Emotional intelligence measures how effectively you perceive, understand, evaluate, manage, express, and respond to your emotions and those of others. Think of emotional intelligence as emotional maturity. You can increase your emotional intelligence by becoming more self-aware and choosing to grow in how you handle your emotions. The benefits of this extend into your wellbeing, relationships, and overall life experience. Your relationships, in particular, will grow stronger. Emotional intelligence is essential for self-development, and mindfulness and shadow work are a powerful combination of tools to support this growth.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
High emotional intelligence includes:
- Expressing feelings openly and authentically.
- Understanding and empathising with the emotions of others.
- Embodying compassion towards yourself and others.
- Recognising emotional triggers and taking responsibility for them.
- Regulating emotions and responding consciously, rather than reacting impulsively.
- Processing unresolved emotions such as anger, resentment, grief, or guilt.
- Letting go of blame and self-blame.
- Embodying healthy self-worth.
- Choosing positive emotional states that support wellbeing and fulfilment.
When emotional intelligence is lacking, unhealthy patterns like road rage, toxic relationship dynamics, and cycles of blame and negativity can take over. By mastering your emotions, you can transform these patterns, fostering greater harmony in your relationships and life.
Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of consciously directing your attention to the present moment, from the centre of your awareness, without reactivity or judgement. This centre of awareness is a step back from the contents of your mind. From this place, you are no longer entangled in your emotions or thoughts and can embody metacognitive states, which cultivate greater presence, awareness, freedom, and empowerment.
Scientific research confirms that mindfulness enhances key components of emotional intelligence, such as self-awareness, emotion regulation, and impulse control (Hill & Updegraff, 2012). It is no surprise, then, that emotionally intelligent people are naturally more mindful (Jiménez-Picón, et al., 2021).
Mindfulness helps you regulate your emotions and mature emotionally by boosting present-moment awareness and reducing reactivity, resistance, and entanglement in unhelpful thoughts and emotions. The process is simple: it involves bringing your attention back from unhelpful emotions and thoughts, without reactivity or judgement, so you can hold your centre of presence or metacognitive state. While simple, the process is not always easy, but the more you practice it, the better you become at it.
Mindfulness has earned its reputation in the mental health field as a key element of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002), which is used to treat depression, mood disorders, and prevent relapses. Whether you’re dealing with clinical conditions or simply experience low mood and negativity, mindfulness enhances emotional intelligence by offering a more effective strategy for managing negative emotions. This strategy involves stepping back from your emotions and thoughts, shifting into a metacognitive state, rather than trying to think your way out of a low mood by focusing on your problems and their causes.
Emotional Intelligence and Shadow Work
Shadow work, rooted in Jungian psychology, involves becoming aware of, integrating, and transforming the unconscious, disowned aspects of yourself that form your “shadow self.” We often repress, deny, or hide these aspects from ourselves to avoid triggering fear, embarrassment, shame, or guilt, thus preserving the ego’s persona.
When you repress and disown these shadow aspects, you do not take responsibility for them and often project them onto othersâeither attacking them if you think they are negative or idolising them if you think they are positive. Blame is a manifestation of such projection. For example, you might say “you hurt me” to another person when, in fact, you are responsible for hurting yourself, just as you are responsible for all your reactive states. This projection and blame can lead to conflict. To grow emotionally in such situations, you need to take responsibility for your emotional states and co-create the hurtful situation. This is where shadow work is especially useful.
Shadow work increases your emotional intelligence by helping you become more emotionally aware, integrated, and present. It is supported by mindfulness, which helps free you from your attachment to the ego and its persona, as well as from reactivity and resistance to your shadow aspects. Through this, you can more honestly understand and appraise yourself, challenge your egocentricity bias, and better commit to your emotional growth.
It’s helpful to begin shadow work by committing to take full responsibility for your experience. This allows you to realise how you have created or co-created difficult experiences with your shadow aspects, rather than projecting responsibility onto others. Humility and self-acceptance are also vital for successful shadow work, as well as for emotional intelligence. None of us are perfect, and neither do we need to be. It’s important to recognise that everyone has a shadow self and an emotional egocentric bias, which can distort self-awareness and blind us to our shadow aspects. With sufficient humility and self-acceptance, you can allow your emotional flaws to surface for conscious integration, transformation, and healing.
You can practise shadow work in moments of mindful self-inquiry or through an extended self-inquiry practice. For more on this, read my posts The Art of Self-Inquiry and How to Release Negative Patterns Effectively.
Emotional Intelligence as a Path to Freedom
Emotional intelligence teaches you that your emotions don’t have to be passive experiences or programmed reactions that control you and make you a victim of negative moods. By being more mindful, you can grow beyond your negative emotions and clear their triggers, along with your vulnerability to them. By disentangling and stepping back from your automatic emotions and thoughts, becoming more present, and shifting your perception, you can choose to create and experience positive emotional states.
The ability to step back from emotional patterns and switch states is always possible. However, how easily you recognise this and put it into practice depends on the strength of your centre and your metacognitive neural networks. These can be built with a deliberate and consistent mindfulness practice. For more on this, read my post The Power of Metacognitive States.
Sometimes you might stay stuck in negative emotions because you are blaming someone else for them rather than taking responsibility. This quickly leads to a downward spiral, as negative emotions and blame feed off each other. If you are emotionally intelligent, you will observe your state and take responsibility for your life and reactions.
Another reason for staying stuck in negative emotions is thinking you need to honour them and your dark side. This belief might be confused with shadow work. Of course, you always need to feel your emotions, learn from them, and understand what triggered them. But choosing to stay stuck in them doesn’t serve you. You always have the responsibility to release yourself from them and choose a more positive and empowering emotional state. This is emotional intelligence.
Generally, the reasons for failing to process emotions are:
- Not stepping back from them.
- Not taking full responsibility for them.
- Blaming someone else for them.
- Lacking awareness of them.
- Resisting feeling them.
- Denying their existence or influence.
- Believing it is noble to honour them by staying stuck in them.
- Believing it is okay to put up with them.
- Believing nothing can be done about them.
When emotional intelligence is low, it’s no wonder that people distract themselves and numb themselves out. Drug and alcohol use, along with other forms of addiction, are simply masking the underlying issue of unprocessed negative emotions.
Empowering Emotional Intelligence
To develop emotional intelligence to enjoy greater freedom, fulfilment, and happiness in your life, as well as healthier, more rewarding relationships, you can follow these steps:
- Recognise the value of developing emotional intelligence.
- Build self-worth to honour your positive potential.
- Be responsible for yourself.
- Begin with an act of will.
- Practise mindfulness to strengthen emotional awareness and regulation.
- Seek empowering support from others.
Next Step: If youâre ready to deepen your emotional intelligence and transform your emotional patterns, book a Guidance Call with me. In this personalised one-on-one session, we’ll explore the emotional and energetic roots of your challenges, empowering you to navigate them with clarity, mindfulness, and empowerment.
References
- Hill, C. L. M., & Updegraff, J. A. (2012). Mindfulness and its relationship to emotional regulation. Emotion, 12(1), 81-90. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026355
- JimĂ©nez-PicĂłn, N., Romero-MartĂn, M., Ponce-BlandĂłn, J. A., Ramirez-Baena, L., Palomo-Lara, J. C., & GĂłmez-Salgado, J. (2021). The Relationship between Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence as a Protective Factor for Healthcare Professionals: Systematic Review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(10), 5491. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105491
- Segal, Z., Williams, M., & Teasdale, J. (2002). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression: A new approach to preventing relapse. Guilford Publications.