It’s worth investing in: 7 achievable ways to enhance your emotional health.
7 Achievable Ways to Enhance Your Emotional Health
Coaching clients often have emotional health as one of their goals. Even if they don’t define it that way because they don’t know what the heck emotional health is!
What they are able to say is that they want to live a good life and feel fulfilled. In order to reach those goals, a person need emotional health.
What is emotional health anyway?
- Emotionally healthy people have high personal Emotional Intelligence: They recognize, understand and manage their own emotions.
- Emotionally healthy people have high interpersonal Emotional Intelligence: They have the ability to recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.
- Emotionally healthy people are resilient: They can bounce back from difficult circumstances (with help from others when needed).
- Emotionally healthy people have grit. They have perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
- Emotionally healthy people treat with the balance of compassion and assertiveness.
Compassionate people notice other’s suffering and want to help. Assertive people know where to draw the line so that they do not fall into co-dependency. - Emotionally healthy people treat themselves well.
- Emotionally healthy people find and engage in truth, beauty and goodness.
Does that sound overwhelming? It’s not. Here are 7 achievable ways to enhance your emotional health.
- For personal Emotional Intelligence, practice 3 W’s daily. Get a journal and once a day record: WHAT am I feeling? WHY am I feeling that way? WHAT am I going to do about it?
- For interpersonal Emotional Intelligence, practice perspective taking. In that same journal, record an interaction or event that happened that day. Now practice the 3 W’s from the other(s) perspective. Do your best (the more you practice, the easier it will become). WHAT were they feeling? WHY were they feeling that way? (What is their history/story/need/fear?) WHAT are you going to do about what happened?
- To build resilience. Talk to yourself about recovering from tough things (predict to yourself that you will recover). Create positive experiences for yourself.
- To build grit. Spend some time on self-discovery. Begin to pray about setting life-goals for yourself.
- To balance compassion and assertiveness. Do a good deed daily. Say “no” to people who take advantage of you.
- Treat yourself well. Start with some mindfulness and gratitude. Here’s a link for progressive relaxation breathing- a simple mindfulness exercise, and a how-to for gratitude lists.
- Begin to expand your emotional health with “truth, beauty and goodness” by noticing God’s work each day. Here’s a link for my version of the mindful prayer exercise: Ignatian Examen.
These are all achievable goals, but sometimes working towards ANY goal is easier and more fun when working with a coach. When you’re ready to work on your emotional health goals, contact me to get started with life or career coaching.
Hey, and look at the sidebar and sign up for my newsletter. I’ll be sending out an email weekly for the next 7 weeks with a downloadable freebie to build on one of the 7 areas above per week. Enhance your emotional health! Sign up for the newsletter.
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