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Emotional Self-Awareness is the Building Block of the Fundamental Emotional Intelligence — Being Able to Shake Off a Bad Mood. ~Daniel Goleman
There comes a time in all of our lives where we’re going to sit back and question whether we’re happy and whether we’re satisfied in our personal growth. There will also come a time when we’re all going to ponder our direction and look back and wonder if our lives have been met with a sense of purpose.
Some of us may have already mastered these valuable lessons while some of us may still be in class.
There’s no time frame in mastering Emotional Intelligence (EI). There’s no right or wrong way in understanding what emotional intelligence is, or what it does or how it affects us.
Unless of course, emotional intelligence has never been explored and never been considered.
When this is the case, growth stops, direction is lost and thriving is exchanged for existing.
Emotional intelligence is our teacher, our mentor and the pilot. We’re basically just sitting shotgun along the journey as a copilot. If we’re good students, we’ll take the lessons with us in learning about ourselves and others, in valuing ourselves and in mastering these lessons we’ve been handed along the way.
If we’re good students, each destination along our journey brings new light to what emotional intelligence is and how our personal growth is affected. And, if we’re good students we will begin recognizing how powerful it is to understand our emotions so that we don’t run from them, so we aren’t sweeping them under the carpet or feeling stuck or controlled by them.
Some will begin experiencing self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy along their initial journey; some won’t. Some will quickly begin understanding how motivation and social skills come into play regarding emotional intelligence; some won’t.
Some will require more time on their journey to recognize what they’re feeling, if they’re feeling, and why they’re feeling.
And, this is OK. It’s all part of our personal growth journey. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon. And as long as you’re pacing yourself for the long-run you’ll reach that personal growth moment.
Some lessons don’t come easy and they aren’t going to be easily moved past. Some lessons will require more time and effort to learn, such as how impulsive behavior is ruled by emotion or when we push someone out of our lives based on self-preservation or to spare feeling emotionally vulnerable.
Things like Ego, pride or acting impulsively are lessons taught along the way. How we as students respond to these lessons helps us evolve in our emotional intelligence journey.
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Most of us start learning about our own emotional intelligence based on how we react or feel in a given situation. We may not recognize that our actions were impulsive or our words harsh. We may not see how we wound up shooting ourselves in the foot and pissing our own happiness down the drain just to spare dealing with messy emotions in the moment.
Many times emotional intelligence is learned as an afterthought or in hindsight.
Because of this, we may learn to avoid emotions when they become too messy. We may rationalize our emotions. Or minimize them. Or give them a new label. We may point fingers and blame others for making us feel a certain way, when at the end of the day we’re responsible for how we feel.
We may emotionally regress in order to prevent having to deal with the emotions we don’t want to face today.
…and when this happens we’re preventing our own growth.
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We may keep others at arms-distance or even shut off our emotions, becoming completely disconnected from recognizing how we feel or how others may feel; self-preservation.
We don’t need to be told what we’re lacking in order to get ourselves out of a rut or to stop making impulsive choices based on emotional overload.
We know what we lack. We know the areas we need to fine tune in our lives. We know the challenges we’re supposed to accept for what needs to be done.
Yet, we may not be ready to accept those challenges.
We also know we’re supposed to be able to reflect on how we’re feeling, to be able to check a bad day at the front door so we don’t bring it home, and to be comfortable with messier emotions and feelings like fear, anger, shame, guilt and sadness — all while having empathy for others.
We can’t be expected to be comfortable with what we’re feeling or others are feeling if we were taught to run from our emotions or push them away. We can’t be expected to respect our emotions or the emotions of others if we were taught about survival and self-preservation instead of vulnerability and love.
A learning curve is to be expected.
The Art of Emotional Intelligence
Figuring out how to build our emotional intelligence is an art form. It’s never the same for everyone and we all learn and grow when we’re ready to take on this challenge.
There’s no shortcut.
Empathy. Since empathy is a huge part of having emotional intelligence, that means learning and understanding what emotional empathy is and how it feels to relate to someone else’s emotions. This can be challenging because it requires putting yourself (and your heart) in the other person’s shoes.
There’s a difference between cognitive empathy (recognizing and being able to label what someone feels) and emotional empathy (actually placing yourself in their emotions) to experience their pain, their joy, their fear.
Practicing building emotional empathy means being OK with being vulnerable and that in itself is a process. No one wants to feel emotionally raw because it puts you in a vulnerable situation — to be laughed at, rejected, hurt, or ignored.
But, it’s also the only way to really understand another person’s perspective and how they feel.
