If you’ve stopped doing these 7 things, you’re more emotionally intelligent than you realize
I was scrolling through social media the other day when I stumbled across one of those “emotional intelligence” quizzes.
You know the type—ten questions that supposedly reveal whether you’re emotionally enlightened or completely clueless about feelings.
But here’s what struck me: most of these tests focus on what you “should” be doing to boost your EQ. Take deep breaths! Practice empathy! Communicate better!
What they miss is something far more telling—the behaviors you’ve naturally stopped doing.
Think about it. Sometimes growth isn’t about adding new habits to your life. It’s about recognizing the toxic patterns you’ve quietly left behind without even realizing it.
If you’ve found yourself moving away from certain behaviors lately, you might be more emotionally intelligent than you give yourself credit for. The fact that you’ve organically stopped doing these seven things? That’s actually a pretty big deal.
Let’s dig into what those behaviors are.
1. Reacting immediately when someone pushes your buttons
Remember the last time someone said something that made your blood boil? Maybe it was a passive-aggressive comment from a colleague or a criticism that hit way too close to home.
If you’re like most people, your first instinct used to be firing back immediately. Defending yourself. Setting the record straight. Making sure they knew exactly how wrong they were.
But here’s what I’ve noticed about emotionally intelligent people—they’ve stopped doing this.
Instead of reacting in the heat of the moment, they’ve learned to pause. They take a breath. They sit with the discomfort of feeling triggered without immediately acting on it.
They’ve figured out that responding from a place of calm usually gets them much better results than responding from a place of anger or hurt.
The space between stimulus and response? That’s where emotional intelligence lives. If you’ve started creating that space naturally, you’re further along than you think.
2. Seeking validation for every decision you make
There was a time when I couldn’t choose a restaurant for dinner without polling at least three friends first.
Should I take this job? What do you think about this guy I’m dating? Does this outfit look okay?
Sound exhausting? It was.
If you’ve stopped constantly seeking external approval for your choices, you’ve made a huge leap in emotional intelligence.
You’ve learned to trust your own judgment, even when it feels scary or uncertain.
This shift usually happens quietly. One day you realize you booked a weekend trip without asking anyone if it was a good idea. Or you turned down an invitation because you genuinely didn’t want to go—not because someone told you it was okay to say no.
Emotionally intelligent people understand that while advice can be valuable, the need for constant validation is actually a form of emotional outsourcing.
You’re essentially asking other people to take responsibility for your feelings about your own life.
When you stop doing this, something interesting happens. Your confidence grows. Your decisions feel more aligned with who you actually are, not who you think others want you to be.
Sure, you might make some mistakes along the way. But they’re your mistakes to make and learn from.
3. Taking everything personally
I used to think my boss’s bad mood was somehow my fault. If a friend seemed distant, clearly I had done something wrong. Someone didn’t text me back? Obviously they were mad at me.
The exhausting part about taking everything personally is that it makes you the center of everyone else’s emotional universe.
And here’s the thing—you’re not.
If you’ve stopped automatically assuming that other people’s moods, reactions, or behaviors are about you, you’ve developed a key marker of emotional intelligence.
You’ve learned to separate your emotions from everyone else’s emotional weather.
This doesn’t mean you’ve become callous or indifferent. It means you’ve realized that most of the time, when someone is grumpy, stressed, or acting weird, it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
They might simply be dealing with family drama, work pressure, or just having an off day.
The freedom that comes with this realization is incredible.
You stop walking on eggshells around people.
You stop analyzing every interaction for hidden meanings.
You stop carrying the weight of other people’s emotions on your shoulders.
Instead, you can respond to situations from a place of curiosity rather than defensiveness. “I wonder what’s going on with them” becomes more interesting than “What did I do wrong?”
4. Trying to fix everyone’s problems
You know that friend who calls you crying at midnight? The family member who always has drama? The coworker who complains about the same issue for months but never does anything about it?
If you’ve stopped jumping in as the designated problem-solver for everyone in your orbit, congratulations—you’ve learned one of emotional intelligence’s trickiest lessons.
I used to be the person who thought I could save everyone.
If someone had a bad breakup, I’d spend hours crafting the perfect pep talk. If a friend was unhappy at work, I’d send job listings and offer to rewrite their resume.
