Improving Emotional Intelligence – Self-Control

Improving emotional intelligence starts with discovering how you feel emotionally. Before we can exert emotional control, we first have to increase our emotional awareness and have a basic understanding of our own emotional dynamics. The next step is learning emotional self-regulation. Self management is rooted in the knowledge that our emotions can be changed. The ability to actually change something comes from self-empowerment.

This means that we come to realize that we create our emotional experiences and we don’t blame the karma, the government, our generation, previous generations, other nations, other people for how we feel. We do not give the power of control away. Taking responsibility for how we feel in a healthy way is difficult when we were educated otherwise, but can be learned.

In this guide:

• In short about self-management and emotion regulation
• What to do to improve emotional self-regulation?
• Developing the skills – Emotional wellness and self-empowerment

This is Step 2 – developing self-control skills and improving the sense of self-empowerment. You might also be interested in our Complete Guide to improving emotional intelligence that gives a summery and overview of all the steps. You can find the other steps interesting too:

What is emotion management?

Emotions and feelings are part of our daily experience. Sometimes it is a nice and normal experience, but sometimes it feels like an “out of control roller coaster ride” kind of experience. Emotional management is about staying in control. The key issues in this segment of the emotional intelligence topic are feeling like a victim of the emotions, disempowered or being self- empowered and capable to change.

You can Stay in control only if you believe that you can have control in the first place. Emotion regulation stems from the believe that we can control our own emotional experience. When we are willing and capable to stay open-minded (aware) while moving along the emotional scale, we can experience life fully and emotionally because we know how to move trough imbalances.

Emotion regulation and control is NOT about closing ourselves in a box of happy feelings. People with high emotional intelligence do not know how to control their emotions perfectly all the time. Everybody is living here in this dynamic, changing environment with others who are having different ideas and desires and all of us loose the connection to positivity sometimes. Loss, grief, diseases affect everybody and it is good to know that, feeling down doesn’t make you a person with low EQ. You can have high emotional intelligence and still feel negative feelings occasionally. EQ and especially self-management can help in overcoming the situation, in handling the emotional flow and regaining balance easier and sooner.

When you become self-empowered you won’t be emotionally overwhelmed by strong influential impulses and charismatic people. It will be easier to make appropriate decisions and resist negative social pressure. When your EQ is low you become easily stressed, angry, frustrated, enchanted and your ability to think clearly becomes compromised. The importance of emotional self-regulation is that you’ll be able to make clear choices, follow through on goals, plans, commitments and adapt to unexpected changes with ease and flexibility.

What to do to improve emotional self-regulation?

• Take responsibility for your inner emotional experiences
• Take accountability for your actions and words
• Embrace (self-)discipline as a tool of self-empowerment
• Learn to respond not to react

Take responsibility for your feelings and emotions

Your emotions and behavior come from you, they don’t come from anyone else and once you start accepting responsibility for how you feel and how you behave it will have a positive impact on all areas of your life. A basic step in improving emotional intelligence is understanding that blaming, projecting, denying, ignoring or numbing our feelings will not make them go away. And it is you and only you who can do something about learning to cope with them.

Emotions can be triggered from the outside or the inside, but hey are not created by that trigger. When you say: “She/He made me angry” you put the power in that persons hand to control your emotions. You victimize and disempower yourself. What is happening in your world, in your emotional life is being actively shaped by your beliefs and actions. They can do or say things that upset and trigger you to be angry but it is not them who create the anger, frustration, etc. It is not them forcing you to think on it again and again and make the negative emotion stay. It would be easier if they didn’t do that in the first place, but that is another question. What is important for now is recognizing that the control is in your hand. You become angry as a reaction to people, situations, ideas , thoughts but you can move out of it. So if it is not them, than what is creating that unpleasant feeling in you?

Emotions are closely related to your thoughts. Your thoughts affect the way you feel emotionally and the way you feel affects how you think. It is one of those typical “what came first the egg or the chicken? ” type of questions. It is important to realize, that how you feel when you walk into a room can affect what you think about the people you meet in there. In the same way how you think about a situation, what perspective you choose can affect how you feel about yourself, your life and so on. Your emotions are within your control zone. Not in the sense that you can change it when you are in the middle of it. No. That is too late. You can decide however where you want to go from there. You can take your power back.

Taking responsibility is the next step that follows naturally as you are becoming more and more mindful and self-aware. Mindfulness implies that you are becoming aware of your emotional flow, it is like waking up and opening up to paying attention to your life deliberately. The emotion- thought interaction happens mostly automatically, but not all of the process has to be automatic. You can step in and coordinate its dynamics. In order to do so you want to stop acting like the victim by quitting your pity party and start embracing your true power.

