Ways To Become More Emotionally Intelligent: 7 Strategies To Increase Emotional Intelligence

What does it mean to be emotionally intelligent?

Being emotionally intelligent means having the ability to identify emotions, understand them deeply and calmly address them. Emotionally intelligent people are less likely to overreact or lose control of emotions. They’re more capable of understanding their own emotions as well as those of others. They are able to maintain calmness even when they feel strong emotion.

How to be more emotionally intelligent

Emotional intelligence is a useful skill to have for navigating the real world. As we become adults, there’s often this expectation that we’ll be capable of functioning in a regulated manner despite how we feel. Emotional intelligence can help with better regulating and navigating your emotions. This can be beneficial in work, in relationships with family, friends and people we love, and in daily life.

Here are techniques for becoming more emotionally intelligent.

1. Analyze what you feel

If you feel an emotion, start by gaining a firm understanding of what exactly you feel. Sometimes people may inadvertently just feel things because of a cause but they do not fully understand what it is they are feeling. Knowing what emotions are in your mind can help you better work towards coping with them.

Give your feelings specific names. Are you angry? Sad? Jealous? Ashamed? What is what you’re feeling called? Then look into where you feel it and how you feel it. If you are angry, for example, you may feel it in the chest or in the front of your forehead. Maybe you might feel it elsewhere. Do a full mind and body analysis to pinpoint what, where and how you are feeling.

2. Identify the source of your emotions

It’s important to understand the why behind emotions. This is where identifying the reason for feeling occurs. Can emotions sometimes exist without cause? Yes, it’s possible. But in most cases emotions stem from a cause. Something usually leads to the way people feel.

If you feel emotion x, what’s the reason for feeling this way? What is the source of this feeling? Understand why you feel the way you do and what is at the core of these feelings. For example, you may be angry that someone is always late. That’s the superficial reason. But try to get to a core reason for feeling this way. It might be more than one core reason. Maybe someone who’s always late makes you feel like you’ve wasted your time which you allocated for them, for example. Wasting time is a core reason here. Keep digging until you give yourself the most basic and essential reasoning behind your emotions.

Knowing the reasoning behind your emotions shouldn’t be taken as incentive to get angry at the person (this is not the emotionally intelligent response). Rather, use this understanding to better cope with and accept what you feel.

3. Direct your energy to bettering yourself

Emotions tend to confer energy on people. They are a mental motivator to take action. What better action to take than action to help yourself become the best version of you? This is an excellent use of your emotional energy. Take time to do something to help you feel better, make you smarter, build up your self-esteem or whatever else. Direct your emotional energy towards something useful for you. That’s much better than almost any other thing you can direct it towards. Invest in yourself.

4. Don’t allow excessive emotionality to govern your behavior

The way you feel is one thing, but how you behave in response to those feeling is a completely different thing. There’s nothing wrong with feeling emotions but there is something wrong with acting on them in an inappropriate manner. Even if you aren’t quite at the level of emotional intelligence you should be at, being able to control how you act and “fake it till you make it” can at least give off the impression that you’re emotionally intelligent.

Create a divide between how you feel and how you act. Not to the point where you seem passive and unfazed even by things that require at least some emotion, but to the point where you do not overreact or let emotions take full control of your actions. Build an emotionally intelligent exterior.

5. Practice acceptance

Accepting things the way they are and just letting them be can help with overcoming emotional hardships in the mind. If you genuinely accept something and become okay with it, it’s much harder for this thing to cause you distress. A useful skill to have as an emotionally intelligent person is being able to recognize when your best course of action is accepting something for what it is.

Acceptance doesn’t mean liking it, it just means being okay with it. You choose to let this thing be and move on with your life. Make sure acceptance is authentic; i.e. don’t just convince yourself that you’ve accepted something even though you haven’t, actually accept it.

6. Be more empathetic to others

If someone shows you clear indications of a certain emotion, it’s important to understand that they likely feel that way for a reason. While you may or may not know the reason, it is important to be empathetic to the person and try to be personable and understanding. Even emotionally intelligent people can’t always read what others are feeling, so don’t feel disconnected if ever you misunderstand someone’s feeling or fail to pick up on what their state of mind is.

Being empathetic doesn’t require you to understand all the details of someone’s emotions. All you need to do is be accommodative when you think someone feels a certain way. If they tell you what they’re feeling, be understanding and make yourself available to them. You don’t have to become someone’s therapist, but being able to legitimate their feelings and giving them the motivation to keep pushing is great.

Be more empathetic and diplomatic especially when interacting with people who seem to be hyped up on emotion. Learn de-escalation tactics to resolve potential conflict in an emotionally intelligent manner.

7. Feel your emotions

A great way to come to terms with emotions is to let them run their course by feeling them. Fully feel whatever you need to and let yourself process anything you need to. Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean being emotionless, it means being able to function with and navigate your emotions. If you need to, take a few minutes every day to sit down and just feel. Let your emotions out calmly. Cry if you have to. But take a few moments to just be an observer of any emotions your mind brings on.