No longer feeling happy about or even lost interest in your PhD degree? Our guest, Adepeju, shares why emotional intelligence is key to happiness during PhD!

A successful man is always asked… what is the secret of your success? No one inquires into what the secret of failure is. It is always obvious, so why bother to ask?

Now, what do you think the secret of success is? What would you call the secret of PhD success? Most importantly, what would PhD success mean for you? Happiness? Fulfilment? Or just another milestone?

Whatever it means to you, one thing is certain, it isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a roller coaster journey of different phases and facets of life, albeit an exciting one.

The emotional stages of a PhD degree

Oftentimes one starts with excitement and is highly motivated with all the potentials and ready to begin this new chapter of one’s career.

Then honeymoon phase with so much to do, so many thoughts, hopes and aspirations, here one tries to pick up skills, know-hows knowledge among other things. This stage also is when you would like to make connections, establish yourself as a PhD candidate, gather sources, probably have a mentor or two and generally hope to get the hang of the whole process even in the face of uncertainty and self-doubt.

The third phase is the phase of disappointment and evaluation. Here at this point, reality comes in, and a chasm between the ideal and the real emerges. You realize that the journey is not as exciting as you have envisioned. There are a lot of pitfalls that are discouraging enough for one to want to quit.

The entire trip is physically demanding, mentally taxing, emotionally draining and one may be dissatisfied with the progress. It is a kind of re-evaluation stage – an opportunity to pause and make some adjustments and affirmations.

And the last stage, this final stage is the high efficiency stage, when performance is top-notch,  your energy focuses on fulfilling your tasks and timing resulting in obvious accomplishments, recognition and acknowledgement.

To get to this peak performance stage, a PhD student needs to have lots of emotional intelligence to perform at such a level. Emotional intelligence is a tool that has been found to help cope in stressful and brain tasking situations and, in this case, relationships with colleagues and supervisors alike.

Is emotional intelligence important while doing a PhD degree?

The father of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman, describes emotional intelligence as the ability of a person to perceive, use, comprehend, manage, and navigate through the emotions and behavioural attitudes and feelings of others without prejudice and can adapt to their environment.

Over the last two decades, the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has grown in popularity as a measure of a person’s knowledge, skills, and abilities in the workplace, profession, school, personal life, and overall success. Therefore, emotional quotient (EQ) has been reported to rank higher than intelligent quotient in day to day activities.

If I had known earlier what I am sharing now, there’s a high chance the PhD process would have been a lot easier.

Did I consider the solitary nature of the process, the significance of the supervision team, my abilities, skillsets, strength, and the amount of reading, researching, writing and redrafting to be put forward?

Definitely! However, I was rudely shocked and rocked out of my boat, but I finally found my feet before it was too late.

When one considers issues that arise during a PhD, it’s easy to see why this skill is so important. Therefore, I will be enumerating some ways in which I have been able to stay afloat with the five key elements of emotional intelligence.

How to develop emotional intelligence during your PhD?

First of all, you can improve your self-awareness by asking for constructive feedback from like minds, start to write a journal to keep tab, re-evaluate your goals, and learn how to express feelings in the right manner and in the right places without necessarily having to clamp down on the emotions.

Major on self-regulation as it is not enough to only be self-aware. Hence, there should also be an improvement in the ability to cope with stress, changes in your thoughts patterns and emotional responses by using cognitive reframing.

Self-regulation is one tool that can help you with procrastination. Of course, we all have reasons to procrastinate in different areas of life. But it is vital to control it by setting and committing to deadlines alongside your other teammates.

Also, you will need to do a lot of reading, especially in the early days of your PhD degree. So when writing, cut yourself some slack, be prepared to read, draft, redraft and put in your absolute best without having to aim for perfection.

The ability to deeply connect with others socially, manage other people’s emotions, and leverage self-awareness and self-regulation to have meaningful interactions is germane.

A PhD student must be able to converse freely and meaningfully, actively listen for words being said and those not said, subtle reactions using eye contacts and body languages. There is an inherent need to have a strong sustainable interaction between you and your research team and the supervisor(s), as you can’t do this alone.

The purpose of a team is for you to work together under a guide to achieve a goal. To excel in this journey, you would need to cultivate the habit of attending seminars, conferences and courses.

The ability to react and respond to others expressed emotions and understand their feeling, aka. empathy, is another skill that needs honing. The journey isn’t only rigorous for you, but for others too. To comprehend the power dynamics that frequently influence daily activities and interactions, a PhD student could imbibe the culture of loving-kindness meditation, reflecting on someone elses situations.

Motivation: This seems to be in short supply. Some people are motivated for all the wrong reasons like fame, money, recognition and so on.

People with high emotional intelligence are motivated for something extraordinary. They have aims and objectives, a clear goal and a strong desire to succeed, continually seeking ways to improve as they are highly capable of taking charge with a strong sense of commitment.

It is vital to note that you cannot always feel motivated. It is part of the roller coaster journey to feel discouraged and want to quit. The deal is to relax, take some time to cool off and re-ignite your passion.

As much as you absolutely need to put your best foot forward and aim for excellence, celebrate your every achievement and do not try to be a perfectionist.

Conclusions

Because I wanted or rather needed to be on track and remain sane during my PhD, I had to do some researches. That’s when I found out about emotional intelligence. So I thoroughly researched Daniel Goleman’s books and audiotapes to totally acquire this skill and I am revelling in it.

Emotional intelligence has been a lifesaver to me.

In preparation for the PhD program, I would recommend that academic institutions implement a few days to a few weeks to deliver an orientation program focusing on emotional intelligence and other important soft skills before the commencement of the actual PhD program.

The number of years it takes to acquire a PhD is too long to not be happy during or after the journey.