Seven Habits Of Highly Emotionally Intelligent People

Emotionally intelligent people habits

Powerful Habits Of People With High Emotional Intelligence

Maybe you’ve noticed that some people in your surrounding are different in communication with others. They are good listeners, know how to manage their emotions, and want to help every time when you have problems. Those are highly emotionally intelligent people.

But what is emotional intelligence (EQ)? Dr.Helen Odessky defines emotional intelligence as the ability to understand what other people are saying and how what they are saying is impacting them emotionally.

Being aware that our emotions can impact people (positively or negatively), and learning how to manage those emotions – our own or from the others.

Now when we know what is emotional intelligence, let’s see how emotionally intelligent people live their lives. How they see on life and what are their habits?

How these people recognize and understand their and emotions from others. By knowing this you can also improve your life and start dealing with your emotions which will help to live a happier and healthier life.

In this article, you will learn what are the habits of emotionally intelligent persons and what they do to manage their emotions and behavior.

Habits of Emotionally Intelligent People

Especially Self-Aware

The ability to understand ourselves, the way we feel, why we feel that way, and the ability to use that knowledge to learn and improve – self-awareness. Or if we simplify this it is a process of self-discovery, which is not easy and requires a lot of work.

Life is not about you. You must give love joy, and hope to others if you want to receive the same. It is not complicated it is just how the universe works. Self-awareness will help you to find your passion mission, and goals. It will help you to make sense of past present, and future.

What to do to improve self-awareness?

  • Start your day with positive affirmations and use them throughout the day.
  • Write down your goals plans and priorities
  • Look at yourself objectively (try to see yourself as you really are)
  • Practice mindfulness and meditate daily
  • Ask trusted friends to describe you

Emotionally intelligent people are self-aware and that helps them to understand other people and detect how they perceive them in return. When you are self-aware you can see where your thoughts and emotions are guiding you.

Prioritize The Most Important Things

Emotionally intelligent people are able to control their emotions and prioritize what is most important for them. For example, you look at the news every day and see only war financial problems negative news for the future. And that all has negative effects on you and your emotions (worried, scared for the future).

But emotionally intelligent people don’t worry about these things. Why? Because they can’t control them. They focus their energy only on two things that they can control- their attention and their effort.

How to prioritize what is important?

  • Design your ideal week (your calendar shouldn’t be something that stresses you out, each day should be a new adventure).
  • Build meaningful, long-term relationships with people who add value to your life.
  • Stay committed to your passions no matter what.
  • Learn from your failures and shortcomings so you can grow as a person and professional.
  • Practice non-attachment to ideas, plans, and expectations – flexibility creates adaptability which creates happiness and success.

You are prioritizing things in your life according to your values. If you are not aware of what your values are, just look at your calendar and your every day schedule. Do you prioritize work or family? Having dinner with your wife and kids or a business partner?

It is maybe time to to sync your schedule back up with your values-your real ones. 


People that are emotionally intelligent see every opportunity as a way to grow and create new relationships. They are open-minded and interested in new people.

Open-minded people understand that there is always a possibility that they might be wrong and they are ready to consider the other person’s views of the problem.

They don’t get upset with questions or showing them that they are wrong. They know that being right means changing their minds when someone else knows something they don’t.

They are always more interested in listening than speaking. They focus on the person that is speaking, show that they are listening, and respond accordingly.

Rather than just formulating the response while the other is speaking they try to understand the other person, make a connection, and have a healthy conversation.

Handle Emotions

Because emotional intelligence provides a better understanding of emotions, emotionally intelligent people know the importance of taking care of themselves. They know how and when to slow down and de-stress.

If you use self-awareness to manage your emotions in a way that aligns with your values and beliefs, it helps you to battle adversity and overcomes barriers that stand in tour way. If you are aware of your emotions and take action to regulate them, it is the key to happiness and great mental health.

How to manage your emotions? (by psychologytoday )

  • You can not turn emotions on and off.
    • They are part of human experience and they will come and go. The idea that we can banish them is unhelpful. The more we strive to live according to our values the more our emotions will rise to challenge us.
  • You are not your emotions.
    • You are a person with values and commitments who has emotions that are triggered on a regular and ongoing base. When we become fused to our emotions we are hijacked by them. If you can notice them without becoming they will not determine your behavior.
  • We can always choose our response to them.
    • We can’t choose our emotions but we can always choose our response to them. Don’t let a thought or feeling to prevent you from taking action. Change that thought and make a step, you will show that you have control over your emotion or thought.

Care About Other People

They care about other people and what they are going through. Emotionally intelligent people are curious about people around them and this curiosity is a product of empathy.


How to enrich the life of others?

  • Communicate. Be a good listener. Show the people that you care by listening to what they have to say. Tell the people what they should hear rather than what they want to hear.
  • Care. Care for the concerns of others as if they are your own. Do one kind act at least once a week.
  • Help. Help people to learn something new or connect them with someone who can help to achieve their goals.

Don’t Compare To Others

When they feel good about something that they’ve accomplished, emotionally intelligent people won’t let someone else ruin that feeling. It is impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, but you don’t need to compare yourself to others and you can always take people’s opinions with a little reserve.

Remember that one thing is certain – no matter what other people think of you at any moment you are not as good or bad as they say you are.

Suppress Negative Self-Talk

The more you spin around negative thoughts, the more power you give them. What are the negative thoughts? They are just thoughts. The easiest way to get out of your mind is to write them down. Once you’ve put them away, you will be more rationalized and clear-headed.

Stopping negative self-talk is not an easy thing to do. It is a pattern of very well established thought in your brain. Negative self-talk makes you anxious, hurt your performance, and makes you less resilient.

To suppress this way of thinking do this:

  • Monitor your negative self-talk by writing it down.
    • Our negative thoughts are reflexive and automatic. The act of writing brings what was reflexive and out of your control into the preview of the conscious mind. Getting them out and heard diminishes their power of you.
  • Imagine Someone You Love.
    • Imagine someone you care about or love, will you say these negative words to that person? You surely won’t say someone you care about that is “fat”, “not good”, “not pretty”. If you don’t say these things to others why you say to yourself?
  • Reprogram your negative self-talk with positive scripts.
    • Try to swap the harmful self – talk scripts with positive ones like: “You got this“, “You’re strong“, “You are in control“.
Habits of emotionally intelligent people

Final thoughts about the habits of emotionally intelligent persons

Research shows that emotional intelligence (EQ) is much more important than IQ. Emotionally intelligent people with average IQ’s outperform those with high IQ’s. Emotional intelligence has a big impact on our behavior, relationships, and success at work or in every area of our lives.

Emotionally intelligent people aren’t born with these habits and values. It is all about training. By practicing these emotionally intelligent behaviors your brain builds pathways needed to make them into habits.

By doing this for some time your old destructive behaviors will shut down and your new will guide throughout life.

It is not easy to change a habit, something that you’ve been doing every day over and over for years. But everybody who wants success and better life must start from somewhere.

The best place is to change beliefs, and that you can do everything that you have imagined. It only needs hard work and belief for success.

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