5 Important Emotional Intelligence Skills That Will improve Your Life
Why Having These Will Enhance Your Mental Health and Your Social Awareness
If you have emotional intelligence skills, you will deal with unexpected events and situations in your life well, and also relate better to others dealing with something similar.
Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to notice their emotions and those of others, and respond sensibly that’s appropriate for the situation they’re in.
Emotional intelligence skills are important to have to develop strong and meaningful relationships.
1-Minute Summary Video
What are Emotional Intelligence Skills?
Emotional intelligence skills dictate how you respond in situations unfamiliar to you. They often fall into four categories which are:
- The ability to observe or identify emotions.
- Knowing how to use emotions that’s acceptable for a situation.
- Understanding what’s causing emotions.
- Managing emotions to control your emotional state.
The better your emotional intelligence skills, the better you will use these categories to your benefit.
Why Develop Emotional Intelligence Skills?
It’s important to develop emotional intelligence skills because:
- It will affect your motivation and your performance.
- It will impact your mental health.
- It will influence the quality of your relationships.
- It will help reduce stress.
- It will contribute to your overall success in life.
- It will affect your self-image and self-confidence.
When you develop emotional intelligence skills, you will know how to better express your emotions and show empathy to others by understanding how they feel.
5 Important Emotional Intelligence Skills to Develop
Developing emotional intelligence skills requires discipline and commitment, just like when developing any skill. The stronger your commitment, the more you will improve.
Here are five important emotional intelligence skills that will improve your mental health and your social awareness, which means you will increase the quality of your life.
- Focusing on your personal development to know yourself better. To improve anything in your life starts with self-awareness. You can only develop greater self-awareness through learning. This will help you understand your triggers and the causes of your emotions, which will allow you to respond better.
- Improving your social awareness. You can improve your social awareness by speaking less, actively listening, and asking smart questions. This will help you relate to others well, which means you will know how to express empathy when needed.
- Developing the ability to grasp other people’s perspectives. Understanding others’ perspective will allow you to see their experiences or situations from their point of view. This will also help you understand their model of the world and what drives them.
- Becoming more intrinsically motivated. The less you rely on “good” things happening in your life to feel positive emotions, the less likely you will have low motivation. Being intrinsically motivated means you have greater levels of clarity in life and have an inner drive to do what’s needed to achieve what you want.
- Observing and questioning your thoughts regularly. You have thoughts, but you’re not your thoughts. This means you can observe them. When you observe your thoughts often, you will realise not all of them are true or helpful to you. You can observe and question your thoughts through practices such as journalling and meditation.
Ways to Develop Emotional Intelligence Skills
Ways you can develop emotional intelligence skills include:
- Working with a coach or a professional trained in emotional intelligence.
- Doing a daily or weekly review of your emotions and how you can improve.
- Changing the meaning you give to experiences to generate the emotions you want to feel.
- Acknowledging and celebrating your positive or healthy emotions.
- Remembering you always have the choice to react or respond to anything that happens in your life.
Final Thoughts
Having emotional intelligence skills is an ongoing, never-ending practice. As your skills improve, you will feel better about yourself and your life, which means your attitude will also improve.
That will have a significant effect on the person you become and what you accomplish in your life.
Action Step: Schedule quiet time daily to observe your emotions and how you feel during a day. If you notice your emotions fluctuate a lot, choose one thing to work on improving your emotional intelligence skills. You can start by learning more about your triggers and how they affect your emotional state.
Question: What is another important emotional intelligence skill that will improve your life?
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