How to improve emotional intelligence skills

What Is Emotional Intelligence:

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage your own emotional feelings and the emotions of others.

It has three main facets: Emotional perceptivity, the power of focusing emotions and channeling emotions for analysis and contemplation.

The skill to evaluate your mind/emotional continuum(brains’ emotional mental processor) and manage it as well as boosting other peoples moods.

Emotions are like a river running all through your system. All the different states of feelings in a sense make up the “emotional body”. So how to improve emotional intelligence skills?

If you self-scan(watch your mind and feelings) regularly say 5 minutes a day and slowly increase it as you become used to it, this will give you the ability to control how you feel.

Mastery of this will certainly lead to a more joyous state of mind.

For when you feel good it is much easier to manage stress-related situations better.

Therefore, it is advisable to practice emotional training, by observing how you feel in different situations and think about why you feel the way you do.

THE LIMBIC SYSTEM:

Let us examine the human anatomy to get more insight on how the body processes our feelings in order to be more equipped at improving our emotional intelligence.

The limbic system sits on top of the brain stem is said to be one of the most archaic parts of the brain to develop and react to stimuli. The limbic system works with more developed parts of the brain serving multiple functions.

It combines higher mental functions and primitive emotions into a unified system.

A part of the limbic system called the hippocampus helps us create and keep memories which is essential for our growth.

The limbic system and hippocampus help determine our emotional behaviors.

Memory retention tends to emphasize pleasing and bad experiences, assess possible dangerous situations, helps us choose what we want based on past experiences, and helps in learning skills.

One of the primary hardwired functions of this part of the brain is to aid in survival in terms of eating and sex.

How the brain processes emotions:

According to a psychologist, our emotional state is the brain processing emotions in terms of not only how we feel, but how we think and react to those feelings.

In 1872, Charles Darwin first published “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” which he explains the evolutionary purpose of emotions is essential for our survival.

Life forms must struggle to survive and pass on its genes to ensure that the species can go on. Fear is a necessary ingredient for safety. The “fight-or-flight” that is built in our system can harness inner strength reserve for battling a predator or escaping one.

The species desire to court and mate with one another is also an emotion to reinforce the need to reproduce.

A person’s brain as the control center looks at situations, for example if an earthquake occurs they will attempt to escape by leaving the area or hide under a structure for preservation. When an attractive person entices you by making sexual advances, you will have a strong desire to bond with them for a more intimate connection.

A person’s brain evaluates these circumstances in order to stay alive and procreate, by using your strong feelings to convince every nerve, cell, and organ in the body to pursue protection of your life or bond with someone for sex.

Why society represses the individual’s human drives:

“Emotions,” wrote Aristotle (384–322 BCE), “are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites.”

These natural feelings in man if either suppressed or expressed primitively have cause many problems. In order to attempt to eliminate these social evils civilizations have come up with numerous ways to try to clamp down on raw emotions of its individuals.

Society says real men don’t show feelings if they are to be considered strong, efficient, and logical.

Men grow up practicing being unemotional realist thinkers.

So it should not surprise anyone that men have a hard time tuning into how they feel, bonding with others, being considerate, reasonable, and being openly expressive.

Since the beginning of time men have been guilty of wanton unrestrained passion whether emotional or sexual, this has caused psychological maladies such as an excessive desire for power and fame.

When this passion grows unchecked this will lead to greed, frustration, and anger for one can never get enough in life without a certain amount of contentment for their lot in life.

The crimes that were committed have cause these avaricious men to become guilty leading to self-loathing. Because it is an inherent need to preserve one’s own life, the guilt is projected onto others creating misplaced hatred, one of the main reasons for war since time immemorial.

Now Because women are an important central element of society, due to having the maternal role in rearing children for tomorrows future, they have an inherent responsibility to maintain dignity.

How they act strongly influences our human social structure. The evolutionary growth of human species has hardwired women to be an irresistible sexual force in order to ensure our survival through sexual reproduction.

The female is such a powerful sex symbol that is merely impossible for all men not to seek a mate.

As mankind developed more intelligence and self-awareness, some women harness their ability to think and develop skills at womancraft(art of seduction) to such a level that they were able to rule over whole families, political, and communal group structures.

