1. Mindfulness Activities increase your Emotional intelligence (EI)

The ability to master our emotions with a deeper level of insight.

"Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., well-known writer and researcher on leadership who wrote the best-seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, says. Goleman has dedicated his work to finding out what makes people successful. And, his title spoiling the surprise, he says it comes down to their emotional intelligence. That’s what drives a person to excellence."

Quote above is from an article on Success.com

Characteristics of Emotional Intelligent people include.

1. Being able to maintain a balanced lifestyle in which ideally you’re living a happy and fulfilling life. With purpose, being positive and of service.
2. Healthy social interaction, building good relationships, integrating techniques to work with stress and learning the ability to calm yourself and others in emotionally heated situations. Maintaining self-awareness through reflection and self-management.
3. People with high emotional intelligent are generally successful in their professional endeavours and personal life.

Different forms of this could be:

• Seeing how you react to a situation, and the ability to stop, think and feel before expressing yourself. (Self control)
• Being empathetic to others and yourself. (Mindfulness)
• Being positive and uplifting. (Optimistic)
• Confidence and awareness of your strengths and weaknesses.
• Ability to lead and work with a team to achieve goals. (Leadership)
• Taking responsibility for your actions and apologizing when you’ve done something thoughtlessly. (Respect)
• Doing what you say. (Impeccable to your word)
• Speaking your truth and calling someone on inappropriate behavior. (Boundaries)
• Making good choices. (Being conscious)
• Embracing change; a knowing that it’s a given. (Acceptance)
• Healthy lifestyle, balanced between work, play, exercise, rest and relaxing. Eating healthy, as good gut health aids mental clarity and good feelings, junk foods squash emotions and can leave you feeling flat in the long term. (Wellbeing)
• Yoga and meditation, aid wellbeing leading to EI (Connecting with your body, mind and soul)
• Environmental conservation, mindfulness around your impact on nature. (Down to earth)
• Driven, discipline creates freedom, and success in your business or passions. (Motivated)
• Leading by example! (Inspiring)
• Regularly putting your hand on your heart, feeling, relaxing and Smiling ear to ear.  (Open heart meditation)

Having healthy relationships by being completely present and listening to what is being shared, which can be done by sharing back with someone what you hear them say and going back and forth until you both feel heard and acknowledged. This is a great technique to achieve good communication skills. Fundamental in having healthy relationships. When working with people this creates an accountability, when the person shares back what you have said, theres no misunderstanding.

It's good to talk about emotions, sharing how you feel, and pinpointing what type of emotion it is. One technique to help you could be writing down your feelings and describing the emotion and possibly where it's coming from? Eg. I feel (*) because (*). It's important that your owning your emotions, as this makes a huge difference in any expression of your feelings. When we say you make me feel, its can be taken as an attack and that person could get defensive. It's also giving your power away, for when we own our emotions we are empowered.

These emotions can also be channeled into something like work, sports, artistic expressions, cleaning, exercise or meditation ect.

In a sense understanding what works best for you to deal with our different emotions.

Encouraging ourselves and others to talk about our fellings. Sharing in a group with support and full acceptance is very powerful tool of self acceptance.

When we become good friends with ourselves it allows our relationship with others to become better.

Follow your heart, achieve your dreams with small steps and express your authentic self!

High emotional intelligent people are generally talented, professional and have a successful mindset. Capable of dealing with their own emotions and others in a supportive manner.

One example of realising this is achieved by being present and holding a safe space for someone to experience, acknowledge and express suppressed emotions which are underneath the surface and blocking personal success and inner wellbeing.

Some of these emotions being anger, fear, jealousy, shame, guilt, sadness and insecurities, ect. Generally speaking these trapped emotions are from childhood experiences, trauma and relationships issues.

A great technique to help clear suppressed emotions is to roll play through your emotions, everyday for 5 to 20 minutes, such as getting angry, sad, jealous, joyful, excited and feeling shame. Expressing each one in an appropriate way ie. Not at anyone but in your own space.

If you have rage coming up around something, walk away from the situation and scream into your hands. This can help move the emotion and allow you to come back to the situation in a calmer state.

Emotions which haven’t been fully felt or dealt with, and if triggered and witnessed with your full acceptance will help unlock these suppressed emotions.

Liberating yourself from the stories and beliefs we have about possibly being “not good enough”, “not worthy”, “fear of loss” and “insecure”. Which we could be suppressing and escaping with alcoholism, sex addiction, being a workaholic, drug abuse, trying to prove we are good enough through achievements or possessions and inappropriate use of power.

These are all ways of avoiding what is really going on underneath the surface. Looking outside of yourself for gratification, or a distraction from your feelings. Which is generally only a temporary fix of the underlying emotions, which we can suppress with the above forms of excape.

This looking outside ourselfs to feel better, when I have that dream car, house, job, relationship I’ll be happy. In general isn’t true if you haven’t dealt with your inner issues.

When we shift into this inner self/world and recreate these subconscious, unconscious beliefs, which really run the show and our experiences in life, we can realize the truth, that we are good enough, worthy, probably really special!

From this place we can give and help others, which I believe is the greatest gift and enjoy the happiness of being of service!

 Daily meditation of at least 20 minutes morning and night is a great starting point for greater Emotional intelligence. One way to meditate is with continued focus on your breath, in through your nostrils for 5 seconds and out 5 seconds through your nostrils or mouth. Catching any thoughts entering your mind and coming back to full focus on breath. Imagin your thoughts are like clouds and observe them coming and going. Focus is the key to deepen in this process. Just this practice of meditation alone has lead people to an enlighten state of being.

If you’re finding this too hard with the mind wandering, which can take some time to master, another technique you can use is counting each breath. Going back from 20 to 0 and then to 20 again. Then build up to 50 and then 100.

I highly recommend regular meditation to train the mind to be able to focus, and creating more body awareness, which over time can lead to a general feeling of wellbeing. Personally I find 1 hour sittings and up to 2 hours the best, as my Personal experiences of deep peace and contentment comes with longer meditations and connecting with nature. Another experience from longer meditations has been feeling connected to the source, gratitude for everything, and a joy fulfilling us in being present to the miracle we are and is in everything around us!

Article written by Guy Sohm