Emotional intelligence is a critical thing to have if you want to be successful in life. Unless you plan on living alone in a cave you’re going to have to know how to deal with people.
These 4 tips are simple ways to increase your emotional intelligence.
Don’t Criticize, Condemn, or Complain
Every person is the hero of her or his own story. Even notorious criminals like Al Capone considered themselves to be good guys.
Pointing out someone’s flaws will not get that person to change his or her behavior. The only thing this tactic achieves is creating resentment for the criticizer—in this case, you. Avoid critiques and condemnations.
Complaints suck. It puts you in a negative mindset. More importantly, nobody cares. Almost without exception, no one wants to hear somebody else complain.
Consciously avoiding these 3 activities will instantly increase your social attractiveness.
Develop a Loving Kindness Practice
Loving kindness is a specific type of meditation. This practice involves cultivating friendly feelings towards one’s self, family, friends, enemies, and all beings.
While it may sound woo-woo, clinical studies have shown that people that regularly do loving kindness meditation are able to increase their empathy. Empathy is one of the key pillars of emotional intelligence.
This is especially useful for young people. The region of the brain responsible for empathy is one of the slowest to develop. That’s why young people can often be selfish and self-centered when compared to older people.
Actively strengthening your empathy through a loving kindness practice is an excellent way to differentiate yourself from your peers.
Become Genuinely Interested in Other People
This may be the fastest way to up your EQ. If you’re able to become genuinely interested in other people you will naturally develop an attractiveness to the people you encounter.
A key part of this is being a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves—their favorite subject. You can make 10 times more progress with a person talking about his interests and story for 20 minutes than going on about yourself for 20 hours.
A good way to make it fun for yourself is to make a game out of it. You’re a detective. Your objective is to find out one interesting fact about the other person.
Becoming genuinely interested in others will dramatically increase your emotional intelligence, and lead to a happier life.
Show Respect for the Other Person’s Opinion; Never Say, “You’re Wrong”
Do you like to be told your wrong? Neither do other people.
If you disagree with someone it’s important to do it tactfully. If you know a person is objectively wrong, don’t tell her she is, especially if she didn’t ask for your opinion.
Allowing people to save face is an important part of emotional intelligence. Much like criticizing and condemning, proving that someone is wrong will only make him resent you.
If you want to be more emotionally intelligent do not directly point out when someone is wrong.
Summary
Humans are social animals. Emotional intelligence is an important key to success. There are a few simple ways to raise your emotional intelligence.
You’re immediately more socially attractive if you stop criticizing, condemning, and complaining. Having a loving kindness practice develops your empathy, a vital component of emotional intelligence. Becoming genuinely interested in others will make you much happier and a better conversationalist. Finally, allowing people to save face when they’re wrong avoids resentment.
Deploy these strategies to become more socially attractive.