You're likely to have gone through a day during which you experienced a range of emotions. But do you pay enough attention to these? If you've been taught to suppress your emotions or always to prioritize rational thought above what you feel, it can actually have negative consequences - for you personally, and even in a business context.As you may have deduced, emotions can have enormous power. They can motivate you to act by steering you toward what you desire and away from what you find unpleasant. Even negative emotions like anger can be beneficial by providing you with a stimulus to take productive action.Emotions also help you understand your needs and those of others.And recognizing and taking them into account can help you build strong, healthy relationships and improve your ability to relate to others.To live full, rewarding lives, people need to make use of their minds and their hearts. Intellect and emotion aren't opposed to each other - they work together, informing your perceptions and reactions.Favoring one or the other throws things out of balance.But it's not possible to use emotions to your advantage if you suppress or misinterpret them. So emotional awareness is vital. It involves accurately recognizing your emotions and those of others.A person's emotional intelligence quotient - or EQ for short - is the capacity to reason about emotional information. EQ is increasingly recognized as important in both personal and work environments.Even in business contexts, where rational thought is traditionally valued over emotional skills, research shows that EQ is an important predictor of success.This applies especially in areas where dealing well with others is crucial, like sales. People with high EQs relate better to others, make better use of feedback to develop themselves, and generally possess greater understanding of their environments than those with low EQs.EQ can be divided into four general areas of competence - self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship management.