Practical Ways To Develop Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness And Self-regulation

We’ve been exploring the exciting topic of emotional intelligence.

Last week, we discussed Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Intelligence. We looked at the differences and similarities. Today, we will look at practical ways to develop emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be nurtured and learned.

Being emotionally intelligent does not come pre-installed in our genetic software.

We can understand, nurture and become better at managing emotions.

As I’ve always mentioned in previous articles, emotional intelligence is becoming an important yardstick for measuring leadership competence and is as important as the intelligence quotient (cognitive intelligence).

Today, people are not just looking at your technical, mental and professional skills as a leader; they are also interested in your ability to control your emotions and those of people around you.

So, it’s paramount that leaders pay more attention to developing healthy emotional control in their everyday lives.

In this article, I will outline practical ways you can nurture emotional intelligence as a leader and as an everyday person.

In the journey to nurturing emotional intelligence, we must understand the components of emotional intelligence.

Which include:

• Self-Awareness.
• Self Regulation.
• Motivation
• Empathy.
• Social Skills

I wrote a separate article that described the components of emotional intelligence. Read it here.

Understanding the core components of emotional intelligence makes it easier for us to apply principles that can help us improve each component.

Understanding And Improving Self-awareness

The journey to becoming a healthy emotional being starts with you. Knowing yourself at a deeper level.

The decision to become emotionally healthy means you have to go beyond scratching the surface to knowing more about yourself.

Recognising and understanding your emotions, moods, behaviour and how these elements influence you and others around you.

You must be objective about this deep assessment of yourself. You must be ready to detect and know your strengths and weaknesses, confront the weak areas, resolve to improve them, and take steps to strengthen your strengths.

Understanding yourself makes it easier to make the right decisions. It makes you more aware of how you interact with people around you because you know what you’re made up of and how expressing your unique emotions affects people negatively and positively.

Here are some practical tips to help you cultivate self-awareness:

• How Objective Can We Be?
• Keeping A Journal
• Understanding Your Motivation
• Engage Self-assessment Tools
• The Power Of Self-reflection

• How Objective Can We Be?: You have to be as objective as possible, and looking at yourself from the lenses and perspective of others can also help you a lot. Write down and document what they have to say. You must also know that they might not be 100% accurate in their judgement of you. It’s feedback, and it doesn’t have to be entirely correct.

• Keeping A Journal: Writing is a form of therapy. It helps you think properly. In the journey to self-awareness, writing or journaling will help you express your thoughts, feelings, and inner movements on paper. Journaling enables you to document your daily experiences, emotions and moods and helps you detect patterns over time that can help you understand who you are.

• Understanding Your Motivation: We’re all driven by invisible forces within. Our inner motivations push us forward and ahead, even when challenges come our way. Knowing what motivates you and mastering it is a key step towards self-awareness. People who forge ahead through adversity have mastered preserving their self-motivation. You can do the same. Look for your inner motivation, understand, nurture, and maintain it. Don’t lose sight.

• Engage Self-assessment Tools: There are many modern science-backed self-assessment tools available today. These tools can aid you in understanding yourself. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, 16 Personalities Test, and Strong Interest Inventory are just a few self-assessment tools you can use to understand yourself better. There are also other self-assessment tools in the domain of Career Aptitude Tests, Emotional Intelligence Assessments and Continuous Improvement Self-assessment tools that can help you understand yourself more deeply.

• The Power Of Self-reflection: Self-reflection allows you to look back and evaluate yourself and what you’ve done. It could be daily, weekly, or monthly. I prefer daily introspections. I feel it enables you to quickly detect areas in your life, attitude, behaviour, and reactions that need to be worked on, improved, or encouraged. Before you go to bed, think about your day for a few minutes. How did you react to the good and bad stimuli thrown at you? Did you do well or poorly? If you did badly, think of ways to improve; if you did well, look for how you can reinforce those good things. Journaling comes in handy here.

The Path To Self-regulation

Self-regulation is the second key component of emotional intelligence and is all about how we manage, control and understand our thoughts, emotions and behaviours.

The key mechanism of self-regulation is the ability to harness what I like to call emotional energy the right way.

Every day, we emit emotional energies.

When we are happy, sad, depressed, stressed, worried, excited, or anxious, it is through self-regulation that we can control these emotions and direct the force the right way.

You can encounter a sad situation and not let it weigh you down.

Instead, you use that vibe to do something else or avoid letting it soil your day entirely. That’s self-regulation, and it can be developed.

Self-regulation helps us navigate the daily labyrinth of emotional complexities safely without hurting ourselves and those we meet and interact with.

Here are practical ways we can nurture self-regulation:

• Deep Breathing Exercises
• The Growth Mindset
• Attend To Self-care
• Setting Realistic Goals
• Emotional Regulation Techniques
• Seek Expert/Professional Help

• Deep Breathing Exercises: Yes, you can calm down vigorous emotions like anxiety and anger with the help of deep breathing exercises. It works; you just have to train yourself to pause and then breathe. Incorporating deep breathing exercises into your daily routine will help you cool down, especially if your daily work is associated with high-stress activities. You could also explore relaxation techniques (modified deep breathing exercises) to help control your emotions and calm you down.

• The Growth Mindset: What is the growth mindset? Simple, it’s approaching life’s challenges with a positive “I Can” attitude. The growth mindset sees everything as an opportunity to learn and become better and stronger. Mistakes are opportunities to get better, and progress and success are still opportunities to do even more and better. The growth mindset celebrates progress over perfection and is constantly pushing against boundaries and limitations.

• Attend To Self-care: The quest for self-regulation isn’t done in isolation from other vital aspects of our well-being. We must prioritise self-care. Taking care of our mental, physical, and emotional well-being is essential for developing the strength needed for self-regulation. Exercise, eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and engaging in hobbies and activities that build social health and bring joy, happiness and fulfilment are all steps towards self-care.

• Setting Realistic Goals: Failure to achieve goals we’ve set for ourselves can lead to discouragement. The path to self-regulation is all about doing things that will bring balance to your internal emotional ecosystem and avoiding anything that might disrupt that delicate balance as much as possible. We must learn how to break goals into smaller, manageable, achievable portions so we don’t get overwhelmed and frustrated. The idea behind breaking goals into smaller portions that can be quickly done is that the sense of accomplishment that comes from achieving smaller goals is a source of motivation and inspiration for us to keep going.

• Emotional Regulation Techniques: Cognitive reframing, perspective-taking, and mindfulness exercises are examples of emotional regulation techniques you can explore to help you better regulate your emotions. Cognitive reframing is a technique that enables you to change your mindset. It allows you to view a situation, person, or relationship from a different angle. While perspective-taking explores a situation from the perspective of others. According to Gehlbach, perspective-taking is “The ability to understand how a situation appears to another person and how that person is reacting cognitively and emotionally to the situation.”

• Seek Expert/Professional Help: I always encourage people to seek professional help when it looks like they have arrived at their wit ends, especially for mental and psychological matters. The professional can scientifically assess your situation and prescribe the right therapy you need to help in your recovery or understanding of your emotions. Don’t underestimate the importance of seeking professional help; you might just be one or two therapies away from getting a hold of your mental health and becoming the best version of yourself.

We will stop here. In the next article, we will look into the components–motivation, empathy, and social skills. We will explore practical ways to develop these vital emotional intelligence components and maybe bring this series to an end. Maybe.

I write about leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship every Monday at Care City. Though my writings target healthcare entrepreneurs, leaders and innovators, I feel entrepreneurs and leaders, in general, can learn from them.

Catch you next week Monday.

Have a productive week ahead. Bye.