Emotional Self Awareness
May 8, 2008
How aware are you of your emotions?
In what way would it be valuable for you to be fully aware of your emotions? How would that improve your life or work?
Well, any moment or situation either at work or in the rest of your life, includes these components: What you think, what you feel and what you do. Emotions are what move you to action – for better or worse. The very name comes from the Latin “e motere” or to move. If emotions move you, wouldn’t it be a good idea to know how?
To be most powerful and effective, you must be aware of your emotions and how they influence your thoughts and actions. But how do you learn to do that, especially when you have been trained not to?
That’s right, trained not to. You see, your biological potential for sensing and feeling emotions is huge but you have been socialized to regard logic as valuable and emotion as not. As a child you were told. “stop that crying there’s nothing wrong with you.” And in the workplace you were trained to “leave your emotions at the door.” We were told that emotions cloud decision-making. It is not emotion that clouds decision-making but the misuse of emotion. In fact, even an accountant looking at a financial spreadsheet filled with numbers must use her emotional brain to give context and meaning to what she is seeing.
So to overcome the social bias and reclaim your natural sensibility you must consciously choose to be aware. And you must choose to train yourself to sense, understand and use emotions to your advantage.
Try this: In any situation stop and ask your self, what am I feeling right now? How is that feeling affecting my thoughts?
As you focus your attention on your emotions you will increase your awareness and begin to command emotions and use them as information for decision-making and not just something that happens to you.
Joseph Liberti, EQ At Work
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