3 Exercises To Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Have you ever wondered what emotional intelligence is? Have you wondered why your emotional intelligence is important? Emotions exist because they provide valuable information. They help us adapt to change and improve our social life. But do you know how to interpret what they are trying to tell you?

To take full advantage of the emotions, you must recognize and understand them. In this way you will be able to see why you feel them and what they mean in different situations.

Acquiring Emotional Knowledge

More emotional knowledge will lead to more emotional intelligence. It will provide you with the standards you need to distinguish between your emotions and those of others. You will also understand why you feel them and how they can help you. Because you need emotional knowledge and experience to regulate the emotions in an effective way. It also helps you keep them from giving you too much anxiety.

If your emotional intelligence is underdeveloped, now you have some good reasons to try and improve it. How can you start getting to know your emotional self?

You start by keeping a weekly diary. In it, write down all the emotions you experience throughout the day. You also write down the situations in which you felt these emotions. Because that way you will become more aware of which emotions are more dominant in your life. This will also help you see that we often experience conflicting feelings.

To sharpen your ability to recognize, you design a questionnaire that you have to answer. These are examples of possible questions. “What emotion was it?” and “How did this emotion feel?”. That will help you keep track of the information you have observed. Because it is those data that indicate a certain emotion or another.

Taking advantage of your emotional intelligence

Once you’ve increased your emotional intelligence and learned how to recognize your emotions, it’s time to put it into practice. The goal is to understand the function of your emotions and how they prompt you to act. The idea is also that you understand that everyone has different thoughts, emotions and intentions. This knowledge will have a beneficial effect on your social interactions.

To do this, you need to apply the understanding of emotions in different situations. This can range from situations in which you are not involved, such as movies or other people’s stories, to conflicts in which you have been involved.

Now you know clearly on which emotions and situations you want to practice and what you want to work on. The next step that is helpful is to break the situation down into consecutive series. Do this as the situation develops. For each situation and for each different person involved, you analyze it. Analyze what they say, do and think and what emotion they feel.

That way you become more aware of how emotions, thoughts and behaviors are all connected. Moreover, you will also understand that what you think and feel does not always correspond to what other people think and feel. Finally, you will also see the motivational function of emotions, which we mentioned before. You will find that our emotions inform us. They are what drives us to get what we need.

Try not to constantly analyze your emotions!

Like all things in life, you need to use your emotional knowledge in a balanced way. Yes, it can’t help you if you don’t have it. But it also doesn’t help if you are constantly fixated on your emotions and your physical sensations. So you have to learn how to reduce it when you are analyzing every emotion you feel. Because if you don’t, you run the risk of losing the dynamic power of your emotions.

Try to spend half an hour a day for a full week thinking about what upsets you. Think about how you can get it out of your head and how you can feel unpleasant feelings without avoiding them. The purpose of this exercise is not for you to wallow in your misery. On the contrary, the goal is to give yourself enough space so that you can feel it.

If you feel an unpleasant emotion, don’t let it circulate in your mind. Hold it back and wait to really feel it until that half hour you set aside for it. During this time, sit in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Set your alarm for thirty minutes. When the alarm goes off, you return to your daily activities.

Do these exercises. You will then be able to take advantage of your emotional intelligence. You will have more power to use your emotions for the benefit of your physical and mental well-being. It is normal to feel negative emotions. But it is important that you learn how to recognize them. Because this way you ensure that you do not feel them too often, not too intensely or for too long.

Featured image courtesy of Aral Tasher, Alejandro Álvarez, and Averie Woodard