These amoral females were able to secretly commit heinous crimes by maneuvering key men of power to do their bidding.

Some men were clever enough to form a nexus with these power mad women and gain control of whole nations.

This has led to religious, political and social communal group to use extreme sexual repression techniques in order to make women subordinate in every area of life to cut down her great potential power.

Since we are creatures of feeling once society blindly suppresses sexual desire, then the fundamental universal pleasure principle was damaged in humanity leading to many other problems.

But wise men and women although they may have great personal power would never misuse it. So if they are smart and pay attention to what is going on around them, they will less likely by subject to emotional repression be societies rigid laws.

Social repression causes feeling numbness for life in general:

Most men probably don’t even know how they feel. Since they have been taught to ignore their feelings for most of the time, how would a man even have a clue as to what he is feeling?

Women were trained by society as a whole that it is virtuous to suppress emotional and sexual feelings to avoid arousing heat to the opposite sex.

This rigid emotional repression forced on women, has created psychological frigid or artificial state of womanhood and is viewed as dignified, intelligent, pure, and perhaps even a divine state of being.

The social confinement of human expression creates a neurotic condition where the individual may unconsciously find aberrant ways to let out bottled up feelings.

Freud attempts to liberate us from our sexual imprisonment:

One of Sigmund Freud’s greatest work that has had a powerful impact on human life in the West during the 20th century is a rigorous and thorough reexamination of sex and sexual behavior.

He taught that sexual repression is one of the major contributing causes of psychological disorders. He states that overly restraining young people from getting proper sex education leads to mental sickness in adulthood.

Western society through misunderstanding Christianity claims sex is taboo and label freedom of expression or even normal sexual behavior as sinful.

Instead of teaching young people how to understand their natural sex drives and channel their needs intelligently, they kept them in the dark.

This has indirectly lead to rape, vicious fights, hate crime, excessive sex repression causing madness, satanism, hypersexuality, and drug abuse.

The responsible parent should be the first ones to teach their kids about sex and how to channel and sublimate the passions, as opposed to kids initially getting their information from the media or other kids.

How kids first get their insight into sex may shape their psychosexual(mental and sexual system) development for the rest of their lives.

Self-awareness can rewire humanities emotional sickness:

Some days we wake up feeling crappy with little energy and other days we feel great with tons of energy. The roller coaster ride of how most people feel retards any real progress in any endeavor.

The instability of passion for life is due to the authorities in any society trying to constrain people from wanton behavior due to unbridled passion.

This has mistrained man to unconsciously self-repress their feelings causing emotionally sickness, leading to chronic sexual or emotional disorders.

But instead of repression, it is better to channel our base passion into a constructive interest. That way you can get enjoyment through your hobby, which will sublimate your lower nature.

So by redirecting your natural god given sex drives in projects you are working on, can greatly relieve sexual tension and emotional apathy.

The way we feel is perhaps the most important aspect of us. For depending on how you feel will determine your state of mind most of the time.

Even our thought process is colored more or less by our mood. It is extremely hard to be 100% objective in any given situation.

So one could attempt the herculean task of trying to be perfectly neutral in order to examine facts in a given circumstance or one could take a much easier road by introspectively tuning into how one feels.

Monitoring your feelings is easier because human evolution has much more experience of feelings than thinking.

As you become aware of the patterns of your feelings then you can begin to get a handle on how to control your inner state of being.

This self-awareness technique is a good way to improve emotional intelligence skills.

As you get more control of your moods, various plans that you attempt to carry out will not be hijack by depressive moods from emotional repression or flighty ideas accompanied with dumb plans due to an explosion of feeling from unnatural forced suppressed sex drives.

How to use mental power to build your emotional intelligence skills:

To be intellectual means to be able to learn or process data from your environment and to be able to utilize proper judgment to solve problems in unknown circumstances.

By successfully obtaining knowledge and having a good memory one can learn to apply critical thinking to remove obstacles in one’s life. Let us example the different components of the mind.

