Emotional awareness is an easy concept to understand, but it is a difficult skill to master. The term describes your ability to understand your emotions and their effects on your life.
When your emotional awareness is strong, you know exactly what you are feeling and why. You understand how your emotions are impacting your goals. You also understand how other people see you. This gives you confidence, clarity and an accurate view of your own strengths and limitations.
Emotional awareness in practice
Have you ever had a boss or teacher who clearly “played favorites?” If you were on her good side, you’d get ahead. Get on her bad side and you can kiss your good grade or promotion goodbye. This person is a good example of someone who does not have strong emotional awareness.
When you’re emotionally aware, you understand the impact your emotions can have on any given situation. If your boss were emotionally aware, she would promote the person who was most capable regardless of her personal feelings for that person. Not only does this benefit the person being promoted but it also benefits the boss. By promoting someone who is more qualified, her team will excel, which looks great for her.
Here are a few ways emotional awareness can help in your everyday life:
1. Become a great leader – A study by the Korn Ferry Hay Group found that 92% of leaders with multiple emotional self-awareness strengths had teams with high energy and high performance. These leaders created a positive emotional climate that motivated their team to put in extra effort. Leaders who scored low in emotional self-awareness created negative climates 78% of the time.
2. Coping with social situations – Emotional awareness is an important skill to help you get through times of emotional and physical crisis. In many cases, people rely on their addictions instead of their emotional intelligence. Technology is a great example of this. Whenever you’re uncomfortable in a social situation, you can bury your face in your smartphone to escape. Technology addiction is real, and it has been proven to lower emotional intelligence. Emotional awareness is also a powerful tool in overcoming addiction. As you gain a better understanding of your emotions and their impact, you can make wiser choices about your daily habits.
3. Better academic performance and teamwork – One 2010 study focused on the impact of mental ability and emotional intelligence in college students’ academic and social performance. Researchers found that emotional intelligence had some impact on academic performance, although mental ability was the strongest predictor. They also found that emotional intelligence was strongly correlated to the quality of social interactions with peers.
Emotional awareness is clearly a trait that can have a positive outcome on your decisions and your life. The good news is that emotional awareness can be learned.
Look at each moment as an opportunity to be self-aware. Think about your thoughts, feelings, and actions in every moment, especially before you make a major decision. The more you practice emotional awareness, the easier it gets.