5 Activities to Develop Emotional Intelligence and Maturity

Hey there everybody. And welcome to this video on five activities to improve your emotional intelligence. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. So let's start out by defining what emotional intelligence is. Emotional intelligence is your ability to identify feelings within yourself, to manage those feelings, not only to deal with distress, but also to increase eustress or happy feelings. And your ability to respond appropriately to other people's emotions. Your ability to empathize, identify what they're feeling and respond in an appropriate manner. The first activity you can do in order to improve your emotional intelligence is to improve your emotional vocabulary, improve your ability to identify emotions within yourself. A lot of times we have been gotten lazy about how we identify our feelings. We're feeling happy, mad, sad, glad or afraid. And that doesn't nearly capture the depth and breadth of emotions that we're able to feel. So it's important to start using scaled emotion words. So you have on a scale on one end you're feeling okay, in the middle you're feeling good, and on this side over here, you're feeling wonderful. So try to get away from using the blah words, the words that just come kind of automatically and find different synonyms like you're feeling fabulous or wonderful or amazing or distressed. You know, those are words that we're not used to using, but it helps us identify more accurately where we are. Make a feelings scrapbook. Identify on each page a different feeling and then discuss, write down what does that feeling look like in you? What does your face look like? What is your not? What are your non verbals look like? What does that look like in you? What does it feel like in you when you have that feeling? When you feel curious, when you feel empty, anxious, when you feel angry or depressed, what do those things feel like in your body then? What triggers those feelings for each one, identify what triggers curiosity in you or what triggers joy and happiness in you? This morning we had two huge blackbirds on our deck and I love having them around because they chase away the hawks and the hawks kill my chickens. So, you know, we're friends. Friends. But I don't see them very often and I can't remember the last time they actually came to the feeder. So I'm a little curious about why they came to my feeder. But I was also joyful to see them. They are such big, magnificent creatures. So in if I were doing a feeling scrapbook, I would put that under awe as well as potentially under curiosity. So what triggers that feeling in you? What memories do you have about that feeling? Think back into Your past. When have you felt that feeling before? That will help you not only identify what that feeling looks like and feels like, but it will also help you recognize when you may be acting or reacting from something that happened in your past. If something's happening in the present that reminds you of the past, you start to feel depressed. You're like, okay, I know why I'm feeling so much more depressed about this than I would expect to. It reminds me of blah. For distressful emotions, what helps manage it? What can you do to tolerate that distress? Feelings are like your. Your body's smoke alarm. Your feelings are there to tell you when there's a threat, when. When there's something to be happy about, when there's something to be curious about. It's your body's alarm system. You don't want to get rid of your feelings. You don't want to suppress your feelings. But when you're experiencing distress, you know you also don't want to sit there in agony. So what can you do to manage your emotions? Just like when you break your arm or something else and you've got physical pain, you don't want to sit there in complete agony until your arm heals. You want to make the pain tolerable. You may recognize that there's nothing you can do to make that pain completely go away, but what can you do to make it tolerable? So once you start becoming more aware of your emotions, you're also going to start becoming more aware of emotions and others. When you know that this is what happiness looks like in you, when you see it in other people, you're going to recognize it more. The next activity is mindfulness, being mindful of your feelings. It's great to have an emotional vocabulary, but if you are on autopilot all the time and you don't notice when you're feeling a certain way, then it doesn't do any good. You can't respond to your something that you don't recognize. You can't respond to something that you don't notice. So be mindful of your feelings. Be mindful of your vulnerabilities for distress. And that is one of the ways that you respond to distressful emotions is to recognize, I'm sick, I'm in pain, I'm tired. Whatever your vulnerabilities are, this is going on with me today. So I am more likely to respond in, in an unpleasant way. I'm more likely to get angry. I'm more likely to get frustrated today. Okay, so you're recognizing that and Then you can respond to it. You can manage your actions, and you can manage, to a certain extent, the day in order to try to