7 Exercises And Activities To Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence It is one of the constructs that has gained the greatest popularity in recent decades in the field of psychology, as it has been shown to be key in work, educational and sports performance; and it is essential for people’s well-being, happiness and personal development.

Fundamentally, it is the set of our mental skills aimed at identifying and regulating our emotions and feelings, as well as recognizing them in other people to empathize better.

If you still don’t know what Emotional Intelligence is and you want to know in detail about it, I invite you to read these two articles:

Exercises and activities to develop your Emotional Intelligence

If you already know what Emotional Intelligence is and what its benefits are, The next step is to put it into practice Below we present a list of activities and tips that will allow you to develop your Emotional Intelligence.

1. Have your emotions diary

To start practicing Emotional Intelligence daily, there is nothing better than having an emotional diary. This activity is simple, as it is similar to the classic teenage diary.

To keep your emotions diary, you just have to take 10 or 20 minutes a day, preferably before going to bed, to review how your day went on an emotional level If, for example, you feel that you have been experiencing stress and feel sad, write it down. Review how you have felt during the week and compare it to the previous week.

It is important that you add strategies to feel better, that is, tasks you can do to avoid excess negative emotions With the emotions diary it is possible to work on emotional self-knowledge and emotional regulation as you use it. This strategy is useful to understand your emotions and to give you feedback about how you feel.

2. Active listening: observe non-verbal language

Active listening is one of the social skills that we should all possess but that we rarely put into practice. And there is a big difference between listening and hearing. Active listening focuses not only on words that is, it takes into account non-verbal language and the communication of emotions.

To carry it out in your daily life, you need to take a few minutes from your conversations to voluntarily listen actively. You may think it is simple, but it is common that instead of pay full attention to the other person’s communication, our thoughts and our beliefs contaminate our interpersonal communication. So the next time you are in front of someone, take a few minutes to observe their body language, their gestures, their looks, their expressions and the emotions that the other interlocutor is trying to convey.

3. The wheel of life

The wheel of life is one of the most effective techniques to know ourselves and correct those areas of our lives that we are not happy with. Performing this exercise does not take more than 20 minutes and its operation is very simple. Its effectiveness is such that even personal development experts use this technique.

This technique helps us know what our wants and needs are, which are often hidden by social demands. Therefore, it is a way to empower ourselves in life, to put on paper what we really want and what is important to us. So we can have a clearer vision of where we want to go, from outside our heads.

To perform this exercise, we need a sheet of paper that contains a circle so that we can put what areas of our life are important to us and we want to work on For example, work, friends, partner, family, leisure… Afterwards, it is necessary to evaluate each variable with a score that shows our preference. For example, if work is the most important thing, we will put the number “1”. Once we are clear about the order of preference, it is necessary to write down different actions to improve our lives.

4. Vipassana meditation

There are different types of meditation, and although many people think that this technique only serves to calm us down, some of these meditative practices are really useful for improving Emotional Intelligence. One of the best known is vipassana meditation In fact, vipassana is a term from the Pali language that means “observation” or “clear vision.”

vipassana meditation emphasizes awareness and attention to breathing, focusing the mind on the air that enters and leaves through the nose. When the mind begins to ruminate, it is necessary to label thoughts and emotions, observe them and let them go, accepting them.

5. Stop for a minute

Emotional regulation is also one of the keys to Emotional Intelligence and interpersonal relationships. But it is not always possible to stop for a minute in our lives to analyze the present moment. Imagine that you are in a collective bargaining agreement at work and things get out of hand. The atmosphere has become tense and you are not reaching an agreement because there is a certain tone of tension. You may want to stop for a moment, clear your mind, and respond and negotiate with your head rather than your heart.

You can learn to relax and control your emotions with one-minute meditation. Once you’ve perfected it, you can use it anytime, anywhere. In the previous example (that of collective bargaining), if things get out of hand, it is always better to take a 5-minute break so that the waters return to normal and the negotiation can be resumed with serenity In that situation you could take advantage of that break to practice this exercise.