Take accountability for your actions and words

Developing personal accountability for our actions and words is an essential skill for our professional success and overall happiness. We are social beings and emotional intelligence plays an important part of our social interactions. Accountability stems from taking responsibility, so it normally implies that accountable people recognize team dynamics and understand the social norms. They do not put their head in the sand, they don’t blame others when they are at fault and are willing to own up to their part that they are contributing to failures, challenges and conflicts. They are willing to examine their behaviors and communication and apologize when it is adequate.

Accountability is your willingness and your ability to reflect on your decisions. You are where you are today, due to the decisions that you’ve taken. When you feel empowered to take personal accountability for your choices your sense of emotional wellness and emotional intelligence will automatically grow. Personal accountability takes courage, but it builds integrity, mutual respect and trustworthiness.

The more positive aspect that comes from being accountable is recognizing your values and worth. You will recognize that your successes do not come to you by luck. You are the reason for them, it is your choices, your actions, your day to day attitudes and words that allow those personal or professional results. If you have repeatedly allowed yourself to be mistreated and devalued, it is a good question to ask yourself: Where I am disrespected? Where I am not taking responsibility and hiding from accountability?

Embrace (self-)discipline as a tool of self-empowerment

The biggest issue about emotions is that they can get out of control. This is usually happening due to the fact that the person is not becoming aware of certain emotions in the present moment. By the time they pick up on the emotion and realize how they feel, they have already let the chemical reaction chain escalade. Such intense emotional outbreaks negatively affect the rational mental thinking and can ruin years of friendships, can sidetrack lifegoals, compromise professional development and financial security. To exert emotion regulation and control it is necessary to develop emotional awareness first. These practices are complete attitude changes that won’t happen overnight. It takes time and disciplined effort and conscientiousness to form new habits.

Discipline is not very popular today and we can see how people want to present themselves on social media more like free spirits, spontaneous, adventurous and courageous. “Interesting if true” would be a nice button for these posts. Carelessness is not the most efficient or most conscious use of free will. As strange and unlikely as it sounds Discipline is necessary for Spontaneity.

While it can be challenging to stick to disciplined plans and practices it is worth the effort. This is called delayed gratification and how people relate to this has to do with their level of emotional intelligence. It is the ability to postpone immediate pleasure, resist the temptation of immediate gain in favor of later reward. Being planned and organized means you are establishing routines and following up on them. Procrastination is a way to avoid responsibility and escape or at least delay dealing with a situations and uncomfortable tasks.

You want to be resilient enough to deal with discomfort now and construct your long term habits of emotional management. When you have a mindfulness practice in place, a gratitude practice going on and you regularly do emotional maintenance, you clear the emotional cupboard recurrently and you know where you are headed, than spontaneity and synchronicity can become daily experiences.

Learn to respond not to react

Managing stress and anxiety. Coping strategies, such as managing stress by taking a walk in the park, do not cause harm but do not help much on the long run either. We can fall in the same emotional hole on the same street again and again. The same things will trigger the same behavior again and again. These patterns create such a strong momentum that we habitually go into that same emotional reaction without thinking. Most of our reactions can be valid and working out but some can create chaos and trouble.

Responding means mindfulness, presence and conscious choice. This is about learning to make conscious choices that line up with your moral guidelines, and fit your personal and professional priorities. Sometimes it is necessary to develop a greater understanding of the emotional experience, to heal your past traumas, to let go of negative beliefs before you can respond constructively to challenges.

Moving out from the momentum of automatic reaction is not easy, but improving you emotional intelligence can help you dissect and diffuse strong emotional reactions and allow you to take the more peaceful and satisfying path in life.

Developing the skills – EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION

Learn breathing techniques to calm yourself down. You can learn breathing techniques by including them in your morning or evening routine. You practice in peaceful times and conditions so it will pop up as second nature when you are in stressful situation. Breathwork can help you reduce stress, anxiety, frustration and calm down instead of going into panic attacks. The techniques you can learn include belly breathing, alternate nostril breathing, mindful breathing, counted breathing like 4-7-8 . Do not try to tackle the problems that pushed you off your balance until you will feel completely calm and composed.

Practice gratitude and feeling satisfied daily- This can become a beneficial daily habit that works as a prevention technique in the sense, that Focusing on generating the feelings of satisfaction and gratitude willingly can teach you how to choose your thoughts. You’ll learn to let go of some of the things that come to your mind simply because they don’t match with the feeling of gratitude and satisfaction that you are practicing. This practice gives you solidity and strong emotional foundation.

Distance yourself from the situation – pause (count till 10) and give yourself some time before you respond. Stop escalating negative situations. As you realize that a conversation is making you feel bad excuse yourself and leave. Communication and social skills can come handy to help you do that easily.

