5 SKILLS TO HELP

YOU DEVELOP
EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE
An astronaut is probably the most difficult job to land
on the planet. Of tens of thousands of applications,
NASA selects roughly half a dozen each decade. The
application process is rigorous and highly demanding.
You have to be a total badass to qualify. You have to
have deep expertise in science and engineering. You
need at least 1,000 hours of piloting experience. You
have to be physically fit and strong. And, most of all,
you have to be a smart motherfucker.

Lisa Nowak was all of these things. She had a masters

degree in aeronautical engineering and had studied
postgraduate astrophysics at the U.S. Naval Academy.
She flew air missions for the U.S. Navy in the Pacific
for over five years. And in 1996, she was one of the
fortunate few to be selected to become an astronaut.
Clearly, she was smart as hell. But in 2007, after
discovering that her lover was seeing another woman,
Lisa drove 15 hours straight, in a diaper, from
Houston to Orlando, in order to confront her
boyfriend’s new squeeze in an airport parking lot. Lisa
packed zip ties, pepper spray, and large garbage bags
and had some vague-but-not-really-thought-through
plan to kidnap the woman. But before she could even
get the woman out of her car, Lisa had an emotional
breakdown, resulting in her quickly being arrested.

***

Emotional intelligence is a concept researchers came

up with in the 1980s and 90s to explain why
intelligent people like Lisa often do really, really
stupid things. The argument went that the same way
your general intelligence (IQ) is a measurement of
your ability to process information and come to sound
decisions, your emotional intelligence (EQ) is your
ability to process emotions—both others’ and your
own—and come to sound decisions.

Some people have an incredibly high IQ but low EQ

—think of your nutty professor who can’t match his
socks or doesn’t see the purpose in showering. Other
people have incredibly high EQ but low IQ—think the
street hustler who can’t even spell his own name but
somehow talks you into giving him the shirt off your
back.

Psychologists who study emotional intelligence

sometimes claim that it is actually more important
than general intelligence.1 This statement is
controversial at best, and a big bag o’ “what the
fuck?” at worst. For one, measuring emotional
intelligence is difficult, if not impossible. Most of this
stuff is subjective.

But also because emotional intelligence isn’t as stable

as general intelligence is. IQ is harder to change. But
EQ is something you can work on and develop like a
muscle or a skill and watch grow, like a dainty flower
in your stupid ass garden.

STOP BEING AN EMOTIONAL

IDIOT
E
nt
er
 y
o
ur
e
m
ai
l
a
d
dr
es
s
b
el
o
w
a
n
d
I’
ll
se
n
d
y
o
u
 a
4
9-
p
a
g
e
g
ui
d
e
w
it
h
ti
ps
o
n
b
ec
o
m
in
g
m
or
e
se
lf
-
a
w
ar
e,
e
m
p
at
h
et
ic
,
a
n
d
e
m
ot
io
n
al
ly
in
te
lli
g
e
nt
.

I
al
so
se
n
d
o
ut
o
cc
as
io
n
al
u
p
d
at
es
w
it
 h
n
e
w
ar
ti
cl
es
a
n
d
w
h
at
I’
m
w
or
ki
n
g
o
n.
Y
o
ur
in
fo
r
m
at
io
n
is
sa
fe
a
n
d
I
n
e
v
er
,
e
v
er
sp
a
m
.

 
So, basically, no matter how smart you are, you have
no excuse. Get your shit together. Developing
emotional intelligence comes down to not being a
fucknut like Lisa was.

Here are five ways to start doing it.

1. PRACTICE SELF-AWARENESS

Like with most things emotional, you can’t get better

at them until you know what the fuck they are. When
you lack self-awareness, trying to manage your
emotions is like sitting in a tiny boat without a sail on
top of the sea of your own emotions, completely at the
whim of the currents of whatever is happening
moment by moment. You have no idea where you’re
going or how to get there. And all you can do is
scream and yell for help.
Self-awareness involves understanding yourself and
your behavior on three levels: 1) what you’re doing,
2) how you feel about it, and 3) the hardest part,
figuring out what you don’t know about yourself.
Knowing what you’re doing. You would think this
would be pretty simple and straightforward, but the
truth is that in the 21st century, most of us don’t even
know what the fuck we’re doing half the time. We’re
on auto-pilot—check email, text BFF, check
Instagram, watch YouTube, check email, text BFF,
etc., etc.Removing distractions from your life—like,
you know, turning off your damn phone every now
and then and engaging with the world around you is a
nice first step to self-awareness. Finding spaces of
silence and solitude, while potentially scary, are
necessary for our mental health. Other forms of
distraction include work, TV, drugs/alcohol, video
games, cross-stitching, arguing with people on the
internet, etc.

