourselves, loneliness will set in. With deliberate and regular interactions, a social bond is formed. Some relationships in turn produce people who will jump through hoops-of-fire and cross oceans to make you successful and save your head and people who will leave a sour taste in your memory at the thought of them. It is normal. But then, your relationship with the former set of people wasn’t built in a day, you invested EC into it to keep it going. Do you remember my experience I shared earlier? Would you be dazzled if I told you there was no brawl over the issue? I was able to tender a constructive displeasure, she apologized and we moved on. How did it happen? It was because I had sufficient EC invested in the relationship, it allows me withstand emotional threats and pains posed by relationships, and then I applied EQ as well. That is why the manner at which a 300L student will manage academic stress will differ from the way a fresher would. Do you understand how it works now? How then does one build EC? Most times, it is built naturally. The nice moments You both shared, the fun
mischievous acts you both carried out, the pranks you played on each other, the time you fought and came back, the priceless moments you both came through for one another, how you both studied, ate and prayed together, and the list goes on. All these pleasant moments invested in a particular relationship become the capital that sustains it. Thus, the more the nice moments and positive energy you get from a relationship, the higher your capital. So, if there was an altercation between close people, they could withdraw from the capital, this happens when sweet memories override present conflicts. KRIS FANNIN in his article on the power of Emotional Capital in building Influence and Relationships said, ‘’Emotional Capital allows you to be able to mess up occasionally and still have life with a client or in a relationship.’’ Having established that, it’s imperative to know that the EC you have in Relationship A is different from the one in Relationship B, that, because of the peculiarities of each relationship. Invariably, you may have sufficient EC in the former and Emotional deficit in the latter. We don’t like or interact with everybody in like manner, and if bad moments supercede pleasant moments in relationships, EC gets diminished till it becomes empty eventually. In business, you just ran at loss.
