How Emotional Intelligence Benefits Your Overall Health
Your EQ is just as important as your IQ
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions with self-awareness, as well as understanding and respecting other people’s emotions. The steps to cultivating emotional intelligence is to first bring awareness into focus and awareness about what emotions are, in addition to the interaction between emotions and the self.
This is done not only with positive emotions but also through the acceptance and acknowledgment of negative emotions. Having a realistic sense of what is going on in the mind can help to understand the particular emotions that are happening.
The benefit of having a greater emotional intelligence is that one can feel more centered, grounded, and confident in themselves. Other people may be drawn to people who have higher emotional intelligence because they can feel a sense of comfort, acceptance, and ease of being around them or communicating with them.
Increasing Emotional Intelligence
How to increase this behavior can be done first by identifying the emotions or naming the exact emotion that is being felt. By giving a name to the emotion, with experience, a person can start to decipher differences, and can separate these emotions more easily.
This separation and understanding can lead to being able to identify the causes of certain emotions or perhaps patterning of what situations may evoke an emotional reaction. Connecting with core personal values can also be a way to inspire emotional intelligence. Additionally, aligning actions with core values can help to form ease in life and further complement relationships with emotions.
Practicing mindful meditation has been shown to significantly improve emotional intelligence by way of increased emotional regulation, perception, and expression of emotions as well as the understanding of emotions (Jiménez-Picón et al., 2021).
Studies around Emotional Intelligence
Many studies involved with the measurement of emotional intelligence are based on subjective data collection; looking at measurements of positive mood, optimism, confidence, etc. all while, there have been a few instances that measure objective data as well.
Results have shown EI to be beneficial for mental and physical health; including life satisfaction, increased emotional connections with others as well as a reduction in stress symptoms (Afsaneh et al., 2011) “emotional intelligence had a positive relationship with problem-solving coping strategies, social support, cognitive appraisal, and emotional inhibition of positive relationships” (Afsaneh et al., 2011).
“Mikolajczak et al. (2006) found a positive relationship between physical and mental health and the four Emotional Intelligence dimensions, Well-being, Self-Control, Emotionality, and Sociability” (Fernández-Abascal & Martín-Díaz. 2015).
Emotional Intelligence also has an effect on the coping process, including “procedures that one can manage their emotions by applying
them, think in an organized way, conduct and organize behaviors, control automatic arousals, and act in social and non-social environments towards changing or decreasing stressors (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980)… Mayer and Sullivan (1997) believe that emotional intelligence and regulating skills or controlling emotions are related with a high level of coping” (Afsaneh et al., 2011).
Higher emotional intelligence has also been linked to physical health-related behaviors (Martins et al., 2010). “Tsaousis and Nikolaou (2005), examined the relation between EI and health behaviors, finding a negative relationship between total EI and smoking and drinking, and a positive relationship with exercising“ (Fernández-Abascal & Martín-Díaz. 2015). Another study’s results show that individuals with high EI are more likely to participate in following healthy eating practices (Fernández-Abascal & Martín-Díaz. 2015).
In another study, the dimensions of emotional intelligence, including the appraisal of the self and others, showed a reduction in the likelihood of engaging in unhealthy behaviors when compared to the control group, this was shown by an increase in the attributes of health consciousness by participants (Espinosa & Kadić-Maglajlić, 2018).
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important?
This topic is important for self-awareness, self-growth, communication and has tremendous positive health effects. Mental, emotional, and physical health are all shown to improve when strengthening your emotional intelligence.
Communication can become easier and more fluid when increasing emotional intelligence. Participants in studies have shown that they feel more grounded and centered when they practice aspects of emotional intelligence. A greater stress reduction and mental clarity are seen in people who practice expressing and communicating emotions.
Emotional Intelligence Tips
- Start small by bringing more awareness into your everyday habits.
- Try mindful meditation.
- Journal or reflect on the emotions felt throughout the day.
- Ask yourself if the emotions you felt were connected to anything, in particular, notice what you find out about yourself.
- Name your emotions, this can be done as a mental note, during journalling, or verbally expressed during communication. By naming your emotions you can start to notice when they arise and the differences between them.
- Explore trying to understand other people’s emotions, this can be done by active listening and non-judgmental conversation. Using compassion and empathy is a great way to allow others to feel comfortable communicating harder topics.
References
Afsaneh Moradi, Nooshin Pishva, Hadi Bahrami Ehsan, Parvaneh Hadadi, Farzaneh pouladi. (2011). The Relationship Between Coping Strategies and Emotional Intelligence, Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 30, Pages 748–751, ISSN 1877–0428,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.146.
Fernández-Abascal Enrique G., Martín-Díaz María Dolores. (2015). Dimensions of emotional intelligence related to physical and mental health and to health behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology.
DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00317
Espinosa Adriana, Kadić-Maglajlić Selma. (2018). The Mediating Role of Health Consciousness in the Relation Between Emotional Intelligence and Health Behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology. V.9.
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02161
10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02161
Jiménez-Picón N, Romero-Martín M, Ponce-Blandón JA, Ramirez-Baena L, Palomo-Lara JC, Gómez-Salgado J. The Relationship between Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence as a Protective Factor for Healthcare Professionals: Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(10):5491. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105491
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence
