How to be more emotional intelligent?

You make the distinction between cognitive/mental/intellectual processes and emotions. That's an excellent distinction in my view because they are very different: for one thing, emotions often are accompanied by visceral, physical sensations--in the pit of your stomach, or tight in the chest with anxiety. While certain beliefs result in your having emotions, changing your beliefs doesn't necessarily erase unwanted emotions. You can change your belief, for example, about perfectionism to a belief that it's all right to make mistakes. Yet you may still be triggered when you make a mistake because the strategy to avoid making mistake was created in very early years when your survival and sense of worth were threatened. Wounds from such early years, and emotions that are triggered by situations related to the early trauma need deeper work. The work I'm involved in right now involves among other things: developing self-awareness so you notice when upsetting feelings arise, notice that you are having them, relax all efforts to control or reduce or suppress them, stay present to your feelings, welcome the memories that come, welcome other aspects of young self--all within the context of feeling safe enough (and that's another story). The best to you.

i thought that emotional intelligence generally referred to interacting with others.

looking here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence it seems there's been a few different ways to look at it. currently seems to be focused on leadership. i guess maybe this is due to researchers wanting to better understand "how can we make the monkeys work more. work monkey work.". everything seems driven by moneys. or monkeys.

they define emotional intelligence as: "the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.".

anyways, from what you're asking, you seem to want to know how to have "good emotions" more often? rather than self-defeating ones? which may be slightly different from what the wikipedia article is on about. but i guess related.

here's a video that could be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kzf2kBjCHI. he talks about bioenergetics here & in other videos. basically experiencing or releasing emotions by vibrating the body. something like that anyways.

No. What I mean is when I get emotions either positive or negative I want to "tune" myself to understand why those emotions arose in my body, and then the best action to take in dealing with them. Emotions are trying to tell me something but unlike the linear model of thought, emotions use "gut feelings", images, or body sensations. Therefore how I do interpret these feelings and even when I do, what then is my action.

To give a simple example, a girl is found crying in front of a romantic movie stuffing her face with chocolate ice cream. On the table is photos of her now ex-boyfriend, some of the pictures are torn up.

Her emotions are that of sadness, possibly angry, hurt, hopelessness, rejected, due to the break up of her boyfriend she then turns to ice cream for "emotional eating" (you can substitute ice cream for drink, drugs, smokes etc..) to somehow "deal" with this unwanted emotions.

So lets say I see that in myself when situations happen, therefore I don't need the ice cream to comfort me but the feeling is still there how then do I use to benefit me? I suppose,

What am I learning?
Is emotion a power? if so how can I tune in to it?
If accept these feelings I don't want to be a rock who doesn't show them even when I know they are there. I do not deny my feelings, nor do I fight them but what then do I with them?

To give another example, I was playing poker and I knew what the guy had in his hand is this a combination of things? In tune, in the flow of things, being fully aware of myself and the surroundings. Is then emotions linked with intuition?

Because I can't explain how I knew, I just knew. Some may say it was a lucky guess. Normally I would agree with this statement but there was something more in that experience I had. I was connected to everything for a second, a flash of insight and I knew it but it didn't come from the linear model of thought and calculation process which I normally use. It was more a "gut" feeling, but not a vague feeling as if a linear guess, but I knew. As if I had a brain in my stomach, which linked in with my head, and then the head interpreted the "feeling" into words I can understand. You see first was the feeling, and the feeling didn't have a mode of expression such as words but when the two align (head and heart) BOOM I knew. Much like one falls in love. You just know it.

Cpt Yossarian wrote: Emotions are trying to tell me something [. . .]

What emotions tell you is . . . what your thoughts are. Every moment, with no exception, we live in the feeling (emotion) of our thinking. From thoughts come emotions, the two sides of the same coin that they are.

right. i understand what you mean.

i consider that like intuition, instinct or something. it's like pattern matching that happens but it kind of happens without you quite knowing necessarily what the pattern is.

malcolm gladwell wrote about it in one of his books. blink i think? & he tends to source his books from stories, studies from elsewhere. so that could be a trail of things to look into.

the summary of what he wrote is that it can be amazingly powerful. i think there was one guy who could predict whether a shot was going in in basketball before it was released? based on some cues he wasn't consciously aware of. but sometimes it can also be bad in some situations. i guess where the pattern is subtly different but looks the same or something. or where you're developed a connection between 2 things but actually there is a 3rd thing that coincidentally was always there and was actually the thing connected. & the other thing was just a coincidence.

so if it is just pattern matching, then i suppose you get better at it by using it more often. by inputting more data into your brain.

maybe look into pattern matching also.

Edit: by inputting more data, i mean for example the guy that could predict shots going in. he obviously watched a tonne of basketball.

I believe emotional intelligence starts with awareness and understanding your emotions and knowing how to feel them and process them. It is about consciousness or total consciousness and being aware of your movements and thoughts. How you strengthen this is with practice. By journaling you can dig deeper and feel deep rooted emotions that have been lying there. You can also journal and track your feelings and emotions through the week. This will allow you to become more aware of how you react, how you feel, what emotions arise.

emotional intelligence is a ridiculous term. It should be changed asap by something like "emotional awareness and management".

There is just noticing the emotional event, thinking a little about it, making a conscious choice and then applying some trick to shut down the negative emotion, if that's the case.

How to be more emotional intelligent? You can't. You can just learn more tricks (there is one I call "karma principle", for instance) or be more disciplined in your emotional management.

What I think is one of the best ways to learn emotional intelligence, or emotional instinct, (besides just going out there and interacting with people a lot!), is reading in fiction. When you read fiction you imagine how people, think behave and start to understand. Though fictional, characters are based on real people and interaction. I bet you can learn a lot from just reading an hour a day.

You become emotionally intelligent by analysig your actions by the emotions and intelligence of other people .
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Emotional intelligence
Controlling your emotions in difficult situations , so as not to appear weak.
Being careful what you say.
Developing good listening & communication skills.
Learning to be more assertive and employing assertive training to daily life.
I truly think 48 laws of power by Robert Greene teaches you emotional intelligence as well as how to communicate with others. This book is truly the key to success in life if one applies its teachings to daily life.

One really important step to building upon emotional intelligence is to become more self-aware. Self-awareness lies in your ability to discern your strengths and weaknesses, and identify your emotions. It entails being cognizant (or have knowledge) of your unique and natural personality, and narrows into recognizing your beliefs, motivations, and thoughts that determine your daily actions.
Self-awareness is so important because it equips you with the ability to appreciate others, fathom their perceptions towards you, and know your mentality and your reactions to them. This essentially means that self-awareness can be the principal source of your strong personality, thus enabling you to be genuine and trustworthy, and lead purposefully with utmost transparency. Self-awareness takes note of your disappointments and outstanding performances.
By understanding yourself better, you know what you need from other people in order to supplement your individual deficits. Hope this helps

The way to become more emotionally intelligent is by thinking and acting more rationally than emotionally. At least that's how I see it.