prevent distress. So emotional intelligence says, I know that when I'm over tired, I tend to be cranky. Therefore, since I'm tired, I'm going to take proactive steps so I don't experience more distress than is necessary. Be mindful of other people's feelings. And I mentioned earlier, once you start recognizing feelings in yourself, you're going to start recognizing it in others. Once you start recognizing how to respond to feelings in yourself, you're going to have an inkling about how others might want you to respond to them. Now, just because when you get upset you want a hug doesn't mean other people will. So you don't want to assume too much, but you're well on the way to responding appropriately. You're not going to be dismissive of them when they're feeling depressed or anxious or angry about something. So be mindful of other people's feelings. Start out easy. Start out by watching television and just trying to identify how you think a particular character in a television show feels. And this is a great activity to do as a family, to do with children. And you can talk about, well, why do you think that person was feeling that way? And you can also practice using your graded words. Instead of saying that person looks happy, you can say that person looks ecstatic or that person looks content. You can also look on the playground or at work or in the shopping center when you're out. Just people watching. Be mindful of their feelings. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to intervene because you know they may be strangers. But if you're, you start becoming more mindful of the people around you. Then when you are in a situation where you're surrounded by people that you know that you care about, you're going to have practiced feeling identification. It's going to be more automatic. You also might start picking up on what I call energies in the environment. If you're in a situation, if you're in a restaurant or a organization, you're, you know, in a business, and you start feeling anxious for some reason. If you have good emotional intelligence, you may look around and notice that everybody looks miserable. And so you can start becoming aware of where your feeling is coming from because you're, you're sensing their feelings. You want to be mindful of your impact on other people's feelings. How do you, how does your presence impact somebody else? If they're having the worst day of their life and you come in and you're all Susie sunshine and bubbles and rainbows. That is not acknowledging them, that's dismissing their feelings. Yes, you have a right to feel happy, but it's also important to recognize that if you come in and you start, you know, just kind of dumping all that on them, they may not be able to process it. They may feel ignored, neglected, rejected. So you want to recognize your impact on people. Likewise, if you're in an awful mood, noticing how that impacts the people around you, do they start walking on eggshells? Do they get cranky themselves? So you're both being irritable to each other. How does that impact you? And what could you do differently if you don't want that to happen? Emotional intelligence says, okay, I'm going to be smart about how I respond when I'm feeling this way and being mindful of others. Vulnerabilities for distress kind of in general. And again, you don't want to get too far into mind reading, but if you know, for example, we've talked in other videos about how my daughter's an introvert and I am aware that one of her vulnerabilities for distress is being out in a really busy place. It's just overwhelming to her. She's highly sensitive. It's overwhelming to be in a really crowded, busy, hustle, bustly environment like an airport or the mall on Saturday or something. So I am aware of her vulnerabilities for distress in general, and I try to be sensitive to that, recognizing that if she starts acting overwhelmed or exhausted or anxious and we happen to be in one of those places, I might say, hey, it seems like you're getting overwhelmed. Would you like to go? Generally, adults hopefully are going to identify when they start feeling overwhelmed and be more assertive and say, hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Know, can we go sit outside for a few minutes? But not everybody is aware of how they're feeling. So that can be one. One way to address it. And with children and adolescents, even a lot of times they don't know how they're feeling or they don't notice it because they don't. They haven't practiced being mindful. And it can be helpful for caregivers or friends to say, hey, I see that you seem to be overwhelmed and I know that this is an exhausting situation for you. Would you like to take a break? And then there's emotion regulation. You can identify it, you become aware of it, then what do you do with it? And emotion regulation starts with in many cases, distress tolerance. It starts with recognizing that whatever you're feeling is distressful, it's unpleasant, and you can tolerate it. Distress tolerance means accepting the moment, not trying to get rid of the feeling, trying to say, okay, this sucks right now and this too shall pass, or, and I'm strong enough to