10 Emotional Intelligence Articles for Improving Your Effectiveness in Work and Life

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Emotional intelligence is one of the most important tools to add to your tool belt, whether you are a leader, a manager, a manager of managers, or an individual contributor that needs to influence without authority.

Emotional intelligence is “the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.” 

It’s powerful stuff.

Here are 10 of my past posts from this year that will help you learn some new emotional intelligence skills that you can apply immediately:

  1. A Lighter Feeling - What if you could release negative emotions and feel lighter and ready for anything as you go about your day?  You can, if you know how, and the key is, it’s not in your head.
  2. Delayed Gratification: Make It a Better Pill to Swallow - Delayed gratification shows up time and again as one of the best ways to live a better life.  It’s how we rise above the pitfalls of instant gratification.   It’s also how we focus on doing more of what’s important.  But how can we master it?
  3. Emotional Intelligence Quotes – Emotional intelligence is often the difference that makes the difference when it comes to your success in work and life.  This is a roundup of my favorite emotional intelligence quotes from Benjamin Franklin, Buddha, Dale Carnegie, Vincent Van Gogh, and a bunch of other people you probably never heard of.
  4. Empathic Listening: The Highest Form of Listening – Stephen Covey taught us that if we want others to listen to us, we first need to listen to them.  But what’s the best way to listen?  Empathic listening.  It’s where we listen until the other person feels understood.  It sounds so simple, and it is, but where the gap comes in is knowing what to do, and actually doing what you know.
  5. How To Change Any Experience to Empower You -- What if you could change the effect any experience has on you?  What if you could change any feeling, emotion, or behavior for yourself in a matter of moments?  You can.  By changing your state.  You can change how you represent any experience, whether it’s memories of the past, your current experience, or scenarios in the future.
  6. How To Free Yourself from Negative Emotions – Negative emotions are our worst enemies.  What if you could free yourself from negative emotions?  Or, what if you could at least reduce getting stuck and wallowing in negative emotions?  You can.  But you need to know how.  In this article, Brian Tracy shares deep insight into the 4 root causes of negative emotions so we can identify and eliminate them.
  7. How To Get in Superman Mode for Unshakable Confidence - You can’t talk to yourself in a meek and meager way, and expect powerful results.  But, what if you could flip a switch and talk to yourself in a way that’s more assertive, confident, and believable?  You can. And, imagine having a more powerful voice on your side to give you an edge in everything you do, and to help lift you up whenever you need it most.
  8. How Not to Break Under Pressure - Whether it’s negative self-talk or negative beliefs, you can be your own worst enemy.  If you crack under pressure, what happens is you focus on all the wrong things and all the things that could go wrong to the point that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In other words, you become your greatest obstacle.  What if, instead, you could thrive under pressure?  You can.
  9. Mental Toughness Defined – A very simple definition of mental toughness.
  10. Tony Robbins on the Fastest Way to Get Over Fear - Fear can hold us back.  It can hold us back in subtle and insidious ways.  Fear can also outright paralyze us from taking action.  What if we had a way to get over fear, and experience more freedom?  Tony Robbins shows us how.

If you only have time to read one, then I recommend starting with the following:

How To Free Yourself from Negative Emotions 

Best wishes for 2014!