What motivates you to improve your emotional intelligence? Perhaps you wish to have complete control over your life. After all, we only have influence over three aspects of our lives: our ideas, acts, and feelings.
Our sentiments are the most significant of these three since they influence our ideas and activities. In reality, our sentiments and emotions influence 80% or more of our judgments and behaviors. However, because we have the least direct effect on our emotions, our moods are the most difficult for us to regulate.
Gaining emotional control necessitates the development and use of emotional intelligence, which is the capacity to recognize and regulate one's emotions.
You will build emotional intelligence abilities and acquire far more control over yourself and your life if you follow the daily routines suggested in this article, which are all influenced by research in neuroscience and psychology.
1. Delay Displaying Emotions
Have you ever acted rashly in a stressful circumstance and afterward wished you could go back in time? What about regretting something you said in a hurry? Whether these spontaneous reactions are an uncommon event or something that occurs frequently, there are several benefits to being able to wait displaying your emotions.
But first, let's discuss our thoughts and our two thinking systems. The autopilot system is associated with our emotions and intuitions, whereas the deliberate system is associated with our rational thinking.
Because our deliberate system is sluggish, it takes time to activate it and consider the kind of mistakes that the autopilot system can make. To solve this, make it a regular practice to count to ten before engaging in emotion-driven actions and decisions. This will allow your purposeful system to activate and treat your sentiments before you express them.
Understanding how these two systems function and taking some time before reacting can help you gain control of your emotions.
2. Journaling
Writing down your thoughts and feelings on a daily basis might help you build emotional intelligence. Journaling is also a self-care practice that fosters creativity and self-awareness. Journal prompts or basic guiding questions to get you started are also effective for fostering introspection, according to research.
While there are no hard and fast rules for journaling, make it a habit to do so on a regular basis and develop a routine. Create a morning or evening writing practice that incorporates three emotional intelligence-related habits:
- Journaling about yourself and your feelings at the moment
- Journaling about what you learned about your feelings over the last day
- Journaling about where you would like to focus on in developing your emotional intelligence, including both the ability to know and manage your feelings, over time
Remember, the important thing is to get started and to be consistent. Keep it easy by choosing a journaling method—you may write longhand, type, use a voice recorder, or utilize a journaling app—and just start writing.
As you begin to implement the behaviors outlined above, you should revisit your diary entries on a regular basis. It will also allow you to assess your prior stumbling blocks and how far you've progressed.
3. Meditation
Meditation is another technique for increasing emotional intelligence. While most people link meditation with spirituality, it can also help to establish new brain pathways, which can help with stress and emotion management.
Meditation, in particular, can benefit males who struggle with traditional emotional standards and have difficulties expressing their feelings. Meditation has been found in studies to help men engage with their emotions productively.
I propose establishing the following two daily meditation habits:
- At least ten minutes of Zazen (empty mind) meditation - This style of meditation is intended to cleanse and relax the mind. Get into a cross-legged sitting position to execute this. Next, take a deep breath, clear your thoughts, and try not to think about anything. Zazen will assist you in developing concentration and focus, which you may then utilize to pay greater attention to your emotions.
- 5 minutes of loving-kindness meditation is recommended. This sort of meditation will assist you in managing your sentiments toward others and making them richer and more positive. By doing so, you can deepen your connection and emotions of kindness toward loved ones and even strangers. This may be accomplished by envisioning the people in your life, focusing on them, and imagining them sending and receiving love and compassion to and from you.
4. Yoga
You may be aware of its numerous health advantages, but let me emphasize how it also has an influence on emotional intelligence. Yoga helps you to remain in the present moment and pushes you to become self-aware, helping you to notice your emotions more readily. This includes bodily awareness and the capacity to regulate one's body.
Emotions frequently appear physically, thus developing body awareness will help you become more aware of your emotions, distinguish between them, and better regulate them. Make at least 15 minutes of yoga a daily habit.
5. Regularly Identify Cognitive Biases
Because of mental blindspots known as cognitive biases, our emotions frequently lead us astray. These are risky judgment mistakes that can lead to bad judgments in both your personal and professional lives.
You must get ahead of these annoying blindspots by identifying and learning which ones apply to you. Then, devise a daily practice to address the cognitive biases that are most problematic for you.
The first four behaviors I mentioned will also put you in the greatest position to detect and deal with these prejudices. You can, for example, utilize journaling to record your plans for dealing with problems.
6. Relating to Others
While the first five habits on this list will help you to inwardly think, examine, and ponder, you should also consider how you react to others. After following the fifth habit, I'm sure you'll discover how full of cognitive biases we are when it comes to our sentiments about other people.
Make it a regular practice to evaluate your emotions as you engage with others in order to better regulate your emotions. Pause, analyze, and consider what you can learn about yourself as a result of these exchanges. You may even use this as a diary prompt.
Plan your future interactions with people armed with the knowledge you've gained about yourself. Remember to keep postponing exposing your emotions to others, especially at initially, in order to learn to regulate yourself well.
7. Develop Active Listening Skills
Many individuals listen but do not understand what is being stated. This is especially evident in many disagreements when people take a hostile attitude and spend their time in their heads planning a response instead of truly listening to the other person.
Without the proper listening skills, no emotional intelligence can be formed or used, and most confrontations go unsolved.
When chatting with others, listen actively rather than passively or as a method to pass the time until it's your turn to speak. Rather, listen to ensure that you fully comprehend what is being stated.
Active listening assists you in determining how you may contribute to the resolution of a disagreement. This is because it allows you to clarify any ambiguous issues and utilize your emotional intelligence to assist you formulate an appropriate response.
8. Use an Assertive and Collaborative Communication Style
While each habit may be performed independently with good outcomes, I'd want to fill out this list by emphasizing the significance of aggressive and collaborative communication. That's because the first seven behaviors all work together to help you be more aggressive and straightforward.
Remember what you've discovered about yourself, your prejudices, and how you react to others. Then, practice being forceful, rather than aggressive, and more straightforward when talking. This helps you to convey your thoughts more clearly, which encourages others to interact with you more clearly as well.
Conclusion
Whatever your motivation for wanting to improve your emotional intelligence, the effort will only benefit you.
Adopting these daily practices is essential for building emotional intelligence, which is the key to having actual power over your life. While the learning curve varies from person to person, everyone may try and perfect these behaviors.
Use just a couple to observe how it improves certain elements of your life, or use all eight to get the combined benefits of an emotionally aware mind.