1. The cognitive element of the mind is like a scalpel that dissects ideas by analysis, comparisons, inference, deduction, and evaluating.  This function of the mind is concerned with figuring out how things work by breaking them apart and then putting them back together.
2. The feeling function is that part of the mind which is our internal monitor that informs us of how we are doing in any given situation or set of circumstances by how it affects us emotionally.  Because we have an intricate system of feelings, ranging from joy to sadness, from enthusiastic drive to no drive, from bliss to misery, from satisfaction to frustration, and so on. Human species have evolved this aspect of the mind to find a path to a more enjoyable fulling life.
3.  The third function of the mind, our core driving force, is the will component. This aspect of the mind helps us formulate plans, purposes, goals, values, desires, drives, motivations and commitments. This is the mind’s internal impetus, which directs us to move forward toward some action, slows us down, or leads us away from some action. This volitional force plays a key role in determining our behavior.

To attain a strong mind practice trying to solve one problem at a time, until it is solved.

With a strong mind, you can use the three aspects of the mind together to improve your ability to ascertain your emotional state and modify it to gain mastery over yourself.

It is important to identify how and why you feel the way you do.

For example, you may be nervous if you have to speak before a group in a business firm and your anxiety may be compounded by fear of judgment that others may notice your insecurity.

You must have strong self-esteem to override this instinctive fear.

A process for using the cognitive part of the mind to recognize that your feelings aspect of the mind is insecure and afraid to speak before your buisness associates.

Then with patient analysis you can run experiments on finding ways to combat your irrational fear.

Like you may use detailed imagination to see the whole process of talking to an audience in your head a hundred times or more if necessary.

This mental exercise will help you make the act second nature by transforming emotional stage fright into emotional determination to communicate professionally in front of others.

If you think about how you feel in numerous positions in life, evaluate how it impacts you emotionally and you focus on transforming the bad feelings to good ones then you can gradually stop repressing your drives and sublimate them to find greater success and joy in life.

As you keep trying eventually you will get control of your inner state because not to quit means you are using the part of the mind that exercises will.

Chess is an invaluable tool for getting a real grip on your emotions:

Chess is a power tool that teaches you the most effective way to get things done.

Since the mind is complicated and elusive it is a good idea to use this tool to train the mind.

As you improve in chess you will begin to see your thought process more clearly leading to an accurate understanding of you how to think and feel about many things.

Perhaps chess is one of the best ways to become more self-aware because it is a pure abstract discipline that doesn’t distract you with picturesque ideas so you can see your ability to solve problems by how you handle the pieces in the game of chess, which can lead to rapid self-improvement.

Whereas reading, math, art, computer skills, and so on can definitely improve your logic, but their is the danger of too much data leading to mechanical memorization with little or no thought involved.

The mind is like a knife to keep it from getting dull one should sharpen it regularly with solving chess problems.

For instance getting a simple book on checkmates and work on a checkmate daily until you solve it. In time when you finish the book get another book on checkmates.

Eventually, you’ll need a book on checkmates that’s a little more difficult to strengthen your mind further. As you progress you’ll be able to study hard checkmates.

The stronger you make your brain the easier it will be able to multitask by adding chess openings, combinations, positional chess, chess tactics, chess strategy, or chess endings along with studying checkmates.

The more you expose yourself to more aspects of chess then you will be building neural networks in the brain, leading to a more active mind.

Chess is great for social interaction:

To take all the drudgery out of chess be smart and find someone to play.

Whether it is a family member, friend, mate, or a chess group this will be an invaluable way to learn faster than by yourself.

Give yourself goals to be able to play decently in a club or expertly in a tournament. If this is not possible then play chess online and find a web partner.

Like I said earlier to become a powerful human being one must change unconscious sexual repressed energy to conscious mental active energy that can be applied to anything.

Everyone is a social being so networking with others around a constructive fun interest like chess will give you unparalleled benefits in improving your emotional intelligence skills.

This is possibly by far the best way to enhance your emotionality since it is very exciting dealing with people and if you reflect on your social interactions soon you’ll begin to see how your brains mental-emotional-will configuration is working.

Shining light on the dark corners of your mind can only bring opportunity for power because knowledge about yourself will also make it possible to redefine your awareness and feelings.

Please give me some feedback on this article by leaving your comments below.