Understanding and Improving Your Emotional Intelligence - Advance your career and improve your relationships!

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize, control, and express one's own emotions in an appropriate and reasonable manner, AND the ability to recognize, validate, and even influence the emotions of others.

Benefits to having a high EQ are: more success in your personal relationships, better ability to communicate with others, reduced stress and anxiety, having more empathy, and the ability to overcome life's challenges. If your EQ is great, so is your quality of life!

Signs that you have a high EQ:

- You think about your feelings and the feelings of others. You tend to stop for a moment to really understand how you or someone else feels. This process is essentially a part of your regular habits. 

- You are willing to hear what other people think about how you, in terms of how you react and behave. This includes being able to hear negative feedback about yourself with little or no defensiveness. 

- You feel and express...

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How to Create a Positive Atmosphere in Your Relationship

happiness relationships Aug 11, 2018

Here's a strategy that is almost certainly going to create a more positive vibe in your romantic relationship...

1. Take a minute right now and think of 3 positive aspects of your partner’s personality.
2. Next, write down a short story of a time your partner demonstrated each of those 3 characteristics.
3. Tell your partner one of those stories, everyday for the next 3 days. 

The idea is that if you acknowledge the positive characteristics of your partner, you are helping to create a positive culture of appreciation in your relationship. This is extremely important to the health of relationships. 

EXAMPLE:
3 positive characteristics: Creative, Reliable, Funny


Tell your partner a story about them being...

1. Creative: “I was so impressed by the creative ideas you had about how to decorate our living room.”
2. Reliable: “I really appreciated you picking me up last week when I got a flat tire. It means so much to me that I know...

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Improve your Relationship Without Talking About It!

As a Clinical Psychologist who works with both individuals and couples, I can tell you that YOU can actually improve your relationship without talking about it! Don't get me wrong, communication is super important and I highly encourage talking with your significant other a lot, but you can also do a few subtle (but really important!) things to make your relationship better, without ever discussing it with your partner.

While there are several actions you can take to improve your relationship, the one I want to highlight here is actually something comedienne Tiny Fey talks about in her book Bossypants. While reading this book for fun, not expecting it to enlighten my practice of psychology, something struck me. In the book she talks about, "The Rules of Improv." (In case your not familiar with Tina Fey, she started out doing improvisational theater in Chicago, then moved on to Saturday Night Live).

Back to the issue at hand... the FIRST RULE...

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