In order to raise your Emotional Intelligence level, you must become self-aware of the emotions that you are experiencing at any given time, and you must also deal with emotions that you have suppressed in an effort to avoid dealing with them. It is a common tendency to want to push down a certain emotion or to convince yourself that you are not experiencing a particular emotion because it is uncomfortable or for some reason that emotion seems inappropriate under the circumstances. Emotional Intelligence requires that you know your own emotions and that you know how to manage them.

This is not something that you are able to do automatically – it is a process. In order to successfully complete this process, it will help to remember the following facts about your emotions:

Emotional intelligence is based on emotional awareness

Emotional Intelligence differs from regular or classic intelligence in that you can raise your Emotional Intelligence practically at will. And being emotionally intelligent is a crucial part of building solid relationships with family, friends and co-workers. People with high Emotional Intelligence are appreciated because they are steady, calm, collected, and secure, and they seem to have an innate ability to understand others. They always seem to know what to do in any given situation because their emotions don’t overwhelm them, so they are able to think more clearly and act more reasonably.

Emotions are constantly changing

Becoming self-aware of your emotions and what triggers them is not the same as dwelling on them. Take note of how the different things you do on any given day cause one emotion to arise and another to subside and you’ll see that emotions are always subject to change.

Your emotions are often tied to physical sensation

You’ve probably noticed that the way your body reacts to the emotion of fear is different from the emotion of happiness, that the way you feel physically when you’re happy is different from when you are angry, and so on. For instance, paying attention to the fact that your hands are shaking, that your muscles are tense and that your heart is beating rapidly, all of which are tied to being afraid, will help you realize why you are afraid and will help you manage that fear so that you can handle it constructively.

Emotional Intelligence doesn’t replace reason & logic

Becoming aware of what emotions and feelings you are experiencing and knowing how to manage those emotions and feelings will become essentially automatic. Once you no longer struggle to deal with your emotions and feelings instinctively, your thinking and reasoning abilities are clearer and more accurate, and you can use them to work through your emotions without being overcome by them. Just like anything else, you will become better at this as you practice, practice, practice.

When we have an understanding of our emotions, what they are, and how they affect us we are building the foundation to being self – aware. Self-management then follows with a differing set of competencies taking us further down the path of raising our emotional intelligence.