Personal GrowthBeginnerPreview
Emotional Intelligence
A practical beginner's guide to understanding and applying emotional intelligence in daily life, work, and relationships. Grounded in real frameworks and evidence-based techniques.
Anyone who wants to understand and manage emotions more effectively to improve their relationships, communication, and resilience.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook is the practice layer of the Emotional Intelligence course. Each section follows one module and contains exercises, worksheets, and reflections to anchor the concepts in your actual life. Use the templates to build ongoing habits — the emotion journal and self-assessment are tools you will keep returning to long after the course ends.
Self-Awareness: Knowing What You Feel and Why
Exercises that build emotional vocabulary, map your personal triggers, and establish your baseline window of tolerance.
Exercise: The Feeling Wheel Drill
Do this exercise twice a day for one week. At a fixed morning time and again before bed, pause for 90 seconds, notice your current emotional state, and use the three-ring process below to land on a precise word. Do not judge what you find — accuracy is the only goal.
- Inner ring: which of the six core states (happy, sad, angry, disgusted, afraid, surprised) is closest to what you feel right now?
- Middle ring: which variant of that core state fits better? (e.g., sad → helpless or guilty)
- Outer ring: which precise word resonates? (e.g., helpless → powerless or vulnerable)
- What body sensation is accompanying this emotion — where do you feel it, and what texture or quality does it have?
Worksheet: 5-Day Emotion Log
At three points each day (morning, midday, evening) record one row per check-in. After five days, highlight any patterns you see across situations, times of day, or feeling words. Bring this to your Trigger Map exercise.
- Date & Time
- Situation / context
- Precise feeling word
- Body sensation
- Action urge (what did you want to do?)
- What you actually did
Worksheet: Trigger Map
Using your 5-Day Emotion Log as source material, complete this map. Be as specific as possible — vague triggers produce vague insights. You will return to this map at the end of the course to measure how your responses have changed.
- Situational trigger (describe the type of event)
- Emotion reliably produced
- Action urge
- Relational trigger (person or role type)
- Internal trigger (hunger / fatigue / rumination)
- Current window of tolerance: what widens it?
- Current window of tolerance: what narrows it?
Reflection: Baseline Self-Awareness Reflection
- Before this module, which emotions did you most commonly collapse into a blunt label (stressed, upset, fine)? What more precise words would fit those experiences?
- Looking at your Trigger Map, which trigger surprises you most — and what does that surprise tell you about an assumption you had been making about yourself?
Emotional Regulation: Choosing Your Response
Practices for building the STOP habit, applying cognitive reappraisal, using body-based techniques, and planning strategic expression before charged moments.
Exercise: STOP Log — Building the Pause Habit
For seven days, log two instances per day: one where you successfully used the STOP technique (Stop / Take a breath / Observe / Proceed) and one where you wish you had. The goal is not perfection — it is pattern recognition. After seven days you will see which triggers most reliably bypass your pause.
- Trigger: what happened right before the emotional reaction?
- Urge: what did your body want to do (speak, leave, freeze, attack)?
- What you did: did you use STOP or go on autopilot?
- If you used STOP — what changed between the observe step and the proceed step? If you went on autopilot — what would the STOP version have looked like?
Worksheet: Daily Reappraisal Record
Each evening, choose one moment from the day when you felt a strong negative emotion. Record the automatic appraisal (the story you told yourself) and then apply all four reappraisal moves in writing. Note which move produced the most shift in how you feel about the situation.
- Date
- Situation (brief description)
- Automatic appraisal (the story I told myself)
- Recontextualize: what else could be true?
- Zoom out: how much will this matter in a year?
- Role-shift: how would a calm wise friend describe this?
- Find the utility: what might this be teaching me?
- Which move shifted my experience most, and how?
Exercise: Pre-Event Regulation Plan
Identify one upcoming situation this week that is likely to trigger strong emotional activation. Complete this plan before the event. Review it immediately before the event. Debrief immediately after.
- What is the upcoming situation, and which emotion do you anticipate feeling most strongly?
- Which bottom-up technique will you use if you feel flooded — physiological sigh, grounding walk, or cold water? Where and when can you realistically do it?
- If you choose to express your emotional experience, what is the I-statement version? (Complete: 'I feel __ when __ because __.')
- After the event: what actually happened? Which regulation tools did you use, and what did you wish you had done differently?
Reflection: Regulation Pattern Reflection
- Across your STOP Log and Reappraisal Record, which reappraisal move do you reach for most naturally? Which do you find most difficult — and what does that difficulty point to?
- Describe a moment this week when you stayed inside your window of tolerance despite real provocation. What made that possible?
Empathy: Understanding Others from the Inside
Structured practices for identifying your default empathy type, deepening perspective-taking, and building the active listening habit.
Exercise: Empathy Type Audit
Think of three recent interactions where someone was distressed, frustrated, or in need. For each interaction, identify which of the three empathy types you defaulted to (cognitive, emotional, compassionate) and whether you fell into empathic concern or personal distress. Be honest — most people discover they lean heavily on one type.
- Interaction 1: who was it with, what was the emotional content, which empathy type did you use, and was the outcome what the other person needed?
- Interaction 2: same questions. Did you feel empathic concern (able to stay present and focused on them) or personal distress (overwhelmed, wanting to end the discomfort)?
- Where do you think your empathy is currently strongest? Where is the biggest gap between what others need and what you naturally provide?
- What one practice this week would develop your least-used empathy type?
