Being humans, we do not exist in isolation from the outward world that encompasses other humans, flora, and fauna, for which we need social interactions with others in our surroundings. In fact, we are called "social animals" for whom social interactions are of utmost importance for maintaining our mental fitness and staying psychologically fit, present, stable, and valued.

As a matter of fact, we constantly need to feel seen and heard, cherished and valued, acknowledged and respected, valued and esteemed. For this, we need, first of all, to strive to establish prosperous and strong interpersonal relations, where we feel safe, heard, respected, and valued.

In this respect, the concept of "emotional intelligence" is of great importance, since it is through our EQ skills that we perceive, process, analyze, and *interpret *our very own emotions, as well as the emotions of others in our surroundings. So, we can state that we are not only "social animals" but also "emotional" ones, who constantly have the urge to be accepted by others and build harmonious relations with our near and dear ones.

It is in this respect important to highlight that there is a concept called psychosocial relations, which refers to the dynamic, reciprocal, and ongoing interaction between an individual’s internal psychological processes (thoughts, emotions, behaviors, motivations) and their external social environment (relationships, community, culture, societal structures).

Here, it should be noted that if we manage, through our EQ skills, to heighten our personal self-management through self-awareness and strengthen our relationships through social awareness, we can truly build successful and peaceful interpersonal relations with our dearest people. This will result in them valuing us even more and in us feeling more confident about ourselves by means of having that very beautiful feeling of appreciation and acknowledgment gained from successful psychosocial relations.

Yet, the medal also has its other side: Not only are we responsible for those harmonious relations, but others should also be willing to contribute to the successful creation, nurturing, development, and maintenance of those psychosocially significant relations. So, it follows that everything should be reciprocal to keep the relationship successfully going and flourishing.

As we can see, emotions constitute a large part of our psychological well-being, as well as making up a huge part of our lives. Therefore, to be able to run our relations successfully, knowing that we humans are made up of emotions, we should pay greater attention to the perception, analysis, expression, and management thereof. Rostomyan (2022) claims that our interpersonal communication entails many stances of manifestations of *verbal *and *non-verbal *displays of emotions.

Furthermore, we might be unaware that our emotions can be conveyed through subtle changes in our voice, which is already at the paraverbal level of expressing emotions. As for the non-verbal level, though we are usually adept at handling the outward expression of emotions, they can momentarily be displayed on our faces through micro expressions. *Microexpressions *are facial expressions that occur within a fraction of a second. This involuntary emotional leakage exposes a person’s true emotions. For this, we can pay proper attention to reading faces, even in virtual environments, to make sense of the emotions of others.

Moreover, in this respect, cross-cultural nuances can also be very important to take into consideration, since there are times when we find ourselves in cross-cultural settings. While a smile usually imparts positive emotions in Western culture, it can entail confusion or disengagement in other cultures. Therefore, when we find ourselves in cross-cultural environments, it is always a good idea to conduct some research beforehand so as not to get into confusing situations. That way, we will be able to encode and decode emotions successfully and, as a result, build successful and blossoming psychosocial relations across cultures.

In a nutshell, it goes without saying that those very psychosocial relations are the basis of the success of any society. We will not be on the wrong side of that; they are, in fact, the backbone and cornerstone of any community and society at large. So, let us invest in our relationships and see the beauty of harmonious, peaceful, and thriving interpersonal relations change the world successfully and efficiently for the better. As they say, "Peace begins with us."

References

Rostomyan, Anna (2022). The Ultimate Force of Emotions in Communication: A Linguo-cognitive Analysis of Verbal and Non-verbal Expressions of Emotions. Düren: Shaker Verlag.