Schedule time in your day to get away from them. Do

your morning commute with no music or podcast. Just
think about your life. Think about how you’re feeling.
Set aside 10 minutes in the morning to meditate.
Delete social media off your phone for a week. You’ll
often be surprised by what happens to you.We use
these distractions to avoid a lot of uncomfortable
emotions, and so removing distractions and focusing
on how you feel without them can reveal some kind of
scary shit sometimes. But removing distractions is
critical because it gets us to the next level.

Know what you’re feeling. At first, once you actually

pay attention to how you feel, it might freak you out.
You might come to realize you’re often actually pretty
sad or that you’re kind of an angry asshole to a lot of
people in your life. You might realize that there’s a lot
of anxiety going on, and that whole “phone addiction”
thing is really just a way to constantly numb and
distract yourself from that anxiety.It’s important at this
point to not judge the emotions that arise. You’ll be
tempted to say something like, “Ick! Anxiety! What
the fuck is wrong with me!” But that just makes it
worse. Whatever emotion is there has a good reason to
be there, even if you don’t remember what that reason
is. So don’t be too hard on yourself.

Knowing your own emotional bullshit. Once you

see all the icky, uncomfortable stuff you’re feeling,
you’ll begin to get a sense of where your own little
crazy resides. For instance, I get really touchy about
being interrupted. I get irrationally angry when I’m
trying to speak and the person I’m speaking to is
distracted. I take it personally. And while sometimes it
is just them being rude, sometimes shit happens and I
end up looking like a total dickface because I can’t
stand going two seconds without every word I speak
being respected. That’s some of my emotional
bullshit. And it’s only by being aware of it that I can
ever react against it.

Now, just being self-aware is not sufficient in and of

itself. One must be able to manage their emotions too.

MORE ARTICLES ON SELF-AWARENESS

• The Three Levels of Self-Awareness

• Your Two Minds
• Why You Can’t Trust Yourself
• How We Judge Others is How We Judge
Ourselves
• 9 Subtle Lies We All Tell Ourselves
• Meditation: Why You Should Do It
• You Already Have Everything You Need
• The Virtue of Doubt
• 11 Shitty Things We All Do But Never Admit
• Stop Trying to Change Yourself
 • Your Next Big Life-Changing Breakthrough is
Already Happening (Subscribers Only)
• The Theory of Meta-Awesomeness
2. CHANNELING YOUR EMOTIONS WELL

People who believe that emotions are the be-all-end-

all of life often seek ways to “control” their emotions.
You can’t. You can only react to them.

Emotions are merely the signals that tell us to pay

attention to something. We can then decide whether or
not that “something” is important and choose the best
course of action in addressing it—or not.

There’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” emotion—

there are only “good” and “bad” reactions to your
emotions.

Anger can be a destructive emotion if you misdirect it

and hurt others or yourself in the process. But it can
be a good emotion if you use it to correct injustices
and/or protect yourself or others.

Joy can be a wonderful emotion when shared with

people you love when something good happens. But it
can be a horrifying emotion if it’s derived from
hurting others.

Such is the act of managing your emotions:

recognizing what you’re feeling, deciding whether or
not that’s an appropriate emotion for the situation, and
acting accordingly.

The whole point of this is to be able to channel your

emotions into what psychologists call “goal-directed
behavior”—or what I prefer to call “getting your shit
together.”

MORE ARTICLES ON CHANNELING YOUR EMOTIONS

• Fuck Your Feelings

• The Feedback Loop from Hell
• You’re Okay
• Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards
• The Only Way to Be Truly Confident in Yourself
• The Fear of Missing Out: Or How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love Instagram
• Fuck Your Perfectionism (Subscribers Only)
 • 5 Skills to Help You Develop Emotional
Intelligence
3. LEARN TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF

Have you ever lost yourself completely in an activity?

