Improving your emotional intelligence can actually do a lot more for you than making it easier to smooth over disagreements with your significant other. Testing and research have revealed that a startling 90 percent of the most talented and top-performing people in their fields possess higher-than-normal emotional intelligence. What’s a little different about advancing your emotional intelligence is that has to do more with what you avoid doing rather than what you should do. Work towards avoiding the following behaviors to reap the benefits of an improved sense of emotional intelligence.
1. FORGET PERFECTION
An emotionally intelligent person knows that perfection does not exist. In heaven perhaps, but that’s another discussion entirely. Getting bogged down in trying to achieve perfection will never actually allow you to attain it and will most likely leave you with persistent feelings of failure. We, humans, are an imperfect lot, making the pursuit of perfection an endlessly unsuccessful quest. Instead of lamenting the absence of perfection in your accomplishments, focus more on the positive aspects of what you have achieved.
2. DON’T DWELL ON THE PAST
Specifically, don’t dwell on past failures. Even though it’s been said many times over by wise people that we learn best from our failures, that doesn’t mean that we should spend a lot of time reflecting on how terrible we are for failing. Success comes from being able to recover from failure and rising up to try again. Most things that are worth doing will be accompanied by the risk of failure. Recovering from those failures and dwelling on them makes it a lot harder to get up, dust yourself off and try again.
3. DON’T HOLD GRUDGES
It’s so easy for many of us to hold a grudge and in most cases, it is easy to understand why. What may not be as well-understood is that holding onto negative feelings like that for so long actually continues to cause you harm. It triggers an emotional response that elevates stress and anxiety, which can do a number of your productivity.
More important than what this response can do to your ability to get things done is the potential for very serious health problems that can result over time. Chronic stress and anxiety can lead to high blood pressure, stroke and even a heart attack. Emotionally intelligent people know how to let go and not let a grudge take them out of the game – temporarily or permanently!
4. DON’T LET PEOPLE LIMIT YOUR JOY
If you are too hung up on making comparisons between your life and the lives of others to achieve satisfaction and pleasure, you have given up control over your own happiness. Feeling good about doing something does not have to be validated through the approval of others.
People who have high emotional intelligence don’t allow themselves to put too much stock in what other people think of them. A true measure of self-worth comes from inside and it’s important to keep in mind that the things people say about you are usually embellished, whether positively or negatively.