Emotional Intelligence 2 (Self Awareness)

Self Awareness is about recognizing and understanding your emotions as they happen. This sounds simple but the fact is that majority of us either fail to recognize our emotions or ignore them. High self awareness means having a handle on our emotions as and when they happen and being aware of their effect on ourselves.

How do we recognize our emotions?

Emotions typically produce physical sensations that you can use to identify what you are feeling. The physical signs that accompany our feelings can be blatant, such as heavy breathing or sweating, or more subtle, such as increased heartbeat or sweaty palms. Learning how you respond physically to your emotions is important to becoming more emotionally intelligent.

Think about the last time you experienced strong feelings.

• Did you sweat?
• Did your heart beat fast?
• Did you feel tense?
• Did your thoughts race?
• Did your throat get tight?
• Did you get tunnel vision?
• Did your mind go blank?
• Did you shake?
• Did you feel numb?

Now think back in time and go through events when you had one or more of the above. What did you do immediately after you had such strong feelings?

The answer to this question comes in the next part of EI…

Emotional Intelligence

EQ has been around since the inception of the term by Daniel Goleman in 1980s. However as I was trying to understand the concept for nearly two years now, I wasn't able to make much headway till very recent weeks. Then it happened! I could see through the complex web of information on the subject and look at it simply. On gaining clarity on the concept, I wondered how the world is full of books and stuff that makes understanding of simple concepts as difficult as it can be. Further Last week I was able to internalize EQ for the first time in life.

Let me attempt a simplistic view of EI and see if you can gain something by implementing the concept in your life.

Step 1 : What is Emotional Intelligence?

EI is the ability of an individual to understand his emotions, manage his reactions to these emotions, understand others emotions and manage good relationships

Step 2 : How does it apply in my life?

We typically ignore what our emotions are telling us. All emotions are accompanied by physiological changes. By being open to reading these signals from our body, we can easily understand what our emotions are doing to us. After recognizing the emotion we can standby for couple of seconds and respond (using our brains). When we are with others, we can be aware of what the other is feeling and accordingly behave with him/her. This will give us lasting relationships.

Step 3 : Can we improve our EI?

EI is a variable. We are born with some of it. Over the years we set up our beliefs and habits which form our EI. The EQ changes with our experiences. In fact our EQ today is the result of the way we have decided to lead our lives over the years. While we can improve our EQ, we can easily let it decrease as well. Having a good EQ is like maintain a good physique and needs regular tuning.