Like, you start doing something and get immersed in
it and when you snap out of the quasi-hypnotic state
you’ve somehow induced in yourself, you realize
three hours have passed but it felt like fifteen minutes?

This happens to me when I write sometimes. I lose my

sense of time and I get this cascade of subtly-layered
feelings when I’m fleshing out ideas in my head and
putting them into words. It’s like a feeling of
fascination mixed with slightly frustrated intrigue
mixed with little bursts of dopamine when I feel like I
just came up with a great line or funny poop joke or
somehow got my point across without cursing.

I love this feeling, and when I achieve it, it motivates

me to keep writing.

Notice something important here, though: I don’t wait

for that feeling to arise before I start writing.
I start writing and then that feeling starts to build,
which motivates me to keep writing, and the feeling
builds a little more, and on and on.

This is what I call the “Do Something Principle” and

it’s probably one of the simplest yet most magical
“hacks” I’ve ever come across. The Do Something
Principle states that taking action is not just the effect
of motivation, but also the cause of it.

Most people try to look for inspiration first so they can

take some momentous action and change everything
about themselves and their situation. They try to pump
themselves up with whatever flavor of mental
masturbation is in style that week so they can finally
take action. But by next week, they’ve run out of
steam and they’re back at it again, jerking off to
another “method” of motivation.

But I like to turn this on its head completely. When I

need to be motivated, I just do something that’s even
remotely related to what I want to accomplish and
then, action begets motivation begets action, etc.

When I don’t feel like writing, I tell myself I’ll just

work on the outline for now. Once I do that, it often
makes me think of something interesting I hadn’t
thought of yet that I want to include and so I write that
down and maybe flesh it out a little.

Before I know it, I’m halfway through a draft and I

haven’t even put on pants yet.

(NOTE: This is just because I never wear pants.)

The point is that in order to use your emotions

effectively to get your shit together, you have to do
something.

If you don’t feel like anything motivates you, do

something. Draw a doodle, find a free online coding
class, talk to a stranger, learn a musical instrument,
learn something about a really hard subject, volunteer
in your community, go salsa dancing, build a
bookshelf, write a poem. Pay attention to how you
feel before, during, and after whatever it is you’re
doing and use those emotions to guide your future
behavior.

And know that it’s not always “good” feelings that

will motivate you, too. Sometimes I’m frustrated and
really fucking annoyed that I can’t quite say exactly
what I want to say. Sometimes I’m anxious that what
I’m writing won’t resonate with people. But for
whatever reason, these feelings often only make me
want to write more. I love the challenge of wrestling
with something that’s just a little bit out of my reach.

MORE ARTICLES ON MOTIVATION

• The “Do Something” Principle

• How to 80/20 Your Life
• Your Goals Are Overrated
• How to Stop Procrastinating
• How To Be More Productive by Working Less
• The Paradox of Success (Subscribers Only)
 • Analysis Paralysis (Subscribers Only)
• The Creative Advantages of
Ignorance (Subscribers Only)
4. RECOGNIZE EMOTIONS IN OTHERS TO
CREATE HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIPS

Everything we’ve covered so far deals with handling

and directing emotions within yourself. But the whole
point of developing emotional intelligence should
ultimately be to foster healthier relationships in your
life.

And healthy relationships—romantic

relationships, familial relationships, friendships,
whatever—begin with recognition and respect of one
another’s emotional needs.

You do this by connecting and empathizing with

others. By both listening to others and sharing
yourself honestly with others—that is,
through vulnerability.
To empathize with someone doesn’t necessarily mean
to completely understand them, but rather to accept
them as they are, even when you don’t understand
them. You learn to value their existence and treat them
as their own end rather than a means for something
else. You acknowledge their pain as your pain—as our
collective pain.

Relationships are where emotional rubber hits the

proverbial pavement. They get us out of our heads and
into the world around us. They make us realize we’re
a part of something much larger and much more
complex than just ourselves.
And relationships are, ultimately, the way we define
our values.