One of the first things to understand about developing emotional IQ has to do with perceptual filters. Perceptual filters are unconscious, they are very powerful, and can affect our lives tremendously for good or ill. They are like blue sunglasses, they make the world look a certain way to us even though its just the filter, the sunglasses that are blue, not the things we actually look at. Perceptual filters operate "before" the conscious mind, filtering what we perceive so that the world shows up a particular way.