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…
