It has been found that your emotional strength contributes to over 50%-60% of your performance AND SUCCESS as an individual.

It is very critical that I let you know that if you don’t have a strategy to increase your emotional strength, it will be nearly impossible to maintain high performance and a sustained successful life.

This includes everything you’re involved in including your career, physical fitness, relationships (i.e. parenting/marriage/friendship), business endeavors, or even the ability the think clearly.

The great thing for you is that unlike your IQ, emotional strength or intelligence can be dramatically improved if you allow it to be.

When handling life’s difficulties and roadblocks, everyone deals with their issues in different ways. There are some who feel the pressure more than others. But the truth is nobody wants to feel like a weakling. For sure, you don’t want to be the person who’s unable to cope.

This is why it’s critical to build up your emotional strength. Much like focusing on getting your body in shape or practicing a healthy lifestyle, you also need to work on strengthening your mental wellness to help you take on difficult situations.

Emotional strength is a general term as it can cover a multitude of facets of life. But whatever aspect it is, the bottom line remains the same. It brings you positivity to focus on building your mental state by assessing your life, where you are at the moment, and figuring out where you want to be in the future.

This internal evaluation offers you a structure for plans and goals, emphasizing spots where improvement is needed, and concentrating on spots where you’re intellectually solid.

It’s normal for everyone to have their “moments” or “episodes”, but if you continuously feel like you’re drowning emotionally, it’s time to find ways to boost your emotional wellbeing.

Here are some tips on how you can improve your emotional strength and coping abilities.

1. Deal With Your Emotions Even If It’s Awkward Or Uncomfortable.

If your thoughts are distressing or your feelings are painful, you tend to avoid them by distracting yourself. And when you avoid this unpleasantness, you damage your emotional state and even belittle your intelligence.

Dealing with the situation means finding a way to answer the question “How am I feeling?” truthfully. The answer may cause discomfort, but if you can cut the crap that pollutes your brain, you’ll have a better understanding of how you can help yourself when an awkward or confusing situation occurs.

2. Allow Yourself To Feel Anything Before Any Self-Judgment.

Try hard to not discount your emotions before you’re able to sort things out or think them through. Raw emotions often go up and down in waves, until they fade naturally. Give yourself the chance to figure out your feelings – even if they are bad or unhealthy – so you know what triggers them and what you can do to avoid the negativity.

If you judge your feelings in a snap, you’ll get defensive, even on things that you shouldn’t be. And when you do, you hide your true feelings and you cloud your judgment. And both are bad in making wise decisions.

3. Accept And Understand Your Feelings.

Emotional strength doesn’t mean you’re immune to emotional baggage. In reality, mental strength needs you to be intensely mindful of your feelings in order to make the best choice on how you can respond. Emotional strength is all about acknowledging your feelings without getting manipulated by them. It entails an awareness of when it is smart to act contrary to what you’re feeling.

For instance, if you have anxiety attacks whenever you think of trying new things, challenge yourself by stepping out of your comfort zone. Enduring unpleasant feelings require practice, but it’ll come easy as you boost your emotional strength.

4. Replace Mental Poison With Positive, Productive Thoughts.

Although many of us don’t devote time just thinking about our thoughts, upping your understanding of how you think becomes valuable in building up resilience.

Exaggerated mental poison, like thinking you’re worthless, hold you back from testing your abilities to reach your full potential. Make it a habit of catching and killing negative thoughts before they get out of hand and affect how you think and behave.

Replace excessive negativity with thoughts that are more positive and productive. These don’t have to be exceptionally positive, but they need to be realistic. A far more healthy thought is acknowledging that while you have weaknesses, you also have an abundance of strengths.

This practice of changing your thoughts calls for regular observance. The process is a key component in helping you become the best version of yourself.

5. Use Your Mental Energy Sensibly.

Squandering your mental strength and brainpower thinking of things you can’t control could drain your physical and mental energy in an instant. The more you think of negative issues that you can’t fix, the less power you’ll have left to let you do the actual work.

For instance, if something happens that you don’t like such as a person gets elected that you don’t agree with, understand that complaining about it will not fix the problem. Instead figure out ways to prepare for the effects of what could potentially be ahead and spend time dealing with the things you can actually control.

That’s how you can smartly use your mental energy. Save your emotional strength for useful tasks like goal setting. The harder you practice using your mental energy sensibly, the easier it is to turn into a habit.

6. Listen To Your Body.

Your body is one of the best resources for clues on what you truly feel. A knot in your stomach when you’re traveling to work may be due to a stressful job. A flutter of the heart when you’re introduced to someone may suggest that you’re attracted to the other person.  Being attentive to these onset flashes and their underlying sentiments will help you process your initial reaction to certain things.

7. Know Your Limits.

There are moments when having an internal discussion with yourself is no longer acceptable in the situation. This is when you must move your focus outward. True emotional intelligence requires you to not just have the ability to understand your emotions, but to also be aware of what surrounds you.

8. Assess Your Progress Every Day.

These days, a quiet reflection becomes a struggle. It seems like everyone’s always on the go, including you. But you need to devote some time to reflect on your progress. Before going to bed, assess what you’ve discovered so far about your thoughts and emotions. Think about what you wish to enhance or achieve tomorrow.

Building up emotional strength is a work in progress. Don’t worry if you find several rooms for improvement. The fact that you are even beginning to think about how you can improve your emotions makes you already separate and different from the average person!

By the way, difference or getting away from the norm makes you wired for greater success in life!