How to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the skill of noticing, weighing, and managing what you feel, along with what the people around you feel. When it's working, you take in information and respond with your head rather than your reflexes. The payoff shows up as more empathy, a steadier temper when things go sideways, and relationships that actually mean something. None of it is fixed at birth. Several practical habits can raise your EQ if you give them time.
Start with the interrupting. Cutting people off mid-sentence is an easy trap, and it gets worse when the topic makes you squirm. Breaking the habit won't happen overnight, but it belongs at the top of the list. Let the other person finish before you open your mouth. Conversations flow better that way, and you tend to pick up things you'd have talked right over.
Don't wave off what you feel, either. Strong emotions deserve a pause and some thought, and sitting with them is a sign of a healthy mind rather than a weak one. Push a feeling down and it doesn't disappear. It waits, then comes back up later, usually at a worse moment.
There's also the matter of tracing feelings to their source. Particular emotions tend to travel with particular events, and people with high EQ connect those dots and decide accordingly. Ask yourself why a given thing lands the way it does. That question opens the door to changing your circumstances so you stop walking into situations that leave you flat or anxious. Get good at it and keeping an even keel becomes far less of a struggle.
Your body talks too. It throws off signals when something emotional is happening underneath. Stomach in knots every morning before work? That's a message that the job is grinding you down. Learn to read those physical cues and tie them back to whatever set them off. From there you can start cutting the stress and the other drains, which lifts both your EQ and your day-to-day mood.
Sometimes you can't name the feeling or figure out where it came from. An outside view helps here, and it can hand you something you'd never have reached on your own. Pick someone who knows you well and whose own head is clear. Asking for that kind of help, especially about your emotions, is itself a marker that your EQ is climbing.
Then there are the feelings you don't even know you have. Unconscious ones take practice to surface. One approach is free association: settle into a dim, silent spot, get as comfortable as you can, and let your mind drift. Watch for whatever keeps resurfacing. Those recurring threads point at what you actually feel, and they usually want some real attention in your waking life.
Writing helps lock it in. When something hits you hard, put it on paper. Note the feeling and note what's going on around you that brought it on. Later you can read back through and see which situations keep setting off big reactions. That kind of record gives you more control, so you're less likely to blurt something you'll regret or misread what's actually happening in front of you.
All of this is meant to unfold slowly. The simplest path is to take one habit, get comfortable with it, and only then move to the next. Working them one at a time gives each enough of your attention to stick. It's a process. You'll see shifts along the way, so be patient while your feelings make themselves known.
Rosemary Kitchen
Resources: Segal, J., et al. (2014). Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Retrieved on February 6, 2015 from helpguide.org. Ni, P. (2014). How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence, 6 Essentials. Retrieved on February 6, 2015 from psychologytoday.com.