Cultivating Emotional Intelligence - Part 2

In the last post on Emotional Intelligence, I said:

"80% of improving your emotional intelligence is just maximizing the greatness that's already in you."

So how does one do this?

Start with One Conscious Breath

Although it would revolutionize your awareness of your emotions, it's hard to commit to 20 minutes of meditation each day. So what I recommend is to merely start each day with One Conscious Breath.

Take one slow inhale and exhale. Notice the sensations all throughout the breath. Now, what you will almost certainly experience is a compelling desire to do another Conscious Breath. And then another.

You may find yourself returning to the Conscious Breath throughout the day. But don't force it.

This will help you cultivate awareness of your own mind and emotions - one of the elements of Emotional Intelligence. The more you practice awareness of something as simple as your breath, the more you will have awareness of your own thoughts and emotions as they happen.

Be Your Biggest Fan

If you are going to manage your emotions and manage your energy, then you are going to choose positivity and high energy, right?

Our highest and truest nature is the state of high energy and positivity. This is where we belong. Yes, our minds have a negativity bias, but there is something amazingly human and beautiful about the human mind, fully ablaze with possibility, openness, and energy. This is where you can and should be daily.

To arrive at this place, you need a fan. You need encouragement. You need -- Yourself.

YOU can be your biggest fan. In a practice I got from Mel Robbins' book The High Five Habit, each day I want you to look yourself in the mirror and say:

"I love you, I believe in you, something amazing is about to happen"

And then I want you to high five yourself in the mirror.

Why? Because who has a cheerleader encouraging them each day when they wake up? I know that I certainly do not have this. I have to be my own cheerleader. You deserve this -- so be your own cheerleader.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Practice Gratitude

Part of Emotional Intelligence is shifting your own emotions. And gratitude is instrumental in changing your mindset from negative to positive.

Gratitude teaches you to look for the positive in everything. And it truly is a "practice" in that you must do it daily to make it a habit.

Even if you aren't the "leader" of a team gratitude will help you change the results of a team because it will encourage better performance and improve the psychological safety on your team. I promise if you demonstrate gratitude regularly, you will start to be seen as a leader and you'll get noticed for bigger roles.

Every day, start your day with one thing you're grateful for. I recommend choosing something mundane, like a spoon, or a coffee mug, or a napkin. Maybe the hangers in your closet as you get dressed. Notice how beautifully designed and effective they are, how they make your life easier each day.

Noticing the mundane things in life trains you to be grateful for the little things. And it's the little things that we always fail to notice and appreciate in others. And appreciation is the thing that employees continually tell us leaders that we need to do more of.

Reality Affirmations: Reminders of Key Truths

Managing your own emotions is a key element of emotional intelligence. As I said in the last Emotional Intelligence post, we have a negativity bias that we have to actively fight against. We also have negativity blind spots that we return to over and over again -- emotional ruts and beliefs that pop up for us repeatedly. Maybe these sound familiar to you:

• "I can't do that"
• "I don't deserve that"
• "I'll never get the job I want."
• "It's not safe to speak up."
• "Change is scary."
• "People are so stupid and I can't even deal with it."
• "I have to get it perfect the first time."
• "I shouldn't have done that, how could I be so dumb?”
• "Ugh!" or (insert expletive here) -- These are just short ways of saying all of the things above.

The statements above might pop up in your mind so fast that you don't even notice them. You need to practice your mindfulness and breathing enough to start to notice them. But I promise you -- they are there. These negative thoughts steal into your mind so fast that it's easy to miss them.

To combat these types of thoughts, we need to start our days with some truth. Reality Affirmations like the ones below "affirm" the realities that you find it easy to forget. Because we are prone to certain negative thoughts, we need to prime ourselves with the CORRECT thoughts into our heads each day.

Note - I DO NOT recommend putting false facts into your head like "I'm perfect" or "everything I say is brilliant" or "look at me, I'm a millionaire!" Your brain isn't going to welcome or process lies. We need to bring truth into our daily affirmations.

Below are some truths that you might be prone to forgetting, and therefore and you could use a daily reminder:

• Pursuing progress works better than pursuing perfection.
• Fear is a fabrication.
• The best response to obstacles is to do it anyway.
• My thoughts and feelings matter.
• It's ok to ask for help.
• Failure is a part of success.
• Everyone is doing their best - including me.
• I don't have to be 100% certain to make a decision -- If needed, 51% is enough.
• Change is the key to growth.

Make a list of affirmations that are meaningful to you and review them each morning. And choose one to be your focus for the day.

Visualize: Who Do You Want to Be Today?

If you are going to live with Emotional Intelligence today, you can't just show up unconsciously.

You get to decide how you show up for life each day. You aren't ruled by your lizard brain -- you are a cortex-having, positivity-creating, energy machine that makes conscious decisions.

So ask yourself: How do I want to show up today? Who do I want to be today?

When I ask myself this, the answer almost always comes back the same way: I want to show up with positivity and high energy. The rest takes care of itself. Then, I close my eyes and I visualize myself being that person — Unless I'm driving, in which case I definitely don't close my eyes and instead do this sort of eyes-open visualization thing which is just as good and definitely is not weird at all :)

Conclusion

Emotional Intelligence starts with what's inside you. To cultivate this, you need to take concrete actions like slowing down, breathing consciously, practicing gratitude, and using cognitive tools like Reality Affirmations.

You can get better at Emotional Intelligence!

In my next post on Emotional Intelligence, I will share specific tools that leaders can use to demonstrate Emotional Intelligence and build trust and psychological safety with their teams.

Mike Lyons is an HR professional and consultant in the Austin, TX area. He can be found on LinkedIn.