Use your imagination and look for moments during your ordinary day to practice mindfulness. Look for times during your day when you can focus your five senses into more mindfulness. Pay attention to the actual activity (standing, driving, sitting, eating), the people around you, the environment surrounding you and so on.

Imagination

Once you can recognize your own feelings to a degree of certainty, you will then move on to develop the ability to see emotions and feelings in others for what they are.

Recognizing Feelings

The next level of emotional intelligence that you can develop for yourself is your personal ability to rein in or direct your emotions, to call on certain emotions, for instance, so that they help you perform better.

The Next Level of EQ

In your path towards higher EQ, you will most likely run into thought traps—which tend to become habitual for many of us.

Thought Traps

The best novelist and screenplay writers are active and attentive observers of humankind. They have to be, as understanding the role of emotions is how they develop the characters depicted in their stories.

Observing

Having a higher EQ will undoubtedly change your life.

You might have heard that you should develop your EQ. EQ is the personal ability you have to recognize and label your own emotions and feelings.

Your Starting Point

If you can see feelings in yourself, you'll be able to identify them in others. That's the second step you would take if you are interested in developing you EQ—seeing others' feelings as they express them.

Identifying Feelings

Every ten minutes for the next hour, stop. Stop everything you are doing and ask yourself, "What is the predominant thought I have just been thinking?" Write down the complete thought. Don't do anything about it yet, just write it down.

Stop

These are three key words that help you understand what mindfulness is: determination, awareness, and attention.

Understanding Mindfulness

Think about a feeling where your answer was a clear "yes". There is actually a very simple way to dissolve any feeling that arises and is noticable in the body.Mental health professionals have been using and teaching it for decades, as part of their toolkit for helping emotionally overwhelmed patients. On average, it takes less than 2 minutes.

When Your Answer was a Clear "Yes"

Notice when you are spinning in your head around a recurring thought that you just can't let go of.Once you have noticed which thought keeps popping up or that you are spinning in your head, stop! Stop and ask yourself this question, "Could I let go of listening to my mind, yes or no?"Naturally, for these purposes, you want to answer yes.

Notice

Emotional intelligence (EQ/emotional quotient) is our ability to identify, understand and manage or control our feelings. It is additionally our ability to perceive, understand, and influence the emotions of other people.There isn't really an EQ "score" or metric that states how emotionally intelligent you are. If a person is "EQ dumb", most people know it and will usually stay away. If an individual is "EQ smart", he/she acts like a magnet to people.

What is EQ?

Emotional intelligence means being aware that feelings drive both our best and our worst behaviors. For some of us need to train ourselves to observe and understand. Active listening helps.

Awareness

Self management—in regards to improving your EQ—takes awareness of your own feelings, behaviors, and reactions one step further. Self-management is you at-will ability to delay gratification, in the name of more personal mastery over strong feelings or urges.In the name of a quiet, more balanced observation of other people around you. In the name of allowing others to shine.

Self-Management

Become Emotionally Smarter with a Practical Approach! Emotional intelligence has been a buzzword in the personal growth industry and in high-level corporate recruitment strategies since 1995, when Daniel Goleman used the term for his book title and topic. As we would say today, his use of it "went viral" immediately, in the world of business and mental health in particular. Often abbreviated as "EQ", emotional intelligence is the personal ability you have to recognize and label your own emotions and feelings, and to use this information to steer your thinking and behavior in the desired direction. Whether you are looking to climb the career ladder with ease, thrive during social events or simply feel more at peace with yourself, a well-developed EQ is absolutely critical. During the course of this book, we will take a look at the current knowledge surrounding the subject, as well as how you can vastly improve your own emotional intelligence with a series of simple, practical exercises. You will learn about: - How to observe and analyze your emotions at any given moment. - How to connect more easily with people and build strong and lasting relationships. - How your body reacts to your various emotional states. - How to release unwanted and potentially destructive emotions. - "Thought traps" and how to deal with them. - Mindfulness and its role in developing EQ. - How to improve your EQ in everyday environments. - How having a higher emotional intelligence will benefit your life. And more!

ERIC JORDAN

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