We may not be able to control unexpected events in life, but we can control our outlook, attitude, perspective, and how we respond to events. And setting and achieving goals we set for ourselves is also something you have power.
Setting and writing down goals with a plan to achieve them has been shown to increase the likelihood of their attainment. Why not set a goal to improve your emotional fitness? Just like physical fitness, you can become emotionally literate and learn to regulate your emotions for better results in life and relationships.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Emotional fitness, otherwise known as emotional intelligence or EQ, can affect every aspect of our lives, including our physical well-being. And with so many challenges at our doorstep daily, resilience is a critical mindset to master.
Working to improve your EQ comes with many benefits, ranging from decreased stress to increased motivation to enhanced relationships in our lives—beginning with our relationships with ourselves!
If you want to reap the benefits of increased emotional fitness in your life, you’re in the right place. Time to set some goals for your emotional health!
You'll learn three easy and practical steps to improve your EQ for greater happiness and well-being.
Deep dive: "Goal-Setting Is Linked to Higher Achievement."
"Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand,
and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as
a source of human energy, information, connection, and influence."
~Robert K. Cooper, Ph.D.
It's easy to think that emotional intelligence or emotional fitness is all about mushy feelings, but it's a concept well-researched in psychology and supported by neuroscience.
Science shows that our brains have been evolutionarily hardwired for emotional responses and that these responses have been purposefully conserved despite centuries of evolution.
EQ is a person's awareness of their own emotions and the emotions of others.
However, we can also use that awareness in different life situations. To define EQ in more detail, let's start with its four fundamental pillars: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Interpersonal Management or Social Intelligence.
EQ begins with understanding yourself. Being able to distinguish unhelpful thoughts or identify which emotions you’re feeling is one aspect of self-awareness called emotional literacy.
When it comes to others, you need to first be able to recognize and name your own emotions before empathizing with others. This knowledge includes recognizing all the physical responses accompanying our emotions, such as sensations, thoughts, urges, and behaviors.
For example, how did you feel when watching the news? If you felt stressed or anxious, did your heart race? Did you clench your jaw? Or is your strategy to ignore the news altogether or try to avoid the stress by turning off the TV?
Simply stepping back and noticing how your mind and body react in different situations and people will provide greater self-awareness.
Deep dive: "Is a Lack of Self-Awareness Sidelining Your Joy? And How to Fix It!"
Once you understand your own emotions, the next step is regulating them. As helpful as our emotional responses are to our survival, they can also hinder certain social contexts, such as when we react in knee-jerk ways or direct anger at another person.
Controlling ourselves and self-calming are critical for all social situations. If we can’t modulate our emotions, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to put ourselves in another person's shoes.
One small part of self-management includes coping with stress, calming yourself, and expressing your emotions in healthy ways (also known as emotional regulation).
Another aspect of managing oneself is through setting limits and healthy boundaries, such as managing our time, saying no to overeating, achieving goals, and finding a work-life balance.
Related Reading: Why Should You Care About Emotional Regulation?
The third pillar of EQ is social awareness: taking your own emotional and self-awareness and applying it as a context to understand those around you. Social understanding includes reflective listening and having an active interest in others.
While you navigate your daily interactions with your social environment, social awareness requires you to be:
Respectful interactions with others are the next component in building EQ. This fourth and final pillar of emotional intelligence uses everything you've learned thus far to enhance social interactions. Social EQ integrates multiple skills to nurture and cultivate healthy relationships—whether you’re in the workplace, in your social life, or at home.
Conflict resolution is just one example of intelligent interpersonal management.
Take this scenario as an example: Your co-worker comes to you after incorrectly completing his part of a group project. The project had a tight deadline, and the delay in correcting the mistakes was a problem. You blow up and tell him how inept he is while storming off to fix the project. (Hint: this reaction is not emotionally or socially intelligent.)
Now, let’s replay this scenario using EQ:
Your co-worker brings the project to you, and you immediately realize his mistakes. Instead of yelling, you slowly walk to your desk while taking a couple of deep breaths. (This action is a self-calming technique, allowing you to shift your frustration and anger to an intention to get curious.)
Turning around to face your co-worker, you ask in a calm voice, “What was your understanding of this project’s objective and the part you were responsible for?”
