Emotional self-knowledge or self-awareness is about being aware of what we feel, and, in turn, doing so more consistently. Hence, another concept is important, emotional self-control or self-management, which is about deciding what to do with what we feel.
What is emotional self-knowledge or emotional self-awareness?
Emotional self-awareness or self-knowledge is the ability to identify our emotions and feelings, which serves to have greater control in our lives. Being self-aware of our emotions will also allow us to identify the emotions of others and, in this way, improve our interpersonal relationships in our environment.
Why is emotional self-awareness important?
Emotional self-awareness allows us to know our personal limitations and strengths. In addition, in the workplace, self-awareness and emotional self-management favor professional relationships, making them more fluid and preventing misunderstandings.
Some of the benefits of self-awareness and emotional self-control are:
- It favors the professional image
- It projects security, confidence, maturity and responsibility.
- Helps emotional health and professional growth
By recognizing that emotions influence our actions, we can make better decisions, differentiate ourselves from others and better highlight our skills.
How to achieve emotional self-awareness?
The emotional well-being provided by identifying emotions is given through different exercises that you can put into practice to achieve emotional self-knowledge.
Some of them are:
- Keep a notebook where you can record your emotions.
- Writing in a diary to express yourself without fear of judgments
- Ask someone else to describe you and know what image you project.
- Make a family and work sociogram to know the dynamics of your relationships.
Example of how to achieve self-knowledge or emotional self-awareness
The following is an example of emotional self-awareness through a diary.
Contributed by Mauricio Salazar:
Something I was taught and it helped me a lot was to keep an emotional diary. There I wrote every day what emotions I had had during the day and weekly I reviewed the diary and saw how often and at what times or under what circumstances I had felt that emotion.
This helped me with self-knowledge, that is, it was the first step before moving on to self-management. I was given a tool that works very well and that is to take a few seconds before answering to cool my mind to reflect and be assertive in what I am going to say or do.
What is emotional self-control or self-management?
Emotional self-control or emotional self-management is the ability of a person to realize what he/she is feeling and not be carried away by his/her emotions or emotion but can decide what to do with what he/she feels.
How to have self-management of emotions?
Imagine you feel an emotion of anger or sadness. It is important to first realize it, i.e., identify why that emotion is occurring. After you know this, you need to have techniques to handle that situation in the best possible way.
Some ways to achieve healthy distancing from those emotions and feelings are:
- Verbalize the emotion of the moment and express it to the people around you.
- Acknowledge what you are feeling and leave expressing it for later.
- Choosing to stop feeling that emotion and self-motivating yourself to feel something different.
Another way to manage your emotions is through relaxation techniques.
Relaxation techniques
Emotions activate our organism, that is why relaxation is a technique widely used in emotional self-management. Progressive muscle relaxation can be very effective if there is a previous training that allows you to perform it in a few seconds.
Follow these steps to be able to do it:
- Dominant hand and forearm: make a fist and clench it tightly as if you were going to punch.
- Biceps dominant: leaving the hand relaxed, try to touch the shoulder with the wrist, or squeeze the biceps as if you wanted to pull muscle.
- Non-dominant hand and forearm: make a fist and squeeze it hard as if you were going to punch.
- Non-dominant biceps: leave your hand relaxed and try to touch your shoulder with your wrist, or squeeze your biceps as if you wanted to pull muscle.
- Forehead: raise your eyebrows as if you were wrinkling your forehead.
- Eyelids: close your eyes and squeeze them shut.
- Nose and upper cheeks: wrinkle the nose as if making a disgusted face.
- Jaw, lower cheeks and tongue: clench the teeth tightening the whole mouth and press the tongue against the roof of the mouth.
- Neck and throat: try to touch your chin to your chest. Push the back with your head.
- Shoulders and upper back: stretch your shoulders backwards and then forwards as if they wanted to touch.
- Chest: take a deep breath in and hold your breath for a few seconds..... Now let it out forcefully.
- Abdomen: Shrink or tighten your stomach as if you were going to be punched.
- Lower back: arch your back as if you want to pull your abdomen out.
- Dominant leg: step forcefully pushing off the ground. Lying down: stretch your legs and feet.
Review the definition of emotional intelligence.
Contribution created by Alexandra Barrero, Gustavo Nieto and Francisco Rodriguez.
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