A recent event made me completely consider my emotional intelligence. I read books, watched Ted talks, and scanned through a bunch of ‘10 steps to improve’s, ‘3 ways to become’s, but still arrived at nothing. It took me several weeks but it was an epiphany that saved me in the end. At the core, I realized while a lot of people believe being emotionally intelligent means to not be overly emotional, it’s actually the very opposite. To be emotionally intelligent means to be able to understand and feel your emotions. The most important requisite here is to be able to FEEL it. Growing up, we are taught to get over it, let it go, toughen up, and stop crying and that has left many of us out of touch with our emotions. Whenever we do this, we are doing the very opposite of intelligently understanding our emotions because we do everything to quickly discard them and basically live to fight another day.
The truth is that there is a message in every emotion we feel. Whenever we try to speed up the process, we miss the message and leave it unresolved.
Ever heard of sit with it? I tried that and created my own 5 step checklist of things I do every time I feel a strong emotion. This has served me well and I’m happy to finally share this process with you! No, breathe, it doesn’t involve counting down to ten—that’s a good way to suppress and keep things unresolved. We don’t want that. Here’s what’s been working for me. I’ll explain the science behind it as well.
Breathe…
When emotions are triggered e.g. Anger
- What do I feel? Naming the emotion here serves to remove the cloudy feel you get when you are emotionally triggered.
- SIT WITH THIS FEELING! This is the most important step. It took me a while to master this part. This is because we often see having these emotions as a bad thing and we want to quickly get over it! Childhood triggers might echo out a few get over its and you are being dramatic’s but it is important to work past that and truly sit with it. It’s because we’ve been depriving ourselves of this part that we’ve been feeling stuck. So this time, get out of your head. I know this sounds backwards, but I need you to get out of your head, move the emotion out of the reasoning side of your brain which wants to start fixing things and drop it all the way down to your heart and just feel.
- Comfort yourself! Soothe however you please. Cry, sleep, tell yourself it’s okay to be sad. This is the validation most of us seek when we vent to others.
- If you do step 2 & 3 right, step 4 will happen naturally; RELEASE!
- What’s left now is the math of the emotion or the residual aspect: THE MESSAGE. Now your reasoning head can take this part back and ask yourself “why did I feel angry at the way she spoke?” “why did him ignoring me make me sad?” “Why was I offended by her actions?” It can be a plethora of reasons but mostly it’s rooted in some unresolved insecurities or past traumas. Use the opportunity to learn about yourself and delight in just understanding a little more about yourself. This breathes back positivity.
- You can stop at number 5, but depending on the situation the following steps may be needed. Ask yourself what is the worst-case-intention scenario the person who offended you had. Usually this will sound very ridiculous once you say it out loud but it also more than likely what you were hanging on to. What is the best-case-intention scenario? If you are responding back to someone pick this scenario and assume good intent. Don’t take it personal. People are mostly projecting (has nothing to do with you) but probably so were you in your worst-case-intention scenario (has everything to do with you and your ego). Use any of your coping tools here: use boundaries if necessary, decide not to take it personal, or communicate the issue.
Before you say, I don’t have the time to go through these steps while I am boiling up and need to respond, ask yourself why you need to respond so quickly? Moreover, I can say that after doing this for some time, I breezed through the steps a lot quicker and didn’t even know I was doing it when I did it. Repeated emotions will be faster and new ones that haven’t gone through the process will be a lot slower the first few times!
I’ve learned so much on this journey to becoming emotionally intelligent. It’s interesting what happens when you obsess over something and everything just aligns to help you understand. That’s what I did I kept praying to God for the wisdom to navigate this. I am far from perfect, sometimes I flat out fail and refuse to do the work…if this happens to you give yourself grace. Running through these steps has taught me so much about myself and needs that in itself has been more satisfying that being able to come off as cool and collected.
Are there any things you’ve tried to become more emotionally intelligent that you’ve found effective, share them below! I hope this helps you as much as it has me.