If you want to master your emotional empathy, start by recognizing your behavior and how it affects others. Reflect back on if you said or did something that deeply affected someone. Imagine how your actions may have affected them and put yourself in their emotions, in their pain, in their anger or if they felt betrayed or hurt by you.
The point of this isn’t to feel shame or guilt, but you may experience these depending on what you’re learning to recognize about your emotions and the emotions of others. The goal is to build self-awareness and emotional empathy for how your actions can emotionally affect others and how their actions can affect you.
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Surround Yourself With Experiences. I’m talking about experiences that are rich in learning, evolving, growth and intimacy that tap into every part of your emotions. For me it’s about traveling. It’s no surprise that travel is the perfect breeding ground for self-awareness, empathy and personal growth.
Surrounding yourself with experiences doesn’t have to be about traveling to increase personal growth.
You can choose to surround yourself with people who are self-aware, emotionally mature and who challenge you to be a better version of yourself from the inside-out. You may choose to focus on intimate conversations that target emotions, fears, vulnerabilities, special moments, reflections, or that emotionally challenge you. It’s through these kind of experiences where emotional intelligence and personal growth begin.
See Yourself. Some may wear a social mask of anger or happiness to keep others at arms-distance or to protect themselves from being hurt. They may have been taught earlier in life that only certain emotions were “ok” such as anger or to be happy at all costs regardless of how they really feel inside. Not only does this type of expectation get us out of touch with our own emotions, it makes it damn near impossible to experience things like love, authenticity or intimacy because of the shame and pain underneath.
If we’re looking to increase our emotional intelligence, we need to dig deeper by peeling back our many emotional layers. Denial is usually at the top of the layers trying to convince us we’re fine.
Once we peel back a few layers and get honest with ourselves and our emotions, we may find anger. Anger is a secondary emotion that often protects us from even more vulnerable emotions like fear and sadness. Once we start peeling back the layers we can become more self-aware, increase our emotional empathy, and begin building our emotional intelligence.
Learn to Resist Impulses. This includes acting (reacting) in anger, saying something you wish you could take back, or acting impulsively where you destroy a good thing, hurt someone else or wind up sabotaging yourself. Impulsive behavior is a cover for vulnerability — reacting on impulse when you feel emotionally overwhelmed or vulnerable to push away those feelings.
After the moment passes, you may sit back and recognize the intensity of the impulsive decision and then shame and regret hit hard. And, when these emotions and feelings are experienced, the first thing done is usually to push them away to avoid having to feel them or deal with them.
This can start a nasty habit of sabotaging your happiness and then avoiding the pain associated with self-sabotage by filling it with more pain that only feels good in the moment. By increasing our emotional intelligence, we’re eliminating toxic habits and self-sabotaging behavior that were in place to “protect” us from having to feel more vulnerable emotions.
Time Alone. Now, I’m not talking about spending an hour alone or the morning by yourself, although this is a good start for anyone unfamiliar or uncomfortable with being alone. Time alone refers to being comfortable alone without the need for people or other distractions derailing you from your growth. Time alone means to recognize if you’re distracting yourself with empty relationships or unhealthy habits to avoid emotional growth.
To grow emotionally, we have to be OK with being alone without using relationships, hobbies, our job or other things to fill the void of time alone. It’s in these moments of peace and when we’re alone with our thoughts that we can begin to peel back the layers of our emotions and grow.
Needs vs. Wants. Abraham Maslow coined his Hierarchy of Needs as the foundation for human growth which includes emotional needs. Those who are emotionally mature and high in emotional intelligence understand the difference between a need (food, shelter, water, safety, autonomy, affiliation, love) and a want (relationship, casual sex, money, to be idolized, status, etc).
Differentiating between needs vs. wants is a sign of emotional maturity and emotional intelligence.
Emotional immaturity will try to fill their time and schedule with distractions that are focused on wants, not needs. The emotionally mature person will recognize that all the wants in the world cannot fill the void of not having your needs met.
Flexibility. In this respect, those who are high in emotional intelligence understand that humans cannot be creatures of habit if we’re going to grow. Yet, many of us are. We fear change. We get comfortable. We get complacent. We regress. We wind up repeating habits and patterns that only hurt us in the long-run and offer a band-aid in the moment.
For growth, we have to be flexible and willing to be uncomfortable through the process of awareness which means emotionally adapting during the parts of personal growth that can be painful. It’s through the most painful moments that we often grow the most. But, if we aren’t allowing ourselves to feel pain or anger, or shame or vulnerability, we cannot grow.
The goal is to build emotional strength…in order to build emotional intelligence.
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Previously published on medium.com and is republished here under permission.
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