Worksheet: Role Reversal Write
Choose one relationship where you are currently experiencing friction, misunderstanding, or distance. Write a paragraph in first person from their perspective describing the recent difficult interaction. Be as charitable as you honestly can — the goal is accuracy, not agreement. Then answer the debrief questions below.
- The relationship (describe without naming)
- The specific interaction you are examining
- Their perspective written in first person (write at least 150 words)
- What new information emerged that you had not considered from your own perspective?
- What assumption did you discover you had been making about their motives or experience?
- What would you do differently in the next interaction with this person, based on this exercise?
Exercise: Level-Five Listening Practice
In one conversation per day this week, set an internal intention to listen at level five — attending to words, tone, body language, what is NOT said, and the emotional experience behind the content. After the conversation, complete the reflection below. Do not attempt this in all conversations; choose one per day and do it fully.
- Who was the conversation with, and what was the emotional content they were communicating?
- What did you notice about their experience that you would NOT have noticed if you had been listening at your usual level?
- When was it hardest to stay at level five? What pulled your attention away?
- What did you learn about them — or about yourself as a listener — from this practice?
Reflection: Empathy and Your Relationships Reflection
- Which relationship in your life most needs you to bring better empathy right now — and which specific empathy skill (perspective-taking, level-five listening, or matching the type of empathy to the moment) would make the most difference?
- Describe a moment this week when you felt genuinely understood by someone. What did they do that created that experience? How can you bring that to someone else?
EI in Action: Work, Relationships, and Daily Life
Applied exercises for delivering feedback using SBI, navigating conflict with Gottman's antidotes, conducting a repair conversation, and building your personal 90-day EI plan.
Exercise: SBI Feedback Drafting
Identify one piece of feedback you have been withholding — at work or in a personal relationship. Draft it using the Situation-Behavior-Impact framework. Review your draft against the checklist below before delivering it.
- Situation: name the specific context (when and where). Is it specific enough that the other person will know exactly what you are referring to?
- Behavior: describe the observable behavior without inferring motive. Is it observable — something you could show on video? If you used an adjective (disrespectful, careless, dismissive), replace it with the specific behavior that produced that impression.
- Impact: describe the effect on you, the team, or the outcome. Does the impact statement explain why this matters — not just what happened but what it produced?
- After delivering the feedback: what was the other person's response? What would you adjust in how you framed it?
Worksheet: Conflict Pattern Worksheet
Think of a current or recent conflict in any relationship. Map it against Gottman's Four Horsemen and their antidotes. Then plan your next move using the Repair Conversation framework.
- Relationship and context of the conflict
- Which of the Four Horsemen appeared in the conflict? (Criticism / Contempt / Defensiveness / Stonewalling)
- Which ones were yours? Which were theirs?
- Antidote plan: what specific behavior will you replace each Horseman with?
- Repair conversation: your own-your-part statement
- Repair conversation: impact acknowledgment (what was the effect of your behavior on them?)
- Repair conversation: genuine apology statement
- Repair conversation: changed behavior commitment (what specifically will you do differently?)
Exercise: 90-Day EI Development Plan
This is the capstone exercise of the course. Build a specific, actionable development plan anchored to your real life. Do not aim for perfection — aim for one meaningful practice in each domain that you will actually do.
- Primary development domain: based on your work across all four modules, which domain (self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills) has the largest gap between where you are and where you want to be? Why this one?
- Daily practice: for your primary domain, what is one specific practice you will do every day? (Name the time, the duration, the method — vague plans are not plans.)
- Weekly review: write your four weekly review questions here, customized to your primary domain and your real situations. When in the week will you do the review?
- 90-day milestone: what does meaningful progress look like at 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days? Be specific enough that you will know whether you have hit it.
Reflection: Course Closing Reflection
- Return to the Trigger Map you built in Module 1. Look at the five situational triggers, two relational triggers, and two internal triggers you listed. For each one: has your typical response changed at all over the course? What has changed, and what has not yet?
- Which single concept, technique, or framework from this course has already made the most tangible difference in how you show up — and what do you want to make sure you do not lose as the weeks go on?
Your Action Plan
- Keep a 5-day emotion log using the Feeling Wheel — three check-ins per day, precise feeling words only, no blunt labels.
- Build and review your Trigger Map — identify your top five situational, two relational, and two internal triggers and the action urge each produces.
- Practice the STOP technique (Stop / Take a breath / Observe / Proceed) at three low-stakes moments every day for the first two weeks to build the habit before you need it in a charged moment.
- Do one Reappraisal Record entry each evening — choose one difficult moment, apply all four reappraisal moves, and note which produces the most shift.
- Choose your bottom-up regulation technique (physiological sigh, grounding walk, or cold water) and use it intentionally before your next high-stakes event.
- Practice level-five listening in one conversation per day — attend to words, tone, body language, and what is NOT said — and debrief in writing immediately after.
- Complete a Role Reversal Write for the relationship with the most active friction — write their perspective in first person, charitably and honestly, and identify one assumption you were making.
- Draft and deliver one piece of SBI feedback you have been withholding — Situation, Behavior, Impact — and observe the difference in how it lands compared to feedback you have given before.
- Identify any unrepaired rupture in a current relationship and conduct a four-element repair conversation — own your part, name the impact, apologize for your behavior (not their reaction), and commit to a specific changed behavior.
- Write your 90-day EI development plan with a named daily practice, a weekly review with four custom questions, and a 30/60/90-day milestone that you will be able to verify.
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