When we talk about the difference between people who are more successful and those who are not, those who live their dreams and those who don’t even believe they can accomplish what they desire, those who are optimistically grateful about life and those who are pessimistic; the single distinctive factor is their emotional intelligence.
It’s not the external factors, like age, gender, where you came from or who you know that influence your life, is the internal world that shapes your outside world.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence can be simply explained like our ability to control the emotions we have. Controlling our emotions means controlling our actions. And 
when we control our actions we can control the results we have.
If we lack emotional intelligence we will be demoralized by every single difficulty we find in life. But if we have the emotional intelligence to focus on our progress, every problem becomes a challenge we can’t wait to face.
Is important to have emotional intelligence (or emotional training) because humans are emotional creatures. No matter how rational we are and how much we try to think our way through life, most of our decisions are made based on how we feel.
To break it down even more simplistically, we make decisions based on pleasure and pain.
If you have internal conflicts that’s because the emotional intelligence doesn’t align with your mental intelligence. Your heart wants something else but you try to listen to your mind. That’s where the conflict appears and it feels like an internal civil war that creates chaos in life.
Another type of conflict is when you sent mixed signals to your subconscious mind. For example, on one hand, you want a relationship and the love it comes with it, but at the same time, you attach pain to the idea of a relationship. Or you want to lose weight and feel good about yourself, but you only think about how hard it is to discipline yourself.
What influence our emotions?
- The point of view: The way we see things in life, directly influence how we feel about it. What for some people is an end, for others is a new beginning. When some see failures, others see lessons that help them improve themselves. When others see heartbreaking moments, others see opportunities to better appreciate the love. Where is a strong light, there is also a strong shadow. It matters only what you choose to focus on.
- The art of gratefulness: We can have all the riches in the world and feel empty, or we can have bare minimum and feel alive. It matters the level or appreciation we have for life. We are breathing, we are able to love, to work, we have all the opportunities we can possibly wish for. It’s within the highest level of gratefulness where we find our fulfillment.
- The work of progress: My mentor, Tony Robbins, said that progress means happiness. I couldn’t agree more. When we know that we are improving ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially; that’s when we are truly happy. We know we are getting better, we know we go towards our dreams and our passions, we know that we will have something valuable to give to the world. And that means everything!
You might also like: The heart needs healing too
How to improve our emotional intelligence?
The first step is to understand that we have it and to know how important it is. Most of the times people don’t have emotional maturity because they don’t know there is such a thing. So awareness is the first step.
Did you ever saw a person very old with a behavior like a child? Stubborn, selfish, unwilling to learn? Or a kid with a better understanding of his or her emotions than adults around? I know I did. It’s the emotional intelligence which makes the difference.
After this, we need to properly heal any past wounds. We obviously saw things in a way that maybe it’s still hurting us. We need to change our perspective, our gratefulness and to study how to improve how we feel.
The simple way to do that is to take each event that is still in our memory and reattach pain and pleasure to it in a way that is helping us. For example: Instead of feeling the pain of going on diet and exercise, feel the pain to stay the same and not change your physical condition. And think about the pleasure you will get with the accomplishment.
The most important step: we must dedicate ourselves one hour every day to put in our hearts positive emotions. Motivation, love, gratitude, compassion, happiness, all these beautiful things we need to light in our hearts daily. You can do it any way you want it and any way you feel it. Either if you focus on your dreams that you want to accomplish, or you think about the ones you love, you do some exercises to train your body or all of these mentioned.
We have to understand that any positive emotion needs to be trained into ourselves. There aren’t bad emotions, there is just a lack of good ones. So if we make sure we have the most empowering feelings inside of us, no matter what happens around us, we will give our best and we will take advantage of all opportunities to make our lives the way we always dreamed about.
Now it’s your turn. How is this article helpful for you and what changes will you apply in your life? What tips you have into developing more emotional intelligence? Share it with us in the comments. I look forward to hear from you.