get through it, or, and I know how to address this issue so I can stop feeling this way. Distress tolerance activities we've talked about in a lot of other videos, but to just kind of sum it up, addressing your thoughts instead of having hopeless, helpless thoughts, that says, I can't do this, this is overwhelming, this is unbearable. Saying, all right, this sucks, and I can get through it. Activities include breathing or slow breathing, activities, grounding activities like identifying what you see on a wall or even blowing bubbles. Blowing bubbles forces you to slow your breathing. But a lot of people who tend to dissociate when they practice slow breathing don't have that problem when they blow bubbles. So it keeps them more in the present because guess what? They're focused on those bubbles. How many can I blow? Or how big can I blow this particular bubble in a pinch? Or if you're an adult and you're out in public, you can chew bubble gum and actually blow those kind of bubbles. Same thing is going to happen. You're going to chew the gum and then to get that bubble to blow up as big as you want, you're going to have to blow slowly, which slows your breathing and triggers that vagus nerve. Guided imagery can be very helpful as well as sensations. And people are different in what sensations they find calming, comforting. In different situations. It can be a hug, it can be a particular smell, or some people prefer something like cold in order to just kind of shock them out of the moment. I've talked to a few people who, when they are going for a sensation to help them tolerate distress, they actually prefer something noxious, like rotten eggs, because it's, it's jarring and it gets them out of their head for the moment. And trigger and vulnerability awareness fall under emotion regulation. In order to regulate your feelings, you need to be aware of what triggers them. You need to be aware of what makes you more vulnerable for distress. And then you can take steps to prevent unnecessary distress. Distress is part of life. Recognizing that you can cope with it, recognizing you can tolerate it, and recognizing what you can do to prevent unnecessary distress is what we talk about with emotional intelligence and problem solving. All right, so again, identify, be aware of, respond to it when you're in your stress State, when you're in that fight or flight mind, you're not thinking clearly. So distress tolerance, emotion regulation, helps you get into your wise mind. So then you can start problem solving. I've, I use the mnemonic odes for problem solving. Observe what's going on. And sometimes people find it helpful to actually talk out loud about what's going on, especially if you're an extrovert. We tend to think while we talk, so it can be helpful to either silently talk to yourself or go somewhere where you can talk it out. Observe what's going on, describe the facts, examine the options, and then take steps to try to solve the problem. How can you address this issue? If you notice that, that somebody in your office is really upset, okay, you're observing the situation. You're describing the facts. You're figuring out, okay, what are my options to respond to this person because I feel bad that they're unhappy. What are my steps? And then do something. You can always step back and do something different. If they're like, no, I don't, I don't need any help right now. Okay, you know, you can back off or if they say, yeah, I would love to talk, okay, well, then you can pursue that. And responding to others aver is a word that we don't use a lot, but it means to verify or to assert. And this is really important in emotional intelligence. It's becoming aware of your emotions and others. You're validating how both of you feel about a situation. They may feel completely differently than you. You're not saying that they're wrong. You're not saying that you're wrong. You're validating that in their perception based on their experiences. This is how they're feeling. It's just an acknowledgment. You're empathizing. Once you acknowledge how somebody's feeling, empathizing with them and going, okay, well, you think this is the worst thing in the world. So if I'm going to empathize with you, when I felt like that, oh, you know, that, that felt pretty terrifying or depressing. And then you're, then you respond appropriately to that person. You know what steps would be most helpful. Help us continue to make practical tools available to everybody. You can donate any amount@docsnipes.com donate or on cash app at Doc Snipes. You can become a member of the YouTube channel@docsnipes.com join, purchase a super thanks on any helpful video or even earn continuing education@allce.com once you practice those different steps that we talk about or we've talked about. It's important to monitor your progress as you become more aware of the different emotions, be able to identify them better and become more mindful of them. How does that improve your accuracy of identifying and responding to emotions? So, for example, you can look back as monitoring. At the end of the day, I can look back over my emotional intelligence and I can say, you know what? Today I noticed I was