6 Ways to Improve Your Emotional Quotient
Photo Courtesy: pdpics.com
Also known as emotional intelligence, emotional quotient is a concept in human psychology which refers to a person’s ability to understand and manage his or her own emotions, thoughts and reactions to be able to manage interpersonal relationships successfully. Here are a few ways in which you can improve your emotional quotient.
1. Stay calm in a situation of crisis
Emotional quotient has a lot to do with how a person develops coping strategies to deal with crisis or stress. If you tend to go haywire every time you are in trouble, you may lose the strength to look at a situation objectively and make wrong choices. One of the ways to improve your emotional quotient is to stay level headed, stable and calm when you are in a mess. Without having the ability to think clearly with focus, you cannot make the right choices.
2. Control your knee jerk reactions
Controlling emotions is one of the important aspects of building an emotional quotient. If you have the impulse to use a curse word or give a volatile reaction while talking to someone when you are angry, you have to be able to pull yourself back from doing so. Giving knee jerk reactions or an impulsive response may make you regret your words later.
3. Be aware of what you are speaking or doing
Most people are not used to pausing and thinking for a second before uttering a word or taking an action in everyday life. If you want to improve your emotional quotient, you have to start being aware of what you say or do. Think about the repercussions of your words or actions and ponder over how they can impact a situation. You will be in better control of your circumstances if you become more aware of yourself.
4. Watch your own body language
Your body language could be giving away your thoughts even without you realizing it. Whether it is the tight clasp of your hands, rigidity of your shoulders, twitching of your eyebrows or the way you cross your legs, you can use your body language to either manipulate a situation or completely spoil it. Improve your emotional quotient by restraining your body language and train it to give away only those things that you want to.
5. Try to step into other people’s shoes to understand them better
People who have high emotional quotient have an ability to empathize for others. This means that they can step into other people’s shoes and try to understand why they are behaving in a particular way. You too can have a better emotional quotient by being more empathetic and try to understand the root of other people’s responses, emotions and behavior.
6. Polish your communication skills to express yourself in the right way
Having high emotional quotient is all about managing your emotions, which is not possible without being a good communicator. Saying the right thing at the right time, using the right words to express yourself and knowing when to refrain from saying something, are the kind of abilities you need to develop to communicate in a better way and highlight your emotional intelligence.
