Emotional Intelligence Test

Your tendency to avoid expressing your emotions may be linked to your attitude toward emotions in general: You seem to think they are irrational and unproductive, with the potential to cloud your judgment. You might want to take the time to reconsider this attitude and reflect on the value of emotions. Emotions are informative, and can enhance the decision-making as well as rational thinking process. Keep in mind that examining your emotions and the information they offer is not the same as acting on them. Even anger and contempt offer insight: They notify you that something doesn't feel fair or right.

You have the ability to recognize your emotions based solely on the physiological signals from your body.

Even when you are overwhelmed by different emotions, you are able to step back from the situation and objectively analyze your feelings.

Discussing certain touchy topics makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable. You need to find a way to overcome your discomfort with discussing sensitive issues, because you clearly have the ability to handle most other conflict situations.

You sometimes take the time to reflect on your emotions, but tend to consider it safer to rely on logic to guide you, rather than on emotion.

When your gut instinct or intuition offers you a warning, you listen to and trust the information.

You show some self-control, but maintaining your poise can be a struggle sometimes, especially when faced with particularly difficult or emotionally charged situations.

Some people, despite feeling strong negative emotions, are able to separate themselves from what they are feeling and put their emotions in perspective. Others get caught up in the wave, and will find themselves spiraling into more anger, sadness, or negativity. You often fall into the latter emotional pattern. Even though it may not seem like it in the heat of the moment, you can choose how to feel and respond in situations.

You have a multidimensional and in-depth understanding of emotions - in your view, emotions are not just good or bad, positive or negative, intense or weak). You understand the profoundness and complexity of emotions.

Your solid understanding of the complexity of emotions likely enhances your interpretation of other people's emotions and behaviors. You appreciate the possibility that while others' behavior may appear unpredictable and irrational, they may have perfectly good grounds for the way they act. This skill helps you to evaluate any situation from a unique perspective and allows you to address the underlying issues, which makes interactions with others much more effective.

Your ability to understand the motivation behind people's actions allows you to adapt your own response more precisely. You know just the right thing to say or do to make interactions with others more smooth and productive.

While being flexible is generally a good thing, it is possible to take it too far. This might be your case - rather than asserting your needs, you seem to prefer to let others have their way. That is not very healthy. Make sure that your desire to accommodate other people and/or situations does not come at the cost of your own needs.

You are a very insightful individual, and are able to successfully use different cues when making judgments about other people's emotions or behavior. You have an exceptional grasp of human nature and are very skilled at understanding group dynamics.

Your ability to interpret body language likely contributes to your social insight. People won't always tell you the truth about what they are feeling, which is why your ability to read other people (posture, body position, gestures, facial expression, tone of voice) comes in handy. More often than not, we say more with our bodies than we say with our words. With this type of information at your disposal, you can adjust what you say and how you behave around people in order to put them at ease.

Empathy is your strength - you can easily place yourself in other people's shoes, see the world from their point of view, and understand their feelings. Your ability to empathize makes it easier to create meaningful human connection.

While being able to empathize is great in general, it's also important to be able to create a distance between your emotions and the emotions of others. Essentially, make sure to protect yourself, so that you don't internalize other people's struggles. Being able to understand someone's perspective or emotional state provides you with a lot of helpful information about the person (and offer you insight on how you can help them) but it can be overwhelming to actually experience other's emotions, especially negative ones. Remember, you cannot carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

When you are interacting with someone, you likely make it a point to pay attention to what they say verbally as well as their non-verbal communications. This provides you with a more well-rounded understanding of a person's feelings, and allows you to adjust your own approach accordingly.

Your ability to read body language is a useful skill that you can apply to your own non-verbal communications. Make sure to always be consciously aware of what your body language is telling others. If you pick up on distracting mannerisms or incongruous gestures that others commit (crossing arms, tapping fingers, not making regular eye contact), make sure you are not committing these same body language errors yourself.

You are generally quite good at resolving conflict in a manner that benefits everyone involved. Rather than putting all your effort into finding a way to win the argument, you strive to find a solution that everyone can be happy with.

You are generally content with your life at this point, and don't feel the need to set goals and change the status quo. You don't seem to have desire to accomplish any hefty goals, at least not at this time.

You are typically open to learning new things, although you may hesitate occasionally, perhaps if you feel the new skill or knowledge is particularly challenging. You are still a fairly curious person who enjoys learning about the world around you.

You seem to understand the value of failure in achieving success. Failure may be discouraging, but you also recognize that it can be a valuable learning opportunity. After experiencing a failure, you try to determine what went wrong and strive to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Part of healthy striving is the need to grow personally and professionally. Your progress toward self-improvement tends to stall sometimes. You are not always willing to put in the effort required to grow. Keep in mind that striving for self-improvement contributes to your self-worth and has the potential to improve your relationships and performance at work.

Your level of self-motivation is reasonably high. You are generally able to encourage and motivate yourself to try hard and do your best, only occasionally falling short.

You sometimes need an outside incentive to push you into action. You don't depend on extrinsic motivation (e.g. bonus or another kind of reward, others pushing you to succeed), but it does help you. As long as you don't rely too much (or exclusively) on external incentives, this isn't necessarily a problem.

You likely doubt yourself sometimes, because you are not fully aware of your strengths and abilities - you don't recognize what you are capable of. Remember, self-awareness is more than knowing that you exist. It's a clear and conscious understanding and acceptance of both your strengths and your weaknesses.

You are not very self-aware, and may often find yourself wondering why you do the things you do; why you make certain decisions or behave in certain ways. Self-awareness may seem like an abstract concept, but it's simply a matter of taking the time to consciously contemplate your behavior, emotions and thinking patterns. This is something you should try to do more often.

