Do you want to get better at being aware of, expressing, controlling your emotions?

What about your interpersonal skills? Do you want to get better at sensing the emotions of other people?

In this article, I’m going to reveal how to improve your emotional intelligence. Many of these strategies will work both in your personal life and in the workplace.

Unlike other information out there, these tips are actually practical.

Oh boy, when I was a sophomore in college, I took a class on interpersonal communications.

It was such a B.S. elective that didn’t really teach me anything. Everyone took the class just to goof off because it was “easy.”

The funny thing is… I actually wanted to learn the subject. I wanted to enhance this area of my life, only at the time, I didn’t know where to begin.

Rather than trying to circle this topic with vague theory, I’m going to share with you what’s worked for me.

A few years back, I set out on a quest to improve my own emotional intelligence. I had always been very emotionally unaware growing up, which led to disasters in relationships and my personal life.

After hitting a low point, I read everything out there on the topic and tried everything under the sun to get better in this area of my life.

Eventually, I started to see progress. These are the tried and true methods that I used to experience change. You can also use them to improve your emotional and social skills.

1. Begin to Label Your Emotions

You want to get into a habit of labeling your emotions on a daily basis, particularly when you’re feeling negative emotions.

When you label an emotion, you gain clarity on what you’re feeling, which could actually be a mix of feelings.

The reason that you want to do this is because we can’t gain true emotional awareness unless we identify what we are feeling and what is causing those feelings.

Labeling your emotions also starts the process of dealing with them. There are specific strategies that you can use to address emotions like:

• Anger
• Anxiety
• Fear
• Embarrassment
• Guilt
• Regret
• And more.

It’s important that you be very specific. Don’t just say “I feel kinda weird.” Use the actual word for the emotion.

Take the time to find the right word. It will bring clarity to your thinking.

Once you understand what you’re feeling, it’s going to be easier to shift yourself into a more positive emotional state.

2.  Finish this: “I feel ____ because ____.”

After you’ve identified the emotion(s) that you are feeling in a given situation, it’s time to nail down WHY you’re feeling those emotions.

The important part in this step is to NOT JUDGE why you’re feeling these emotions. It’s very easy to rationalize that you “shouldn’t be feeling this way” or that “it’s silly” to feel angry because of a certain thing.

Be completely honest about why you are feeling that emotion. If you’ve never done this kind of self-examination before, then you should write down your answers.

Whether or not they are justified, feelings are real. You can’t fake your way out of an emotion. That’s just how you feel.

Try to keep the beginning part of the statement confined to one emotion. Examples of filling in this statement could include.

• I feel ANGRY because Jenny didn’t invite me to the party.
• I feel SAD because no one could hang out this weekend.
• I feel FRUSTRATED because my friend won’t take my advice.

This is the core sentiment. After you make this one statement, you’ll also have a bunch of thoughts that are related to this core emotion.

Your thoughts are directly influenced by your emotional state. If you’re angry, you’ll have angry thoughts. If you’re sad, you’ll have sad thoughts.

For example, let’s say that you feel sad because all of your friends were too busy to hang out on the weekend.

Your self-talk could look like this: “I feel sad because no one could hang out. Maybe Sarah doesn’t like me. Why am I always the unpopular one? There must be something wrong with me. 

No one really cares about me. I just wish I had friends who cared. I’m probably going to die alone. Gosh, I feel so lonely. 

Because you’re feeling sad, your mind is naturally going to focus on those types of thoughts, which creates a repetitive thought loop. Your thoughts then cause you to feel even sadder.

3. Finish this: “I am thinking about ____. This makes me feel ____.”

We all lead very busy lives. As you go throughout your day, you’re mainly going to be on autopilot.

You’ll be rushing to get things done, and you’ll probably have a bunch of verbal or image-related thoughts going through your head.

At certain points throughout the day, you might be able to take a break from this auto-pilot thought process. You can meditate, do yoga, exercise, etc.

However, for most of the day, we can’t take that break. This means that you need to be ultra-aware of your thoughts and how they’re making you feel.

Do you want to know a secret? 

For the most part, people feel negatively not because of what’s happening in their daily life, but rather because of their THOUGHTS.

Honestly? This happens to ME more than anyone else. Something will cue a negative memory from years ago, or I’ll keep dwelling on something that makes me feel negative.

If you find yourself feeling anxious, angry, or in a funk, take and stop to observe what you’re thinking about. 

Anxiety is typically based in worry and fear of the future. Therefore, when I feel anxious, I tend to “mentally prepare” for events that COULD happen.

I’ll spend time thinking about what I’d say in such and such a situation, or how I would react or respond.

It’s a thought process that is based in fear, and my overthinking is a reaction to that fear.

99.99% of the time, this situation that I’m mentally preparing for NEVER happens. I spend all my time worrying for no reason.

Once I started to pay more attention to my thoughts, I realized that my brain was actually causing me to feel negative. There wasn’t any rational reason in the environment to make me feel angry or sad.

4. Label Other People’s Emotions…

Remember, improving your emotional intelligence isn’t just about understanding your own emotions. It’s also about being able to sense what others are feeling.

I’ve already covered the process for bringing some clarity to what YOU are feeling, but what about the people around you? How can you sense their feelings?