Give yourself time to get out of the survival chemistry. Emotions often come together with hormone rushes that peter out after a relatively short time. Adrenalin is pumped in the system to prompt us of danger and help us run. It is a quick and short impulse, yet sometimes we stay angry for years. When we learn to consciously overwrite the commands given to our body by the survival instincts, than we can react emotionally more intelligent. Moving your physical body can often help. Go for a brisk walk, go for a run, attend a fitness class or go to the gym.

Choose to deal with the emotions as they show up

Learning to do this is a step up in mindfulness as well as adding improvements to you emotional intelligence. Most of the automatic coping mechanism works based on hormones like adrenalin. So in most cases when you face negative events, stressful situations, frustrating people, challenging thoughts your nervous system will not give you an automatic impulse to sit down and think about it. No way. The body is wired to protect you, so when it gets the info that something is going wrong, it will want to escape from there to safely. And when you get to “safety” you will be in a new situation full of impulses to handle. Your mind will be busy picking up and analyzing signals around you, while it is handling the great amount of thought-flow inside. Unlike you do it consciously, the mind won’t go into problem solving mode automatically. It is not coming to you automatically to take the time to deal with a problem, it has to be a conscious choice. You can wait for it to just happen. Time won’t solve your problems.

The mind copes like an unserious friend, that wants to do all the interesting things only, instead of the cleaning chores. The mind wants to sweep things under the carpet so things look good, and go party. This part of the coping mechanism has validity because it develops when we are too little to deal with things and there is noone around us to teach us how to handle emotions more constructively. When you deal with the things as they show up you clean the emotional space around you. Moreover, you get a lot of important data that would be lost otherwise. When you try to solve a problem after 2-3 weeks/ years you won’t really remember what was going on, so it is better to deal with issues till they are present and little.

Don’t go to sleep with anger and grudges, they say and that is a good advise. Sometimes you loose it and get tired and it is better to take a nap, but don’t go more than 3 days without addressing the challenges that show up. The best is to time block a short period for handling problems regularly. You can sit with a piece of paper and face the challenges, failures, criticism consciously and take the time to leave them in a better feeling place. The solutions you are looking for are simple thoughts that feel better. You can look for affirmations on the topic to start your thinking goin in the right direction.

Rethink a challenging situation to reduce anger, anxiety and move out of sadness and fear. As mentioned before it is important to learn to influence your emotional states for the better with the help of your words and thoughts. Reappraisal can come from shifting what you are paying attention to, moving from the negatives to more general, more positive aspects within that experience. Reframing one’s narrative and shifting from a narrower to a more open, broader view will influence how you feel about the situation, how you feel about yourself, about others and life in general.

Use planners and trackers – when you are often distracted by your emotions you will find it hard to stay disciplined and reach your goals. Use day, week, month planners to get you going and stay on track. Planning can mean much more than just putting together a to do list. You can scout ahead for upcoming emotional experiences. For example you are having a meeting. Take a minute to think about how you want to feel and stay there mentally visualizing that it is right after the meeting and all went well. Planning can be a frustrating, stressing experience or it can be a positive, preparing exercise. Tracking, documenting how you are completing simple, smaller tasks can give you a sense of achievement and boost your self-confidence. Using planners can give you a big picture view and reduce feelings of anxiety and improve your skills in stress management.

Teach yourself to keep your word and learn communication techniques for excusing yourself when something happens and you can’t. Chaotic thinking, jumping form one project to another is often leaving you emotionally out of control. It can lead to burn-out, frustration, feelings of time shortageness, lack of focus and clarity. Ensure that you understand what your tasks and deliverables are, know your limits and set realistic deadlines. By having a plan in place, you’re more likely to follow through and finish personal and professional projects even when unexpected situations and unpleasant people show up. Results add to your confidence, motivation and can gain the respect of coworkers, friends and family. Being able to deliver and create is empowering

Prioritize and set achievable targets short, medium, and longer-term. Your priorities can change over time, but that shouldn’t block you from starting from where you are right now. Let yourself start with what feels a priority now and change, review, refine as you move progressively forward. You don’t know what will be your priorities in 3 month. There can be a health issue that just changes everything, or you can meet the love of your life while waiting for the bus, so learn to stay flexible in your approach. Prioritizing can improve productivity, can help you stay on track and strengthen your resilience to burn-out.

Prioritize yourself.

Benefits of improving your self regulations skills

• Improved relationships with friends, colleagues, and family
• More positive and empowered world view
• Trust and respect of others for your integrity
• Respect of others for keeping your word
• Improved sense of inner peace and satisfaction

Final thoughts

Emotional wellness is just as important as mental and physical health. When our emotional wellbeing is compromised it will affect the way we think and it will interfere with our clarity in decision making. When we easily spin out of control emotionally we are triggered into making poor choices, that can seriously damage the quality of our life on the long run.

Resources/ credits / further readings : Levels of Emotional Awareness; How Is Emotional Awareness Related to Emotion Regulation Strategies;