Building Emotional Intelligence.
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Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and respond to our emotions. Unprocessed emotions are the biggest block to our intuition that I have come across thus far. When we take the time to acknowledge, feel, and process our emotions, then we open up our energy body and create a state of flow for our intuition to come in. It sounds simple enough, but most of us have a hard time sitting in our emotions. So how do we do this? Here some tips and tricks that I have found useful in my own process of becoming more emotionally intelligent.
1. Find where you feel your emotions in your body. For me, current emotions are in my gut and it coincides with bloating. My gut will literally expand and keep expanding until I stop, and then backtrack to feel that original emotion I was suppressing. Older unprocessed emotions will become stagnant and stored in other areas of your body. For example, anger in your back or sadness in your chest. Start journaling where you feel your emotions and where old ones are stored. Meditation is also helpful to allow the mind and body to communicate.
2. Stop labeling your emotions. Emotions are neutral until we label them. If we continue to label emotions as good or bad, then it can become harder to process the “bad” ones.
3. Tie your emotions to an experience. For example, after a breakup that pain in my chest was sadness. After I was fired, that sickness in my stomach was shame. When you experience these emotions again, your intuition will bring you back to these prior situations as a way to start to build up an emotional hard drive that you can refer back to.
4. Use your anxiety as an alert system. There are primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are our response to an experience while secondary emotions are the emotion we will feel when the primary one is too uncomfortable to acknowledge. If you are experiencing anxiety, it’s because you are suppressing an emotion. When it feels safe, get into a state where you can explore what is underneath this anxiety. I find it’s best to sit as close to the earth as possible, shut my eyes, place my hands on my belly, and take deep belly breaths until the emotion feels safe to surface.
5. Share. Share with your friends, family, therapist, or anyone that you can trust. Sometimes all we need to say is I don’t know how I am feeling but can you take the time to process this with me? Asking for help is underrated in my opinion.
6. Sit in the discomfort. This is perhaps the hardest part of building your emotional intelligence because we are taught not to feel bad emotions. Have you ever tried to become the observer rather than the judge? Have you ever just sat in your discomfort rather than turning to something that numbs you out? It’s hard work and I can honestly say it has taken me 28 years to truly do this, but wow is it worth it. On my good days, my emotions flow through me rather than stick to me. This leaves my energy body light and allows my intuition to flow in.
Building up your emotional intelligence sounds so simple but yet can feel so difficult. Please know that this is a practice and it’s okay for it not to be perfect. What I can guarantee is that as you continue to build on this and hold trust, you will be amazed at the intuition that starts to flood in.
Be MindFULL and see you again soon.
Xoxo Jesse
