So really, the first thing to develop this sense of motivation is to know exactly how developing high emotional intelligence is going to help you. When you develop high emotional intelligence, you’re going to discover that you understand yourself so much more and you understand other people, too. When you develop high emotional intelligence, you’re going to notice that you are able to see the feelings inside other people.
What this means is if you see somebody behaving in a bit of a strange way, you’re going to begin to relate to how their behavior is actually caused by how they’re feeling inside. When you develop high emotional intelligence, you’re going to be able to have a greater sense of compassion for yourself and a greater sense of compassion for other people, too.
And of course, all of this is going to increase your relationship with yourself, because when you have high emotional intelligence, you’re going to relate to all of your feelings in a different way, and that’s going to help all of your relationships with everybody else in your life as well, because the world is a reflection of our emotion. So this is the first step, intention. Why do you want to develop high emotional intelligence? How is it going to help you in your life when you develop high emotional intelligence? How is this going to add to your happiness and also all of the happiness of the people you care about? Because most people are happy with people who are calm, and centered, and relaxed, who understand their emotions, and who are able to give them the acceptance to feel safe to simply be themselves, to feel loved. So the first step, intention. The second step to developing high emotional intelligence is study. And by this, really, ultimately, you’ll be able to find a path that resonates with you.
I think a very good first step is to explore many different paths, perhaps to read different books, different books on self-help, perhaps to follow different teachers on YouTube, perhaps to have a look at what’s happening in your local city in terms of talks and workshops. You might have a look at one of the local spiritual centers and things like this. You want to really learn from different people about different ways that you can develop high emotional intelligence, and you want to find a path that feels right to you. You want to find somebody that you resonate with, who you can basically trust to help you on your path to developing high emotional intelligence. Because this step study, it’s really about knowledge.
When you have knowledge, when you have the knowledge to be able to understand your feelings, when you have the knowledge to be able to heal emotional pain and create positive emotions in their place, when you have the knowledge to be able to understand other people’s feelings as well, the second step is basically to bring this knowledge into your experience, or in other ways, to bring what you understand in your mind into your heart. So really one of the best ways to do this is to meditate.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Because meditation will help you to create a much deeper sense of connection with yourself. Meditation will quite naturally develop your own awareness of your emotions.
Meditation will help you to create positive feelings inside of yourself. And meditation will help you to develop your sense of awareness in so many ways. Basically to create the space in your mind, a greater space in your mind where you are able to hold the entire contents of your emotional life, because when you do that, you’re going to develop a voice of inner confidence, a voice of inner wisdom.
You’re actually going to learn how to talk to yourself in new ways from a space of inner safety and trust. So there are many ways to learn meditation. There are various apps on the phone these days, although those things are really more guided meditations. Their meditations themselves is actually quite different.
I recommend having a look at local classes which are happening in your area, or even to find a meditation retreat, because this is really a very, very valuable thing to do. If you’re able to go away on a retreat and actually study with a teacher for perhaps five days for a first retreat, or for 10 days for a second retreat, you’re able to develop a relationship to a teacher and to actually learn a practice that you can take away and follow at home. It’s important to understand that if you meditate for five minutes a day, that is infinitely better than meditating for zero minutes a day. You don’t need to meditate for hours a day in order to develop high emotional intelligence. Just a couple of minutes is just fine. And any types of tools and techniques that you develop as part of your practice and part of your awareness are going to help you very much as well.
So this is the third step to developing high emotional intelligence, meditation. The fourth step really can come as a result of the second step and the third step, because the fourth step is community. Somebody once said that we’re the average of the five people that we spend the most time with. So as you seek to develop high emotional intelligence, as you study, as you follow a path that you can trust, as you meditate, as you learn tools and techniques, it’s extremely helpful to surround yourself with some people who are doing the same thing. You’re gonna notice that as you develop higher emotional intelligence, your priorities are going to begin to shift. You’re going to find yourself less interested in having small talk with people, perhaps, and more interested in having deeper and more meaningful conversations. So when you go to workshops, when you go to meditation classes, when you perhaps go to a yoga class, when you get involved in the things which are happening in your local community, you’re going to quite naturally begin to draw a different type of person to you. You’re going to begin to build a spiritual community, if you like. In Buddhism, actually, there’s three wings, if you like, of Buddhism.
There’s the Buddha, there’s the Dharma, and the Sangha. What this means is the Buddha is an authentic teacher who has one authentic path which people can follow. The Buddha is somebody who’s realized, if you like. The Dharma is the actual teachings that the realized teacher has provided that people can follow, and the Dharma is the community of people who are following those teachings. It’s understood in Buddhism that these three things together are extremely important, because on your path to developing high emotional intelligence, you basically want to keep going. It can be quite lonely if you are on these types of paths but you have nobody else to talk about these matters with. So it’s really important to develop a sense of community and to surround yourself with like-minded people. The fifth step to developing high emotional intelligence, and the final step I’ll talk about today, is practice. What this means is to use every single situation in your life as an opportunity to practice, to use every single situation in your life as a chance to learn and grow. There are many ways to practice, of course.
I think it’s very helpful to have a process where, at the end of the day, you might just close your eyes and just think about everything which happened in the day. You might consider moments where you felt calm and connected. You might look at moments where perhaps you felt overwhelmed or angry. You might consider moments where other people were emotionally charged inside of yourself. And even in times where perhaps you reacted rather than responded to something that’s happening in your life, to really have a look at that and to ask yourself, “Well, what did that situation have to teach me?” If I had higher emotional intelligence, if I had a calmer mind, if I had more space inside, if I could go back and if I could be in that situation again, if I could have another chance to talk to that person, well, how might I actually behave differently? And actually imagine yourself behaving in that different way in your mind, because when we rehearse things inside, the subconscious mind actually does not know the difference between real or imagine.
So when you rehearse things, what you can imagine, you can achieve. So use every single thing in your life as practice. Consider situations, perhaps, where you are in emotional pain, where you’re struggling, where you don’t know what to do, where you find yourself feeling trapped, or overwhelmed, or anxious, or depressed, and simply take a moment to breathe into your feelings and to see if you can open, to see if you can expand to the challenges in the present moment of your life and softly to ask yourself, “What is the opportunity here? What can I learn from this situation? How can I embrace every single challenge in my life? And when I’ve integrated that learning, well, how is that gonna help me inside and how is that gonna help me to care for the people that I care about as well?” So these are some steps which I’d like you to consider on your journey to developing high emotional intelligence. It’s an exciting journey that’s going to change your life in many ways, because when your emotions change, your world changes as well. So thank you very much for watching this video today. I hope these steps are helpful to you. My name’s Nicholas Harris, and if you would like to learn how to heal emotional pain safely and naturally with your mind, then please go ahead and subscribe to my channel. Maybe make a comment below. I’d love to hear from you. And check out the suggested video because there’s an invitation for there as well. Have a great day.