After hearing his explanation, you realize that your co-worker misinterpreted the instructions, and you neglected to give the necessary background information for him to be successful. You immediately take responsibility for your part, apologize, and give him the missing pieces to finish correctly and efficiently.
See why self-management is so vital in social interactions?
This communication dance between people is an ongoing challenge. All interpersonal relationships require awareness and self-management for healthy relationships.
Here are all of the components in a nifty chart below.
Understanding, regulating, and expressing our emotions in a healthy way is a potent recipe for improving our EQ. It can help strengthen your EQ the same way you would look at planning a workout for the gym.
To improve your emotional intelligence, you need to exercise each "muscle group" (which in this metaphor is each of the four pillars described above) so that your emotional fitness is well-rounded.
Let’s take a look at three simple steps that will bring you that much closer to building your emotional intelligence across all four pillars.
How many times, when your loved ones ask how you're doing, do you answer "fine" automatically?
When was the last time you stopped to consider what feeling "fine" really means, or if that's actually how you feel at all?
When I coach my clients, I often find that "fine" means "I'm overwhelmed and can't talk about it." or the person is using feeling stuffers to maintain "fine."
The next time you are asked how you are doing, pause to reflect and check in with yourself.
How are you actually feeling?
Try to select the word that best describes your emotional experience in the present moment. The very act of identifying your emotions helps to regulate you. Oftentimes, it will also reset your emotions, too.
Refer to the Wheel of Emotions to learn more about your different emotions.
However, as you identify how you are feeling, remember that the emotional experience is more than a single word; it is a collection of physiological responses, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors.
It's equally as important to be mindful of your physical body as it is to assign a label to your emotions. Turbulent emotions are sometimes felt in the body before we even recognize we're feeling them.
Giving honest responses and opening up to those you feel comfortable around helps create a greater connection.
Sharing how you are truly doing (beyond "fine" or "good") works doubly to strengthen your emotional intelligence by encouraging your conversational partner to open up, too.
This practice will also assist you in exercising your empathy and listening skills, fortifying your EQ by combining the skills of self-expression and active listening.
Self-compassion is defined by three elements: self-kindness versus self-judgment, common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness versus over-identification.
To accomplish a habit of mindfulness, we need to avoid "over-identifying" with our thoughts and practice a concept known in acceptance and commitment therapy as cognitive defusion: separating ourselves and our identities from our unhelpful or unwanted thoughts.
By learning to replace negative self-talk with encouraging self-talk and mindful self-compassion, you're strengthening the skills you need to cope with life's disappointments. You'll also be firing the inner critic and enlisting the more loving part of yourself.
Your inner peace and well-being gained by this practice will empower you to bring more understanding to your relationships.
Intrinsic motivation gives us the strength and energy we need to keep working on our quest for self-improvement. Discovering your fuel and drivers is critical to better understanding yourself.
Intrinsic motivators, such as pride or joy, reinforce our emotional intelligence more effectively than extrinsic motivators, such as tangible rewards like a bonus at work.
To improve your EQ, you need to understand the reason why you value emotional intelligence.
We need to understand our "why" to continue to stay motivated to improve our emotional intelligence. Focusing on our intrinsic motivations is what makes the difference between creating a lifelong habit instead of another abandoned promise to ourselves.
So instead of saying, "I want to improve my EQ," go more in-depth and answer the following questions:
Once you've identified your "why," remind yourself often of your goal and the reasoning behind it to get motivated—and stay that way.
For example, you can leave motivational sticky notes around the house with phrases such as, "I will improve my EQ to feel closer to my partner," or "I will strengthen my emotional intelligence as a leader so I can earn that big promotion.” You could even set reminders on your phone!
As shown above, improving your emotional intelligence boils down to three foundational concepts we know well here at Heartmanity: self-awareness, self-compassion, and intrinsic motivation.
But sometimes, knowledge never makes it to action.
Wanting to practice these three steps is very different than actually acting on these steps. Sometimes, you need just a little bit of extra support.
To strengthen your EQ, take Heartmanity's Emotional Intelligence online course, which will teach you more simple, straightforward ways to develop your emotional intelligence.