Emotions are not just feelings; they are your inner compass.
Emotions offer valuable data according to Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of one of the best emotional intelligence books.
And emotional self-awareness is key to unlocking this data.
Why does it matter?
For starters, self-awareness is the first step to unlocking emotional intelligence, an essential skill in today’s workplace. In addition, it leads to insights into your motivations, values, and aspirations.
This article provides practical insights and strategies to understand your emotions and harness their power for personal growth.
Let’s dive in!
- What is emotional self-awareness?
- The dual aspect of emotional self-awareness
- The link between self-awareness and emotional intelligence
- Why does emotional self-awareness matter?
- Examples of emotional self-awareness
- How to develop emotional self-awareness?
What is emotional self-awareness?
Emotional self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your feelings and emotions, including how they influence your thoughts, actions, and relationships.
It’s a key component of emotional intelligence.
Developing self-awareness helps you first understand and then control your emotions. Mastering your emotions enables you to extract valuable insights, rather than being a slave to its automatic response.
Unfortunately, most people lack emotional awareness. They’re unaware of their negative reactions and struggle to understand themselves.
They’re a puppet to their emotions.
Does that sound like you?
If so, you’re already further ahead than you give yourself credit for. After all, recognizing it is the first essential step to making change happen.
The dual aspect of emotional self-awareness
Like two sides of a coin, emotional self-awareness has two aspects: internal and external self-awareness.
Internal self-awareness refers to the understanding of your own thoughts, values, aspirations, and emotions. In this context, emotional awareness supports the process of self-discovery and self-management.
In contrast, external self-awareness means you can recognize how others perceive you. In this case, emotional awareness helps you empathize and respond appropriately to the emotions and experiences of others.
In other words, emotional self-awareness impacts your private and public life.
The link between self-awareness and emotional intelligence
First, let’s look at the key aspects of emotional intelligence, as laid out by Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional Intelligence:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Empathy
- Motivation
- Social skills
While emotional self-awareness is only one aspect of the wheel of emotional intelligence, it serves a very important role.
Developing emotional self-awareness leads to more self-discipline and better social skills. In addition, self-aware individuals often experience higher levels of motivation and self-confidence.
So if you want to improve emotional intelligence, make self-reflection and other emotional self-awareness practices part of your habits.
Why does emotional self-awareness matter?
Now that we’ve explored the concept of emotional self-awareness, let’s summarize its importance:
- Authentic living: Rather than bending to social pressure and external expectations, emotions provide useful clues into your deepest intrinsic motivations, core values, and personal goals.
- Self-improvement: Improving emotional self-awareness leads to better self-understanding and social skills, two important aspects of personal development.
- Improved social life: Being able to understand and communicate your emotions will lead to better and more meaningful interactions.
- Mental and emotional health: Understanding the message behind your emotions provides self-control and inner peace. You can now act on its message, rather than feeling out of control.
In summary, emotional self-awareness leads to better relationships, improved well-being, and more happiness.
Examples of emotional self-awareness
Emotional self-awareness is a powerful tool in guiding your decisions, actions, and social interactions. To fully understand this concept, let’s look at several examples of emotional self-awareness.
Example 1: Navigating your career path
Say you’re a mid-level marketing executive but you feel dissatisfied with your job – and are unsure why.
Through emotional self-awareness, you realize that your frustration comes from a lack of creative freedom and a desire for more impactful work.
Now you can use these insights to explore careers that better align with your values and passion. This could involve a different role within your field, joining a different type of company, or exploring alternative careers.
Example 2: Enhancing personal relationships
I often felt misunderstood in relationships. And one of the reasons was my inability to understand how I felt and especially how to communicate it.
Reflecting on my emotions helped me understand myself.
And by learning how to communicate my feelings more openly, I experienced deeper conversations, strengthening my connection to others.
While it’s still something I often struggle with today, I’m now aware of the role emotional self-awareness plays in unlocking meaningful relationships.
Example 3: Improving emotional well-being
Many people experience burnout.
Becoming emotionally self-aware enables you to identify the early signs of stress. As a result, you can prevent yourself from burning out by prioritizing joyful and rejuvenating activities when it matters most.
This is what I did when I experienced lots of stress at work.
While my job was only 40 hours a week, I often felt depleted and needed the entire weekend to recover. It took energy away from writing on this blog, exercising, and occasionally seeing family and friends.
And those are important things to me.
So, I decided to take a pay cut and work 32 hours per week. The extra day off reduced a lot of stress and allowed me to pursue my other interests.
The takeaway is this: Listening to your feelings and emotions provides insights that can lead to a more authentic and fulfilling life.
How to develop emotional self-awareness?
Now you know that emotional self-awareness is vital for self-care, personal growth, and relationships, it’s time to learn how to develop it.
The goal of understanding your emotions is twofold:
- Self-discovery: Understanding what your emotions are telling you about your decisions, actions, and overall direction in life.
- Self-management: Understanding your emotional triggers (often in a social context) and their impact on your thoughts and actions. Enough awareness enables you to catch triggers as they occur and adjust your response accordingly. This will improve your self-control and your ability to communicate effectively.
Let’s dig into the exercises.
#1: Practice emotional self-reflection
Self-reflection is a crucial practice that allows you to analyze and understand your emotional triggers and responses.