getting irritable before I bit somebody's head off. Well, good for me. Or this week I got snappy once and overreacted to situations three times. Okay, progress not per perfection. That's still an improvement over last week. Or even I went hiking with friends this week and realized how much I really enjoyed it and missed doing it. You don't need to monitor just for distressful reactions. Monitoring and becoming aware of your happy emotions, your awe, your wonder, your curiosity, your contentment, your happiness, your gratitude, all of those things. Becoming aware of them is also important because it helps balance out the distressful emotions. You want to monitor your effectiveness at regulating your emotions. For, for example, saying, today I noticed my anxiety was increasing three times and I was able to reduce the intensity from a four or a five to a two out of five within 20 minutes. Okay, so I'm regulating my emotions more effectively by being aware of them, by being mindful, by responding to them. Or today I recognized I was vulnerable because of time pressures and lack of sleep. So I made a list of things that I had to do that day and a plan for getting everything else done. So sometimes there are things that just have to be done. Like if you don't pay the water bill, the water's going to get shut off. You have to pick the kids up from school. I mean, there are things that have to be done. So making a list of things that have to be done and a plan for getting everything else done. Maybe the laundry doesn't get done until Tuesday. And I asked my sister to pick the kids up and was successful at not melting down. So recognizing the things that had to be done, figuring out how to do that, acknowledging that, hey, you know, maybe I don't have to do this all by myself. And then reaching out to address the problem and address the feelings that I'm feeling, and accurate awareness of and response to emotions in others. I noticed Sally was unusually withdrawn. I asked her if she wanted to talk instead of avoiding her, which is what I would usually do, maybe, and assuming she was mad at me. A lot of people when somebody in the office or somebody in the family is being withdrawn, they automatically assume it's about them or they get irritable about it or whatever. A lot of times they. They don't respond in a compassionate way. However, in this particular example, the person went up to Sally, recognizing, hey, this person's being withdrawn. That's not usual for her. So maybe I should ask if something's wrong. The next one. I noticed Sam seemed to be getting frustrated doing his homework. And I was right. I empathized. Maybe you're not able to help Sam with his homework. I remember when my son was doing calculus, I wasn't able to help him with that. I could empathize with him. I could help him problem solve. Not the problems themselves, but figure out, okay, how can I actually figure out how to do these? Well, generally the answer was, wait till daddy gets home. But noticing when somebody's feeling a particular way and asking them, it seems like you're getting frustrated. A lot of times people will acknowledge, yes, you're right, or no, no, I'm not. Okay, if you're wrong, you're wrong. That's cool. But empathizing is important. Even if you can't solve a problem or fix something, sometimes just empathizing with somebody helps them feel supported. And finally, Jamie looked mad at lunch today, but he was concentrating on what he was reading. I apologized for interrupting. So in this example, the person thought somebody was upset, went over and asked them about it, and they said, no, I'm just concentrating what I'm on, what I'm reading. And they said, oh, okay, sorry, you know, was just concerned. And they went upon upon their merry way. They didn't continue to intrude, but because obviously the person was involved or engrossed in what they were doing. Check out even more videos on developing emotional intelligence and emotion regulation@YouTube.com Dosnipes. Emotional intelligence is something that is often learned in the context of a sensitive, consistently responsive caregiver who validates your reactions and helps you develop the vocabulary and emotion identification skills you need. And they help you feel safe while teaching you how to tolerate distress and solve problems. When people don't have that secure attachment, a lot of times they don't develop emotional intelligence. You cannot process everything. If you feel a feeling and go into fight or flight mode, which is something that even toddlers do, you can't think clearly at that point. And if caregivers or somebody hasn't taught you how to get into your wise mind to process it, it's really hard to move into emotional intelligence to being proactive instead of reactive. Our culture encourages mindless operation of self and mind reading of others, assuming you know what they think or what they want, both of which lead to poor interpersonal relationships. When you become more emotionally intelligent, you become more sensitive to how you're impacting people and how the environment's impacting you, and you can respond in time. Ultimately, most people can improve their emotional intelligence.