

Assessing Emotional Intelligence
There are so many assessments one can take for personality type, natural strengths and the like. We go through these just for fun sometimes, and it's nice to know we can find reliable assessments when we're seriously searching.
One of the most accurate emotional intelligence (EI) tests is the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). This test can only be given by registered psychologists and accredited professionals. However, I found a video with a great explanation and self-assessment on YouTube called Exploring the MSCEIT (the video is provided in my newsletter). The four questions in the assessment correspond to the four branches of EI on the MSCEIT test scale: Perceiving Emotions (How do you feel right now?), Facilitating Thought (How will what you’re feeling impact your thinking?), Understanding Emotions (What might cause your mood to shift?) and Managing Emotions (How will you stay attuned to your emotions?).
My self assessment looked like this:
1) Perceiving Emotions: As I was watching the video I was feeling exhausted and had little energy. A seasonal virus or two came into my home and affected my family and I.
2) Facilitating Thought: Feeling exhausted and with little energy left me thinking I wasn’t capable of understanding and absorbing the information.
3) Understanding Emotions: If I had taken a nap before watching the video, I may not have struggled so much.
4) Managing Emotions: Being aware that the negative thoughts came from exhaustion helped me push them aside, saving my energy to focus and collect information.
These are steps you can take at home! Slow down, stop if you can, and think about how you feel. Ask yourself if what you’re feeling is impacting how you’re thinking. Is there something that may change how you feel? How can you manage your emotions? Practice will help us tune into our emotions better. Our next step will be to tune into others.