Improving my emotional intelligence is a project that I’m not super hyped about. But a while ago this introvert decided to consciously work to improve my emotional intelligence.
Being able to better identify, understand, and deal with your emotions is extra helpful during perimenopause when your hormones routinely hijack your feelings.
But, when I started looking around for practical and actionable information all I found were people spouting platitudes.
It took a while and a lot of reading, journaling, thinking, and being confused to figure out better search terms and methods.
Here are 3 things I recommend to perimenopausal women who w
- (Re)read The Artist’s Way: Julia Cameron’s classic 12 week “path to higher creativity” will help you find your new normal. It’s enlightening to just consider that you might need to “recover” a sense of 1 or more of the 12 categories: safety, identity, power, integrity, possibility, abundance, connection, strength, compassion, self-protection, autonomy, and/or faith.
- Listen To Buddhify: This guided meditation app is the best I’ve tried. It has meditations from 5-30 minutes covering a range of situations: waking up, walking, needing presence, being overwhelmed, traveling, and some to help you grow your practice by learning new techniques.
I listen to “Good” every single morning. It ends, “May things be good today. And when things aren’t so good, may my ability to deal with that be good today.” I can’t tell you how many times repeating that refrain has helped me stay on track. Having a reminder to be in the moment and know that I can and do cope with life goes a long way to improving my emotional intelligence.
- Read Content At NickWignall.com: This clinical psychologist has really helped me adjust my expectations around what it takes to get and stay emotionally healthy. He offers actionable advice and provides enough detail about the why and how that you can actually make change. He also has a podcast if you like and learn from those.
A good starter article is 10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Self-Awareness https://nickwignall.com/self-awareness/
So there you go! These 3 resources will refresh you as they guide you to a more relaxed and clearer sense of self and wellbeing.
I’ve got a lot of work to do on elevating my emotional intelligence. Please join me for some of that work by signing up to get my monthly “coming soon” emails.