Emotional Intelligence is a huge predictor of success - some reports say that it is a 4X higher predictor than IQ.

However, when you look at most of the strategies around how to improve EQ, guess what they require? A good IQ! What I mean is that these strategies require you to "think" about emotions and how to improve them, which doesn't come easily for most people.

However, there are other ways to improve EQ.

All they require is to improve your Physiology!

See, our emotions often become regulated by how good (or bad) our physiology currently is. Part of the reason people struggle to improve EQ is that their physiology is so messed up because of how our world is designed today. When physiology is wrong, it takes Herculean efforts and high cognition to improve emotions.

However, by improving certain, simple, physiological aspects of our lives, we can dramatically improve EQ!

Just Breathe

The fastest way to improve EQ is to fix your breathing.

We live in a world today that is overflowing with dis-stress. The more stressful situations we are in, the more our breathing quality decreases. This usually happens without us even noticing, even our cell phones going off contributes to this!

As this happens, we actually build a habit of dysfunctional breathing that undermines ALL of our efforts, as we end up in a constant "fight-or-flight" state.

However, we can easily begin to fix this one!

Start by slowing down your breathing. Ideally, you want something close to inhaling for 4 seconds and exhaling for 6 seconds. This is a natural way to get out of the "fight-or-flight" mode.

Also of importance, is to breathe exclusively through the nose (as long as you are medically able), and down into the abdominal/"belly" region.

This isn't all that is helpful, and there is a lot more depth and methods that you can go into to help here, but these little steps get you to a great start.

The Heart of the Situation

Another physiological area to tackle comes from Neurocardiology, specifically HRV.

If you don't know what HRV is, it is the amount of time that occurs between two heartbeats. In a healthy human, this should constantly be changing to meet the demands of the body at any given time. It's a huge indicator of health but also plays an incredibly important role in leadership.

There are many tools to track HRV (I'll give a few good ones soon), depending on what your goals are.

For the purposes of EQ improvement, there are 2 primary goals you should have.

• Improve Overall HRV (to a point)

• Improve HRV Coherence

Overall HRV is an indicator of a higher baseline which helps with overall health and improvement in overall resilience.

Coherence actually plays multiple roles that are debatably more important in leadership

• Is an indicator of resilience at a specific moment

• Helps with handling personal emotions (Personal EQ)

• Can improve other's emotions (External EQ)

This combination becomes powerful in our arsenal as leaders.

Here are the top 3 tools I would use to achieve these goals.

• WHOOP Band (For Overall HRV and more Athletic Minded Individuals)

• Oura Ring (For Overall HRV and more Mindess Focused Individuals)

• HeartMath Inner Balance (For HRV Coherence)

These are the top tools for accuracy and ease of use on the market as I write this.

There are other interesting technologies that exist, but still need improvements before I would recommend them.

I also would not recommend any smartwatches currently. Most of their technology is extremely lacking at this moment. Many of them are also horribly inaccurate and are a waste of money for any real health purposes.

Get Up! Stop Sitting!

Perhaps one of the most underestimated ways to improve EQ is simply adding more movement to our lives!

I DON'T mean that you need to add an hour-long walk to your day, plus a 30-60 minute workout with heavy weights. It is actually a LOT more simple than that. You can even do significantly beneficial movements at your desk, in a full business professional outfit, without breaking a sweat!

The key here is NEAT Energy (Non-Excercise Activity Thermogenesis Energy).

This simply means more movement spread throughout your day, and less sitting still at a desk or on the couch.

• Walk down the hallway, or pace in your office for 30 seconds

• Do a single squat, or switch between standing and sitting at your desk

• Get an active chair

• Do a pushup against your desk (no need to get on the ground)

Simple things like these are tremendously beneficial.

From an EQ perspective, they improve things like:

• Better Energy Utilization (Improves Overall Energy over time, which directly improves EQ capabilities)

• Helps Improve Posture (Which impacts EQ in multiple capacities)

• Makes Us Feel Better and Improves Cognition (Both important in EQ)

When you understand Physiology better, it becomes a lot easier to improve many aspects of leadership.

Plus, the tougher parts of leadership become accessible when our baseline physiology is improved!