Ignite Your Soul by Developing Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (or EQ) is becoming very popular in businesses lately. EQ measures how well you manage your emotions as well as the emotions around you.

High emotionally intelligent people can handle stress and disagreements in the office better than those with a low EQ. It sets you apart because people naturally trust you and enjoy being around you.

Your personal life is better as well. You are more self-confident, self-aware, creative, and energetic.

A high EQ allows you to have a clear understanding of your emotional state and those around you. Emotional intelligence will help you achieve success in all areas more than your IQ.

Five Types of Emotional Intelligence

There are five main classes of skills associated with emotional intelligence

Self-Awareness

When you are self-aware, you recognize your emotions and their impact on your thoughts and behaviors.

Though good self-awareness, you will understand your own strengths and weaknesses. It also helps you build up your self-confidence.

Self-Regulation

When you’re able to master self-regulation, you’re able to put your impulsive behaviors and feelings aside and make more conscious choices.

You still feel them. There’s no getting away from impulsiveness. But it gives you the space between stimulus and response so you can be in charge of your actions.

Self-regulation taps into:

• Self-control
• Trustworthiness
• Conscientiousness
• Adaptability
• Innovation

Motivation

Motivation is that inner drive that propels you towards your goals. This emotional intelligence enables you to set clear goals with a defined path to achieve it.

It also helps you maintain a positive attitude.

Motivation consists of:

• Achievement drive
• Commitment
• Initiative
• Optimism

Empathy

When you have good empathy, you understand the concerns, needs, and emotions of others.

Someone with a strong EQ in empathy will be able to pick up on emotional cues and group power dynamics sooner. This allows you to respond to the reactions of others more appropriately.

Social Skills

The final category of your emotional quotient is how well you’ve developed interpersonal skills

Good social skills allow you to inspire others and be able to be productive in a team setting and more:

• Influence others
• Communicate
• Build bonds
• Lead

Easy Ways to Raise Your Emotional Intelligence

Do you want to be more effective in your life? How about closer relationships both personally and professionally?

And who wouldn’t want to be able to diffuse conflict fast?

Let’s look at the path to get there. Then you just need to become more aware each day, and practice the skills, and you’ll be on your way to igniting your life.

Identify Your Emotional Triggers

You’re human. You get upset. But did you ever look for patterns?

There are a many types of stressors that can trigger you. There could be decisions, disease, phobic, pain, environmental, and more.

Let’s look at the five biggest buckets and then some easy ways to deal with them.

Emotional

Your emotional stressors are also called your internal stressors. They include anxiety and fear along with personality traits like perfectionism, pessimism, and suspiciousness.

These stressors distort your thinking or perceptions that you have towards others. And they’re very personal because we’re all unique with our different experiences growing up.

Journaling or counseling may help you identify causes and create a personal plan to reduce your stress.

Family

Now, I don’t necessarily mean when your mom or aunt asks you when you’re going to get married or have kids. But that can trigger stress.

There are other ones like financial and relationship problems, It can also include empty-nest syndrome or having a child with special needs.

Social

Social stressors are what you may think. But like emotional, they’re individualized. Some people love going to parties, but for other people, it’s very stressful.

This also includes things like public speaking and dating.

To build this up, you may need to try out things that normally give you anxiety. You may need to get external counseling for some of these stressors.

Change

Some people can ride the winds of change easily. Other’s cannot. You should evaluate how well you can handle the big changes like moving or marriage as well as the little changes like your favorite restaurant closing.

Or worse. They got rid of your favorite menu item!

Learning to accept change is one of the best things you can do for your whole life.

A friend often says, “Nothing will ever be as it was.”

Work

Work stressors are specific to your workplace and can include an unreasonable boss, endless tasks, and impossible deadlines.

Eliminate and Reduce

Telling someone to reduce their stress may not seem helpful. Sometimes it’s the simplest answer that is the best.

If you’re unhappy at work, spend time finding a way to get to another position.

There will be times when you cannot eliminate the stress especially if it’s family related.

So you want to look at how you can reduce the strength of how the stress impacts you. This may include counseling, journaling, or finding a different way of looking at the situation to cope.

Don’t forget to do fun things like venting to a friend over lunch. And make sure you’re exercising to burn off the anxiety.

Reframing the situation lets you know you’ve achieved a high EQ because you’re demonstrating that you can push the pause button and choose a response.

Maybe right now things aren’t great. You can reframe it letting yourself know that it’s not forever, and the path is helping you get to where you want to go.

Gain Emotional Control Easily

To gain control over your emotions, you only have to do one thing. But I have to warn you that it’s difficult at first.

You must take responsibility completely for it.

You are the only one responsible for how you respond to a situation. Trying to find someone else to blame will make things worse.

Accepting Feedback

So take responsibility for your choices, actions, and direction in life. And you will feel an interesting shift within you that will help you listen and consider feedback honestly, and create a plan for your life.

That doesn’t mean accepting other people’s comments completely.

You just want to step back and evaluate what they’re saying. Is it appropriate?

Then recognize you have a choice on how to respond. One friend likes saying “Thank you for the feedback. I’ll file it accordingly.”

Setting Boundaries

You can’t set boundaries if you don’t know what they are, right?

So if you have family, social, or work stressors, it’s absolutely okay to set boundaries to reduce them.

It may seem difficult at first to verbalize your needs. But remember, you’re growing and developing. This skill will help you tremendously in igniting your life.

Then you need there to be consequences for behavior. If you’ve asked a coworker to stop interrupting you when you’re on the phone, and they keep coming in to ask a question, it’s okay to ignore them.

There has to be repercussions or else no one will take your boundaries seriously. So stand your ground. You are worthy and deserving.

Someone with a high EQ can define their personal space and take responsibility for protecting it.

My Final Thoughts

None of this is easy at first.

But then, learning to walk wasn’t easy either.

So if you fall down, please don’t feel badly. Pick yourself up, continue to remind yourself that you deserve to be treated well. And keep working on building up your EQ.

This will allow you to have stronger relationships, and be happier at home and at work.