Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage emotions in positive ways. It tends to fuel your performance on the personal and professional front. Self-awareness is one of the essential steps of emotional intelligence. It teaches ways to identify your emotions, to be mindful of what triggers them and their impacts. These tips guide you in discovering the basics of your emotional intelligence, thus improving your self-assurance levels.
Learning to identify your triggers: When you identify what bothers you, you can take action to protect your mental health. By identifying, it can lead you to improved emotional intelligence. This lets you develop the skill to manage the outcome. It helps to take charge of your actions and bestow you the ability to calm down.
Never judge your feelings: Being judgmental about your feelings tends to lose the ability to regard them and be mindful of them. By looking at the emotion just the way it is will lend an opportunity to seize it and find out what your mind has been trying to tell you.
You must question your opinions: It is easy to fall into an ‘opinion bubble’. You must take ample time to read the other side of the story and have your views tested. This will help you to express more and also be more open to new ideas.
Pay attention to your behaviour patterns: You must consider observing your behaviour while you are practising your emotional awareness. The patterns in your life always try to tell you something. Note the way you tend to act when you are undergoing certain feelings and the way that affects your daily life. Once you become more aware, handling the emotions becomes effortless.
Always celebrate the positive: An important aspect of improving self-awareness is to celebrate and reflect on the optimistic life moments. By pointing out the positive, you’re starting to train your brain to focus on other positives. Reflecting on negative emotions is also equally vital to deal with undesirable issues in the future.
Meditate: Mindfulness changes your brain for the better and meditation can help increase your level of self-awareness. It is one of the finest ways to know more about how your thoughts functions.
Have faith in your intuition: If you are still hesitant about which path to take, you must believe your instinct. You have to trust your gut feeling and this will allow your subconscious mind to guide you through the right path.
Look at yourself objectively: It is difficult to know yourself completely, hence getting to comprehend yourself from those who know you are vital. Ask them about your strong points and weaknesses and compare it yourself as this will help to accept yourself.
Come out of your comfort zone: Try new things as not challenging yourself frequently is one of the greatest barriers in knowing your potential. Instead of pushing the emotion away, you must guide yourself and should expand your horizons. This will help you to live a fuller life and live to a higher potential.
Identifying cognitive distortions: This is the most important step in fixing any problem. A major source of the absence of self-awareness is incorrect emotional habits. By learning to recognise these patterns of inaccurate thinking, you can find a link between your thoughts and feelings.
The writer is a mental & emotional wellbeing coach and founder of Let Us Talk.