Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Self-Awareness - knowing what you are feeling

Self-Regulation - how to control your emotions

Motivation - how to keep going in the face
of discouragement

Empathy - how to read emotions in
others

Social skills - influencing and handling
other people’s emotions
 
Click to expand...
Accept your emotions
Whatever your feelings are, accept them as
yours. Realise that your inner self is doing the
best it can right now. Giving yourself a hard
time because you “shouldn’t” be feeling a
certain way is not going to help you. If you
don’t like the way you’re feeling, there are
ways you can change it.
 
Get in touch with your emotions
Notice how you feel right now. Now let your
eyes stray down towards your dominant hand
(the one you write with). Notice how you feel
now - are you more intensely aware of it?
 
Take the labels off your feelings
If you don’t like the way you’re feeling, ask
yourself: “How do you know you are feeling
that?” Forget the label that you’ve given the
emotion - sadness, anxiety or whatever - what
are the physical sensations and where in your
body are they? How intense are they? Are
they constant or do they change? After doing
this for a couple of minutes, you may feel
different.
 
Keep an emotional journal
Take ten minutes at the start and end of each
day to write down your feelings, without
judging or censoring yourself. Notice what you
learn.
 
Meditate
When you meditate, it’s easier to be aware of
your feelings without being distracted by the
busyness and noise of everyday life. Often
creative ideas will come to you as well.
 
Listening to emotional messages
What if that troublesome emotion is trying to
tell you something? No wonder it won’t go
away - you’ve not listened to its message yet.
So ask yourself: “If this feeling has a message
for me, what is it trying to tell me?”
 
Feelings about feelings
We can have feelings about the way we feel.
For example, we might feel guilty about getting
angry. So if you catch yourself feeling bad, ask
yourself “How do I feel about that emotion?”
 
See yourself as a friend sees you
Other people may see aspects of us that we
are unaware of. Put yourself in the shoes of a
friend or someone who loves you - stand like
them, breathe like them, ‘be’ them. Notice how
you look through their eyes and how they feel
about you. You may be pleasantly surprised
by how different you seem from the outside.
 
Listen to your heart (and gut)
The heart is traditionally the source of love,
acceptance and self-in-relation-to-others. For
problems or decision that you can’t solve with
logic alone, put your hand over your heart,
close your eyes and imagine you are
breathing into this area. When you feel you
have identified with your heart area, ask your
heart what to do. Notice what new insights
come to you, and how you feel differently
about the problem and life in general from this
perspective. You can repeat the exercise
identifying into the area just below your navel;
notice what additional perspectives you get
from this viewpoint.
 
Other people as mirrors
Sometimes we can deny uncomfortable
feelings within ourselves and ‘project’ them
onto other people. So if you find that, for
example, other people are often angry with
you and you don’t know why, ask yourself,
“When am I like that?”
 
Take responsibility for your feelings
Once you accept that these are your emotions
and you are responsible for them, your attitude
can change from the powerless “Why am I
feeling this way?” (or even worse, “Why are
they ‘making’ me feel this way?”) to the more
empowering “What do I need to do to change
the way I feel?”
 
Be kind to your body
The biggest single difference you can make to
your emotional stability is to cut down on
coffee. Caffeine (also present in smaller doses
in tea, cola and chocolate) mimics the effect of
adrenaline to give you an energy surge
followed by a dip. This can have a
rollercoaster effect on your emotions. Sugary
foods have a similar effect.
 
Respect your body’s natural cycle
We have a natural cycle of rest and activity.
Left to ourselves, we would have an hour and
a half of activity followed by 20 minutes rest.
The further we get from that natural cycle, the
more stress we experience. So take a break in
the middle of the morning and the middle of
the afternoon, and leave work at a reasonable
time.
 
Stand tall
Your physical posture can have a big effect on
how you feel. Try it now: first, slump over and
hang your head while trying to remember a
good time. It’s not easy, is it? Now stand up
straight, look up, and spread your arms wide,
and notice how much easier it is to feel good!
 
Calm yourself instantly
Focusing on your breathing (tip 5) is one quick
way to calm yourself. Here’s another, that
instantly activates the body’s relaxation
response and works for both fear and anger:
Peripheral vision
1. Starting from focusing on a point slightly
above your eye level, broaden out your field of
vision until you are paying attention to what
you can see out of the corners of your eyes,
while still looking straight ahead.
2. Now extend your awareness even further out,
beyond the edges of your vision and all the
way behind you, 360 degrees.
3. When you come back, notice how calm you
feel and how your breathing has slowed down.
4. You can do peripheral listening and feeling
too.
 
Monitor your body for tension
Every so often, check your body for tension. If
any areas are tense, relax them by imagining
that you are breathing into them.
 
Centre yourself
Pay attention to the centre of your body, a few
inches below your navel and half way between
your stomach and your lower back. Relax your
body and imagine your feet are firmly rooted to
the ground. Notice how physically strong and
centred you feel, and how paying attention to
your centre also makes you feel stronger and
calmer.
 
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