But here’s what I discovered: most people aren’t actually looking for you to solve their problems. They’re looking to be heard, understood, or sometimes just to vent.
When you constantly swoop in with solutions, you’re actually robbing people of the chance to figure things out for themselves.
Plus, you’re setting yourself up for frustration when they don’t take your brilliant advice.
Emotionally intelligent people have learned the art of compassionate listening without the compulsion to fix. They can sit with someone’s discomfort without needing to make it go away.
This shift isn’t about becoming uncaring—it’s about recognizing the difference between supporting someone and taking responsibility for their life.
One is healthy. The other is exhausting for everyone involved.
5. Avoiding difficult emotions at all costs
There was a time when feeling anxious meant immediately reaching for my phone, turning on Netflix, or finding any distraction to make the uncomfortable feeling disappear.
I’d either busy myself with work or scroll through social media until it passes.
If you’ve stopped running from difficult emotions the moment they show up, you’ve made a profound shift toward emotional intelligence.
This doesn’t mean you enjoy feeling crappy—nobody does. But you’ve learned that emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, are messengers carrying important information.
Anxiety might be telling you something needs attention. Sadness could be signaling a loss that needs to be processed. Anger often points to a boundary that’s been crossed.
I recently read Rudá Iandê’s new book “Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life,” and his insights about emotions really struck me.
As he puts it, “Our emotions are not barriers, but profound gateways to the soul—portals to the vast, uncharted landscapes of our inner being.”
When you stop treating emotions like problems to be solved immediately, you start treating them like information to be understood.
You sit with the discomfort long enough to figure out what it’s trying to tell you.
This doesn’t mean wallowing or getting stuck in negative feelings. It means acknowledging them, listening to them, and then deciding how to respond rather than just react.
6. Keeping score in relationships
I have to admit, this one was a bad habit of mine. I’d have a mental tally of who did what and who owes what in my relationships.
But now I know, scorekeeping turns relationships into transactions. It makes love conditional and friendship feel like a business arrangement.
When you’re constantly calculating whether things are “fair,” you’re missing the actual relationship happening right in front of you.
Emotionally intelligent people have learned that healthy relationships aren’t perfectly balanced ledgers.
Sometimes you give more, sometimes you receive more. Sometimes you’re the one who needs support, sometimes you’re the one providing it.
This shift happens when you start giving from a place of genuine care rather than obligation or expectation of return.
You help because you want to, not because you expect it to be reciprocated in equal measure.
When you stop keeping score, something beautiful happens. Your relationships become lighter, more authentic, and way less exhausting.
You stop feeling resentful when people don’t respond exactly as you would, and you start appreciating what they do offer.
7. Needing to be right in every argument
Obviously, with my old scorekeeping mentality, I also used to argue until I was blue in the face, determined to prove my point even when the conversation had long stopped being productive.
It didn’t matter if it was about something trivial like the best pizza topping or something more serious—I needed to win.
If you’ve stopped needing to be right in every disagreement, you’ve unlocked a superpower that most people never develop.
It’s not that you’ve become a pushover or that you no longer have opinions.
It simply means you’ve learned to distinguish between being right and being effective. Between winning an argument and actually communicating.
Emotionally intelligent people have figured out that most arguments aren’t really about the surface-level topic anyway. They’re about feeling heard, respected, or understood.
When you stop focusing on proving your point and start focusing on understanding the other person’s perspective, conversations transform.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is “I hadn’t thought of it that way” or “Help me understand your perspective.” These phrases don’t mean you’re agreeing—they mean you’re curious enough to listen.
Final words
If you recognized yourself in any of these patterns—or better yet, if you realized you’ve naturally stopped doing several of them—give yourself some credit.
The fact that you’ve moved away from these behaviors without a manual or a masterclass? That’s your emotional intelligence evolving in real time.
I’ve found that the most profound growth often happens when we’re not even trying to grow.
We just start noticing that certain ways of being no longer feel authentic or useful.
We stop doing things that drain us or damage our relationships, not because someone told us to, but because we’ve outgrown them.
That’s not just emotional intelligence—that’s wisdom.
So the next time you catch yourself pausing before reacting, or sitting with an uncomfortable feeling instead of running from it, recognize it for what it is. You’re becoming someone who navigates life with more awareness, compassion, and authenticity.
And that’s something worth celebrating, even if no quiz will ever capture it perfectly.
