Emotional intelligence is an area that we can all improve in.  We very often carry around emotional baggage from our past, and we bury and forget about hurts that go way back to our childhood.  The problem is this: emotions are like an internal energy that need to find an outlet.  If bottled up for too long, the negative consequences to our lives and relationships can be profound! We can start the process of healing by building self-awareness about our strengths and limitations.

More importantly, a lack of emotional health can actually sabotage your entire life, and rob you of living the life that God intended for you, without you even knowing it!  Carrying around emotional hurts and disabling patterns of behaviour, can also affect the other areas of our lives, such as our spiritual, mental and even physical health.  I have worked for a number of years now with teenage boys and young adult men from an orphanage in the Caribbean.  On most occasions when I ask these boys and men if they really believe in their hearts that God loves them, the overwhelming answer is NO!  They have experienced so many emotional hurts in their lives that they cannot fathom a loving God who actually cares about them and loves them individually.  They have difficulty praying, exercising and even concentrating on their school work.  The same pattern is true for adults whom I have worked with in a Life and Career Coaching capacity.

In research conducted by PsychTests Inc. in Montreal Canada in 2012, they discovered the following facts about people with a higher emotional IQ (EIQ) as compared with those with a lower EIQ:

• 98% of those with high EIQ (compared to 77% of those with low EIQ) enjoy learning new things.
• 82% of those with high EIQ (compared to 43% of those with low EIQ) carefully think through decisions before moving forward.
• 82% of those with high EIQ (compared to 38% of those with low EIQ) believe that they are useful to their company and know exactly how the organization benefits from their skills and strengths.
• 94% of those with high EIQ (compared to 52% of those with low EIQ) continuously look for ways to improve their performance at work.
• 93% of those with high EIQ (compared to 34% of those with low EIQ) have complete confidence in their abilities.
• In the face of major challenges, 81% of those with high EIQ (compared to 23% of those with low EIQ) become even more determined to succeed.
• 46% of those with low EIQ (compared to 8% of those with high EIQ) are not satisfied with their work unless someone else praises it.
• 39% of those with low EIQ (compared to 2% of those with high EIQ) rely on others to “push” or motivate them.

As the diagram on the left illustrates, emotional health problems can filter into the mental, spiritual and physical aspects of our lives, and cause problems in our ability to function effectively in these other areas.

So how do we address this serious and sometimes life-crippling problem before it’s too late?  It all begins by developing accurate self-awareness in terms of what our emotional strengths and limitations are.  In my opinion and experience, there is no better way to accomplish this than by taking an accurate Psychometric assessment that will provide you with concrete and enumerated values for the different areas of your emotional health.  The one we use most frequently with our clients is called the Multidimensional Emotional IQ Assessment (MEIQ), which we license from PsychTests Inc.

Armed with the results of your MEIQ assessment, you can work with a qualified Life Coach or Counseling Psychologist to improve on your most obvious limitations.  It will take time to improve upon these limitations, but like anything else, hard work and perseverance pays off in the end.  I would recommend taking one limitation at a time and working on the advice provided in the MEIQ report to improve on that limitation over a two-month period.  It’s akin to developing “muscle-memory” when learning a new move or stroke in a sport, such as tennis for example.  When an athlete practices the same move over and over every day for approximately two months, he or she develops muscle-memory such that the move or stroke now becomes second-nature.  The same holds true for learning new techniques for improving on your EIQ limitations.  So why not start living a more balanced and healthier life by taking an emotional IQ assessment today, reviewing the results honestly, and working with a professional on improving your limitations?  You have nothing to lose and the world to gain!