There are several ways to practice self-reflection:
- Regularly journal about your day, focusing on what emotions you felt and why. It’s a perfect practice for your night routine and here you can find some of the best guided journals for self-reflection.
- After an emotional response, immediately ask yourself: “What triggered this? Could I have responded differently?”
- Reflect in other ways, such as meditation, pondering your thoughts in solitude, free-flow writing, answering these self-reflection questions, or talking about your emotional responses with others.
Self-reflection is one of the most effective habits for exploring your emotional world. So definitely give it a proper chance.
#2: Mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness meditation cultivates present-moment awareness.
With this practice, you become the observer of your mind. You’ll recognize emotions and thoughts as they arise. By seeing them as separate units, you begin to see your emotions as a tool, not your identity.
Here’s one way to practice mindfulness meditation:
- Find a quiet place and sit up straight or lie down.
- Set a time for your practice, like 5 or 20 minutes.
- Focus on your breath and bodily sensations.
- At some point, thoughts and emotions will arise. Your attention will drift away. As soon as you notice this, acknowledge it. Then, step back into being the observer of your mind.
- You can choose to label those arising emotions and thoughts. You can also explore them without becoming reactive if you like.
- Gently bring your attention back to your breath and bodily sensations, repeating the process from step 3 until the end of your session.
Meditation is a tool for tuning into your emotional state, providing clarity and calmness. Frequent practice will reveal recurring patterns and themes, increasing your levels of emotional self-awareness.
#3: Ask for feedback
Feedback from others offers external perspectives on your responses and behavior. It helps you identify emotional blind spots.
Seek constructive feedback from close friends, family members, or colleagues about your emotional responses and behavior.
You can do this periodically through a thoughtful questionnaire.
Or you can gather immediate feedback after a social interaction.
When they provide feedback, avoid defending yourself even if you feel the urge to do so. Becoming defensive only makes people less willing to provide honest feedback in the future.
Instead, reflect on their feedback and be curious about their perspective. Try to understand where they’re coming from, especially when you disagree.
After all, feedback is the only way to learn how others perceive you.
#4: Emotional knowledge
While emotional knowledge alone won’t make you much wiser, it’s definitely valuable in combination with deliberate practice.
You benefit more from knowledge when you act on it.
And, action turns knowledge into wisdom.
Assuming you’re an action-taker, here’s how to gain knowledge to develop emotional intelligence and awareness:
- Read books on social and emotional intelligence.
- Take an emotional development course.
- Practice and reflect daily.
Remember: taking action on your emotional knowledge leads to wisdom.
#5: Listen-pause-react
The moment between an event and your response is crucial. When you become aware of this moment, you can interrupt impulsive reactions and regain control over your emotional response.
Easier said than done, of course.
Unsurprisingly, most people never become aware of this moment.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
– Viktor Frankl
While it takes some time and effort, here are ideas to get started:
- Practice active listening in conversations and aim to understand what someone is saying and where they’re coming from.
- Breathe before you respond, especially when you’re experiencing more expressive emotions. In practice, this only has to take 1-2 seconds if you usually respond within a millisecond. Know that it’s okay to let longer pauses fall in your conversations.
- Reflect on potential responses and choose the one that aligns with your values and goals. This option is great for emails, for example. But you can also ask for some time to think things through when someone asks you to make an important decision.
The listen-pause-react approach ensures that your actions are guided by thoughtful consideration, not just emotion. Consistent practice leads to self-mastery.
#6: Explore your inner and outer world
Exploring new experiences and perspectives broadens your worldview, leads to more emotional awareness, and is essential for self-discovery.
Traveling around the world has taught me that.
But you can stay close to home too.
Here are some actionable ideas:
- Engage in (small) activities that push you outside your comfort zone.
- Do something new every month, whether that’s a sport or hobby, eating out in a new restaurant, or engaging in all sorts of experiences.
- Indulge yourself in different cultures and worldviews, especially if they contradict and challenge your own.
Exploration not only broadens your worldview but also makes your life more fun.
#7: Reframe negative emotions as valuable insights
We already mentioned that Daniel Goleman said that emotions provide powerful pieces of data. And that’s just as true for negative emotions.
You might already know that.
Yet, unconsciously, the majority of us judge our negative emotions and try to numb them down.
I frequently do, too.
When you notice negative emotions, take a step back. Acknowledge this moment as a great opportunity to learn about yourself.
Then, explore these questions:
- What’s the message behind this emotion?
- What does it tell you about your needs, beliefs, and motivations?
- How does this negative emotion support growth and well-being?
- What’s the positive takeaway of this emotion?
Difficult moments, setbacks, and challenges are always opportunities for personal growth. By learning to reframe those moments and the attached emotions, you build resilience and an empowering growth mindset.
What’s next
Emotional self-awareness is an important skill in personal and professional development. It enables you to better understand and manage your emotions. It’s at the core of emotional intelligence. And it serves as your inner compass that can provide valuable data for guiding your life’s choices and making authentic decisions.
Further resources:
- The best guided journals for self-reflection
- The best journals for self-care and personal growth
- The best books to gain emotional intelligence
- The best books to develop self-awareness
Challenge: For the next week, spend 10 minutes each day journaling about your emotional experiences. Reflect on what triggered these emotions and how they influenced your decisions.
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