How To Become Emotionally Intelligent

If I were to ask you if you’re emotionally intelligent, what would you say? 

Can you honestly say you handle your emotions in ways that best suit you?

When you feel tired, do you rest? 

When you feel stressed, do you relax?

When you feel anxious, do you distract yourself?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you may, in fact, not be. Sorry to trick you, but it was a necessary point that needed to be made.

So many people think they are doing what’s best for them, but in reality, are only making matters worse for themselves long-term. 

Emotional intelligence is a tricky one, dancing with your emotions is hard, but if you want to become someone with the ability to manoeuvre and use them to become successful, stick around.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence can be defined as "the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions effectively. It involves aligning your feelings with actions that serve your long-term goals and well-being, even in challenging situations."

The reason the examples I gave may not be a sign of an emotionally intelligent person is that although that’s what you feel like doing at that moment, it may not be the best option.

Emotional intelligence is being able to fully understand your emotions, regulate them in a way that helps you the most and act upon them in a way that moves you forward.

It’s feeling tired, but going to the gym anyway and feeling energised after.

It’s feeling stressed, and deciding to complete the tasks you have been procrastinating to clear mental clutter.

It’s feeling anxious, but facing up to the cause and continuing on despite the anxiety, to improve your mental strength and reduce future anxiety.

The reason emotional intelligence is so important in consideration of personal success is that constantly acting upon the way we feel will simply halt any progress.

If we were to take a nap everytime we feel tired, how likely do you think it will be for us to do something great? 

Life is difficult, and if every time we’re faced with uncomfortable emotions and we act upon them in a manner that aims to avoid or reduce them entirely, we may never grow as individuals.

This isn’t about ignoring our emotional well-being, it’s about understanding it fully and knowing what is truly good for us. 

How To Build Emotional Intelligence

To know how to build it, it’s necessary first to understand it at a slightly deeper level.

Famously, according to Daniel Coleman, emotional intelligence has 5 key components. They are as follows:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation 
• Empathy 
• Social skills

For the sake of this blog, I’m only going to focus on the first three, as these will impact you as the individual the most on the path to success. 

Self-awareness is about recognising and understanding your emotions, understanding triggers and why they happen.

Self-regulation is all about controlling said emotions, and knowing how to react and respond in a matter that benefits you best.

Motivation has everything to do with forward-thinking, it’s the ability to handle setbacks on route to what you want and having good perseverance.

Let’s use an example to bring this idea to life. Let's say you have a lot of work to complete, and not much time to do it, which is causing an increasing amount of stress.

Self-awareness would be understanding the true cause of the stress, in this case, it’s the lack of completing the tasks.

Self-regulation would be handling the stress, not letting it get worse, coming to terms with what needs doing and making progress.

Motivation would be taking action, knowing that although the thought of the work is what’s causing the stress, and the thought of tackling it is uncomfortable, it’s knowing that completing it is the only way to reduce it, and any further procrastination will likely make the stress worse. 

If this all seems a little obvious, it’s likely to be. Although in theory, emotional intelligence seems obvious, it’s much harder in practice.

You can take 'stress' and replace it with any uncomfortable emotion, and the same thought process would follow.

The reason all of this is relevant is because fully understanding it is the essential key to building it. 

To give you some clear next steps on your journey to building emotional intelligence, here are some things that help.

Journaling - Take note of your emotions, triggers and patterns. This will help understand yourself better, and gain insights into when and why you experienced specific emotions. 

Meditation - Meditating will help you become more present, meditation is an amazing way to gain a firmer grasp over your mind, giving you a better sense of mind control. This will help with self-awareness.

Cold showers - Yes I am once again suggesting cold showers. The reason is, when staring at the cold water running, filled with dread and its accompanying emotions, you give yourself the chance to ignore them completely and get in anyway. This will teach you the power of ignoring short-term feelings, for better future feelings, the essential concept of emotional intelligence.

If your progress has been slow, and you’re struggling to get out of a rut, look at how you deal with uncomfortable emotions. You may be helping yourself in the moment, and relieving some discomfort, however, you may also be making matters worse long-term. 

Moving forward, become a fly on the walls of your own mind, become extra self-aware and become a master at dealing with your emotions. Think of how each decision will affect you later on and aim to act in a manner that suits your future best.

Good Luck!