Have you ever wondered if there is a way to master your emotions? If you could understand and control them instead of being a prisoner to them? Is there a method to manage and use your emotions in a way that benefits you?

Well, wonder no more because in this article you are going to learn 4 activities to increase your emotional intelligence, which will help you manage, understand and use your emotions rather than being a slave to them!

What is emotional intelligence?

Before we begin with the four activities that will help you improve your emotional intelligence, we should first understand what exactly does EQ (Emotional Intelligence) means.

Emotional intelligence can be described as the ability and the skill to understand, manage and use your emotions in a positive way.

Emotional intelligence can be defined by four attributes as explained by Daniel Goleman in his book “Emotional Intelligence”: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management.

–Self-management: This means being able to control impulsive behaviors and emotions, adapt through changing situations, take initiative and manage your emotions in healthy ways.

–Self-awareness: This attribute consists of recognizing your emotions and observing the way they affect your thoughts and actions. It also includes knowing your weaknesses, your strengths, and being self-confident.

–Social awareness: Being socially aware is all about empathy, it´s about understanding the emotions and needs of the people around you. About being able to put yourself in the position of others and feeling comfortable socially.

–Relationship management: How the name suggests, this attribute is about being able to create and maintain good relationships, clearly communicate your ideas and thoughts as well as the ability to work in a team.

Why is it important to take care of our emotional intelligence?

One of the most important and distinctive characteristics of humans is our ability to feel emotions.

This quality influences every aspect of our lives from the moment we wake up, to the moment we go to sleep. Emotions affect our jobs, families, relationships, health (both physical and mental), decision-making ability, friendships…

For some people, emotions are their loyal and helpful companions throughout life. But for other people their lives are slaves to their feelings, affecting even their communications skills and the way they see the world.

Our emotional intelligence, or better said the way we manage and understand our emotions affects greatly our success in life. Many people attribute personal and professional success to intelligence, IQ, but forget about EQ, even though they both work together in tandem.

Working on our emotional intelligence has numerous benefits and positive outcomes in our life, for example:

-Better understanding of yourself

-Interact with people on a deeper level

-Achieve professional and personal goals

-Professional success

Tips to help you build your emotional intelligence:

If this is the first time that you´ve ever heard about building and developing your emotional intelligence, here are some tips to help you start your journey:

.Be observant of your own emotions.

.Be aware of how daily situations in your life make you feel.

.Reflect on your emotions (you could do this by writing your feelings down on paper. Another method to reflect on your emotions is by simply taking a few minutes a day to think about all the emotions that you felt today and how you reacted according to them).

-When you are being criticized, instead of feeling offended, ask yourself what can you learn about other people’s comments.

-Learn to use “the pause”. “The pause” is a stop you take to think before you speak (especially in situations charged with negative emotions).

-Learn about your emotions. Nowadays we are so used to categorizing our emotions that we have even forgotten how to properly name and identify what we are feeling. Because it is not the same to feel angry as to feel frustrated. So I encourage you to take time to relearn the number of emotions that exist and properly name your emotions. It is a small change, but one that makes a difference when it comes to emotional intelligence and self-awareness.

Top 4 activities to improve your emotional intelligence.

It can seem overwhelming to even consider how to improve your emotional intelligence but don´t worry because there are many exercises and methods to help you do just that.

Emotional intelligence exercises have the purpose of helping us build, develop and improve our emotional intelligence.

And today we are going to see the top 4 exercises to help you develop your EQ.

Emotional intelligence assessment for leaders.

This exercise is going to help you greatly if you are a leader or the head of a group. As we know being a leader includes many different activities and responsibilities to take care of. One of these responsibilities is the ability to clearly communicate and contribute to the image of the organization or team.

This activity consists of writing 10 vision-killing behaviors or actions that leaders may do. Once you have these written down rate them depending on how often you engage in them.

Here are some examples of vision-killing behavior:

-Focusing on too many things at once.

-Not giving clear directions

-Having employees that aren´t good at their jobs

-Pushing too hard on the task and completely forgetting about the people.

-Showing little commitment to the vision of the organization or group.

Once you have them rated, identify the four behaviors that you do more often and focus on working to reduce or eliminate these activities.

Temperament analysis.

This exercise is meant to help you analyze and understand your temperament. 

Temperament is the part of our personality that has to do with our emotional dispositions and it is affected by a number of factors, such as genetic inheritance, physical attributes, life experiences, and environmental conditions.

For this exercise you need to first answer the following questions in order to learn and understand your temperament:

-First, choose three adjectives that best describe your temperament.

-Write three adjectives that people normally use to describe your temperament.

-Once you have the answer to the previous questions, ask yourself which adjectives (and in what measure) are because of genetic inheritance, physical attributes, life experiences, or environmental factors.

– How does each temperamental factor affect your life on a personal level?

-And finally, consider which of these factors would you like to change or improve? Why?

Regulate your emotions when being critisized.

Receiving criticism is one of the situations that usually provokes the strongest emotions. To help you regulate your emotions every time to are being criticized, I have a very easy exercise.

This activity consists of “being a fog”. As the Skills Converged website explains it: “Act like a fog! Imagine you are a fog. When someone throws a stone at you, you absorb that stone without throwing the stone back.”

For example, if someone criticizes you saying things like: “you´re so lazy”, “you never take responsibility”, “you are always late”… simply respond: “Yes, I am lazy”, “Yes, I am always late”, “Yes, I never take responsibility”.

This is a very simple exercise that will even help you take away the power from the person criticizing you.

Once the heat of the moment has passed, it´s time to reflect and assess the areas you have been criticized and if you feel identified in what the other person said. By doing this will, you discover different areas of yourself to work on, in order to become the best version of yourself. 

Working on emotions

This exercise will help you build and develop one of the most fundamental skills when it comes to emotional intelligence, and that is understanding and learning about your emotions.

To improve this area, follow this 4 step guide:

The first step is to name your emotions. Remember the tip we mentioned earlier? Well, now it´s time to put it into practice. Name your feeling and briefly describe them.

The second step is to identify the cause of your emotional state. Recall where you were and what situations may have triggered the emotions that you felt.

The third step is to challenge and question the emotion. To do this ask yourself: “Was my feeling appropriate to the situation? Is this situation a distress that I can control? If this is a situation that I cannot control, is this a distress I have to accept and tolerate?

And lastly, reflect on your emotions and behaviors. This step is about reflecting on how you acted based on your feeling and what you wished you had done instead.

Now that you have a list full of exercises to improve your emotional intelligence it is time for you to try some or maybe all of them.

Thank you so much for investing your time in reading this article, I hope the information in it will help you achieve your objectives.

Before we say goodbye, I have one more question for you, which activities are you most excited to try?