Many people go through the motions in life, not truly understanding why they take certain actions, make certain decisions, or behave in certain ways. You, however, have a clear and conscious understanding of who you are and what you want.

Even if a challenge or a change seems overwhelming, you rarely back down. You will implement strategies to cope, and find ways to adapt.

You possess reasonably good coping skills, although high-pressure, high-stress situations can be a challenge for you occasionally. Moderate amounts of stress will likely be a source of motivation for you - you will be able to channel it effectively. Too much stress, however, will take a toll on you after a while. You do try as much as possible to use productive strategies to cope with stress, but there is room for improvement.

Sometimes, when you're feeling stressed, you are able to find a healthy way to release these emotions, but you need to do this on a more consistent basis. Remember, suppressing your feelings - or, in contrast, letting them out unchecked - is likely to do a lot more damage than good.

You have reached a level of tolerance that few people attain. You are able to let go of minor problems, and probably some of the major ones as well. You "live and let live" and don't make a big deal of things.

While it could sometimes take some time to pick yourself up after experiencing a setback, you will do so eventually. You are fairly resilient, and are typically not easily deterred by obstacles.

The fact that you sometimes struggle to stay resilient in times of trouble could be related to the manner in which you view obstacles. Rather than seeing them as a temporary challenge to overcome, like a hurdle in a race, you sometimes see hardship as insurmountable. This may leave you feeling hopeless, and worried that you won't be able to overcome this difficulty. People who are hardy see problems as temporary, and as opportunity to test their skills. Even in situations where a problem you face could be life-long, there are still ways to lessen the psychological burden it has on you. In fact, research has shown that facing adversity and trauma can actually strengthen resilience.

You adapt easily to change. Like a chameleon, you able to adjust to whatever your circumstances require. When unexpected changes come up or you are required to take on a new task, you can easily rework your approach and plans if necessary. You have likely had a range of experiences that allowed you to develop your adaptability.

When life gets too predictable or routine, you get bored. You handle ambiguity with ease, and prefer to go with the flow, allowing circumstances to take you wherever they may. You don't need stability to be happy, and are likely not afraid to take risks.

You are moderately content. While you likely view certain aspects of happiness as attainable, you may view others as the result of external circumstances (e.g. fate, luck, other people) and therefore, not completely in your power to control.

There is likely very little, if anything, that you would complain about. You are able to find things to be grateful for and take pleasure in small things.

A positive mindset isn't necessarily one of your core traits, but you try to maintain an optimistic attitude. You will hope for the best in most situations, although the potential for disappointment is never far from your mind. Essentially, you envision what it would be like to succeed, but also mentally prepare yourself for failure.

Life's challenges don't make it easy for you to find the positive in a negative situation, but this is something that you should really teach yourself to do. Changing your mindset requires a conscious effort. Remember, every failure and every hardship has an important lesson to offer, even if it's just a matter of knowing how to avoid the same problem in the future.

You rarely engage in unhealthy rumination. While you will occasionally dwell on an issue that is particularly bothering you, you are able to recognize when your thinking is becoming excessive. When necessary, you are usually able to separate yourself from issues that bother you, or at least prevent them from interfering with your life.

Major problems aside, you know not to obsess over minor issues. You recognize that obsessing over every little thing that bothers you is a waste of time and energy.

Others may try to pressure you to cast aside your values, but you will not be swayed. You stand by your beliefs, even if you're in a situation where sticking to your convictions will result in ridicule, rejection, or adverse reactions from others.

You are not one to rebel against every rule or order, but you are also not very compliant either. If you do adhere to the requests of a manager or other authority figure, you will probably do so grudgingly. While it's sensible to question orders and rules, especially when following them could place yourself or others at risk, simply ignoring them on a whim is also not the best approach. By all means, challenge the status quo when it comes to following rules and orders, but make sure you are doing so for good reason, and not simply to rebel.

Your self-esteem is reasonably high, but could still be higher. Your self-view can go through some ups and downs occasionally, especially when you experience rejection or disappointment in yourself. You can be hard on yourself sometimes, but for the most part, you generally love and respect yourself.

You can be self-critical sometimes, and are probably harder on yourself than you are on others. That may seem noble, but it can be quite unhealthy. It's also important to keep in mind that your perception of yourself will rub off on others. If you say or act like you're unworthy of love and respect, they may treat you as such.

Although your self-confidence still has room for improvement, you generally conduct yourself with a sense of assurance. You still have a few hang-ups to work through, but they don't hold you back from taking action or making decisions, at least not too often.

No matter what you manage to accomplish and no matter how much others express admiration or respect towards you, you are unable to enjoy your success. You see yourself as an imposter and do not take pride in your achievements.

While you are assertive on some occasions, it is not a regular habit for you. Even when you do assert yourself, it won't come off as natural - you still hold back a little, show a bit of doubt, or lack self-assurance.

Although you may sometimes place your needs secondary to those of others, you will express them if you really want or need something. You are generally comfortable saying "no" to others, but can regret it or feel guilty on occasion.

Your self-efficacy and belief in your abilities is fairly strong, but can still be developed further. It stands to reason that the stronger your assurance, the less likely you are to be sidetracked and discouraged by obstacles. You usually manage to find a way to overcome them.

Sometimes, you enjoy being pushed out of your comfort zone, but if a project or challenge is not within your immediate area of expertise, you might panic a little and wonder if you can handle it.

You rely on your own judgment. This doesn't necessarily mean that you ignore the opinions of others; it simply means that you trust in your ability to accomplish things on your own without the reassurance of others.

You do not rely on others for approval and do not need others to validate your worth. You may very well enjoy recognition, but you are your own cheerleader.