It’s very simple, but extremely overlooked! There are three ways to sense what someone else is feeling:

• Their body language
• Their facial expressions
• Their tone of voice

Those are the three ways that you can determine what someone is feeling. You have to know how all of them work in order to have a full picture of what’s going on inside their head.

So… what am I suggesting? You should read a book on body language?

Yep! That’s actually EXACTLY what I am suggesting.

I’ve read books on body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. These are the non-verbal signals that people use to communicate emotions.

When you pick up a “gesture cluster,” you’ll be able to label exactly what someone is feeling.

Without this knowledge, it’s going to be hard to accurately label how people are feeling, and therefore, impossible to sense how you should behave.

5. Body Language Basics

Understanding body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice is important for two reasons:

1. You’ll be able to convey your emotions better
2. You’ll pick up on how other people are feeling

Some people have a resting bitch face. I have a resting sad or disinterested face.

Normally, if you were to look at me, I would seem unhappy. That’s just how my face looks.

In social situations, I must make a conscious effort to smile a little bit, otherwise people will think I’m not having a good time and they’ll ask me things like, “Are you okay?”

By understanding body language, you’ll be able to fully understand the signals that you’re sending to other people. 

You might think you’re acting confident, but in reality, your body language is giving off an insecure vibe.

I recommend reading the Definitive Book of Body Language. It’s super comprehensive and will tell you everything you need to know.

Another good one is What Every BODY is Saying. This reveals many of the fundamentals you’ll need to become acquainted with.

In addition to understanding the messages you’re sending, you’ll be able to decode other people’s emotions. This will help you when you’re trying to influence others or trying to determine how they feel about you.

Here are some basic cliff notes when it comes to how body language is tied to emotions:

1. Don’t look at just one gesture or facial expression. Examine gesture clusters. Someone can be smiling, but based on their body language, be nervous, not confident.
2. You must examine the context in which a gesture happens. Someone could have their arms crossed, but because it’s cold, not because they’re feeling closed off or defensive.
3. People will examine your tone of voice and facial expressions to determine how YOU feel about something. It’s not about what you say, it’s how you say it.
4. People use pacifying gestures when under some degree of stress. Pacifying gestures could include wringing hands, touching their face, scratching their head, playing with their ear, etc.
5. Your eye contact (or lack thereof) is used by others to make an assessment regarding how you’re feeling or how you feel about yourself in relation to others in a social situation.

There are many other things that I could go over, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

The big conclusion that you should take away is that often times, we don’t realize that we are sending non-verbal messages to other people.

Finally, we can use this knowledge about body language to better understand how we are feeling.

For example, I will notice when I’m touching my face, have my legs crossed, or am holding my hands in a particular way.

Because of my knowledge, I can quickly draw the conclusion, “Oh, I’m feeling nervous right now” or “Oh, I’m feeling worried and stressed about this.”

I can then either deal with those emotions, engage in positive self-talk, or just change my gestures so that other people don’t pick up on the emotion.

6. For Ultimate Empathy, Mirror Body Language

Empathy is defined as the ability to “understand the feelings of another.”

Naturally, you can logically put yourself in someone’s situation and ask yourself how you would feel.

However, this doesn’t always work and it can be difficult to imagine yourself in certain situations.

A surefire way for understanding how someone is feeling is to mirror their body language.

Let’s say that someone is struggling to make eye contact with you, their arms are folded, and they are speaking in a low voice with non-committal language.

This hasn’t been the case throughout the entire conversation, but when you asked them if they wanted to hang out, they started to adopt these gestures.

Now, let’s say that you were to mirror them. Instantly, you’d get a sense for how they were feeling. I would only fold my arms and fail to make eye contact if I wasn’t feeling comfortable.

You can easily conclude that this person DOES NOT want to hang out with you. Maybe they don’t like the idea you brought up. Maybe they don’t like you.

For whatever reason, they don’t feel comfortable with what you said.

You can then use questions to determine WHY they feel that way.

It’s almost the reverse of the excersises that we talked about previously. In your mind, you’d want to feel out these blanks:

• “This person is feeling ___” – You can find this out by observing body language.
• “This person is feeling ___, because ____.” – You can find this out by asking questions.

In other situations, by mirroring body language, a person will feel more understood.

For example, if your friend is very upset about something and they are frowning and on the verge of tears, by mirroring their facial expressions, you’ll not only get a sense of what they feeling, but that person will also feel more understood.

They will feel like you “get them” because you are in the same emotional state as they are. Clearly, you are concerned and you care.

For those that are more technically inclined, you can use mirroring to help empathize with others.

7. Find a Mentor or a Teacher

Now a days, with blogs, podcasts, and YouTube, it’s super easy to find a mentor that you can learn from.

I’ve been through my own transformation, so I’d love it if you could take a second to reach out and share your story.

It’s difficult to gain an outside perspective on your own problems. If you don’t have the funds to seek out teaching, courses, or books, then I think the next best thing is to keep a journal.

By keeping a journal which catalogues the times you’ve felt positive or negative emotions, you’ll be able to look back on your life and see patterns.

Looking back at some of my own journal entries, I totally see patterns, thought loops, and negative beliefs that I have.

Recognizing these patterns has helped me change myself for the better!