Emotional intelligence

Self-regard along with Emotional self-awareness constitutes the solid foundation that is needed for durability and beauty of the rest of the emotional intelligence building. It is important to understand the essential role of the foundation in a building’s structure. If the foundation is not strong and durable, the finished building, no matter how beautiful and modern it is, will erode quickly and loose its apparent beauty soon enough. It will not be able to face extreme weather conditions, earth quakes or other natural disasters, it might even fall in shaky times. So, the point is that if self-regard and Emotional self-awareness are not strong, the rest of the emotional intelligence competencies and their inter-play will not make sense and one will not be able to build a durable, long-lasting emotional intelligence resource pool.

Self-regard is our ability to accept ourselves as we are, with a full awareness of our strengths and weaknesses. When we have a positive self-regard, we know that we have certain strengths and we know how & when to utilize them. At the same time, we are also fully aware of our weaknesses, the pitfalls that we can fall victims for and should be aware of. Imagine a situation where your friend or colleague ended up making a mistake. The very first and impulsive reaction (lack of Emotional self-awareness!!) of this person would be to find out; what went wrong AND immediately after that; who’s fault was it? Most likely, almost always, it is someone else’s fault! A person with a positive self-regard will not come to this conclusion by default. She/he is fully aware of her/his own strengths & weaknesses and is able to admit if they made a mistake. Most importantly, people with positive self-regard will not get stuck in the mistake but will rather gather the learning from it and move forward in life. It is because they do not blame themselves or others for the mistake/failure but rather see it as an opportunity to learn and grow.

A well-defined feeling of identity is anchored in the realization and awareness of what our strengths and weaknesses are. When we have an awareness of our strengths we feel strong and “enough” in ourselves. This saves us from doubting our abilities, especially in adversities, and help us build a strong confidence and self-efficacy. At the same time, having a realization that we are human, we do have weaknesses and it is OK, keeps us away from going towards a state of over-confidence. Essentially, self-regard provides us with the balanced amount of confidence so that we neither end up with inferiority complex, nor over-confidence.

Look around you; Do you find anyone suffering from lack of confidence or over-confidence? You can be sure that it is because they need to work with their self-regard! When I introduce this competency to people, I do it indirectly through goals and values that they have in life. And in the beginning, there are a lot of participants who, once again, feel surprised/confused because goals and values are usually not something that we walk around and think about in our daily routines, right? But after going through the activities discussions and reflection, I hear the acknowledgement that it was a really good experience to stop for a second in our busy lives and reflect on; What are our goals in life? How do they relate to our values? What is the relationship between our goals, values, strengths and weaknesses? In my workshops I help participants seek answers to these questions in a safe space as a humble guide and it is through this process that we kick off our journey of finding ourselves and how we feel about us!

Emotional Self-awareness; the first step towards building EI

Renowned Emotional Intelligence (EI) practitioner and theorist Daniel Goleman categorizes EI in four main themes which are further divided in several emotional intelligence competencies. These themes are; Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness and Relationship management. This categorization is a good one to remember because it makes clear that the whole concept is built around recognizing and managing one’s own emotions as well as recognizing and managing emotions of people around us. An important realization here is that one has to identify and recognize an emotion in order to manage it. Just like in order to solve any given issue, we first have to make a realization that there is an issue.

Emotional self-awareness is the very first competency that we are going to talk about and it is the first step towards creating an awareness around our own self. As the name suggests, it is our ability to connect to our emotions in a given moment, to know where an emotion is coming from and after creating this awareness, deciding how to react in that situation. It’s our ability to take our internal temperature. Imagine a father coming home after a long day, frustrated by an argument that he had with his boss. As soon as he enters the house, he begins to shout at his teenager kid, who is sitting and watching tv, telling him to do something purposeful with his life rather than wasting time uselessly. When the wife tries to calm him down, he would shun her as well. Now, imagine another person in the same situation who have developed a strong Emotional self-awareness. This person will come home having the same experiences at work and he would be aware that he is not in best of his mood. He would share this feeling openly at home saying; Kindly, switch off the tv, it is just too noisy for me right now, as I had a rough day. I am in a bad mood but none of this has anything to do with you. So, in a difficult situation, an emotionally self-aware person will be able to recognize his/her emotions and decide accordingly about how to act pro-actively rather than re-actively/impulsively.

An impulsive reaction due to a lack of Emotional self-awareness results in feelings of guilt or regret. After establishing a solid Emotional self-awareness, we are able to recognize which behaviours and thoughts we do not need to engage in because they eventually bring a negative emotion to us. Which emotions, thoughts and behaviours are emotionally draining to us and which are emotionally energizing? Once we are able to get rid of emotionally draining attitudes and thoughts, we create space within our selves for more emotionally energizing experiences. This is how Emotional self-awareness helps us become expansive and flexible, by always being in touch with our internal selves.

Whenever I introduce people to Emotional self-awareness the first reaction is “surprise”. The main reason for this surprise is that in emotionally over-whelming situations we are prone to look outwards, so that we can find out “whose fault was this negative experience that I had?” So, the first surprise is “What?? I need to look inside to find something that is not working well??” And this is where I experience most resistance as a change facilitator in the process of building emotional intelligence. In this part of the process I am mostly focused on helping people accept that we have to start from ourselves in order to improve our own life quality. Our life and our happiness is our own responsibility. And once people get used to engaging in this expansive behaviour, they can never stop!

Emotional self-awareness is the first and most important building block of emotional intelligence along with self-regard that we will learn about in the next blog. Just like any other systemic process, practice is the key to building a strong Emotional self-awareness. In my workshops and coaching sessions, I provide both, tools to practice & enhance Emotional self-awareness AND also a safe & secure environment to experiment with new behaviors. I will leave you with the question: “Where do I find my- self in the process of building a strong Emotional self-awareness? Am I well on my way or do I need to start the process now?”. You are welcome to contact me if there are any questions and you feel that you (or your team) need help to build a strong Emotional self-awareness.