Developing Emotional Awareness

Recognizing and Harnessing the Power of Your Emotions

Emotions are the glue that connects you to other people and gives meaning to life. They are the foundation of your ability to understand yourself and relate to others.

When you are aware and in control of your emotions, you can think clearly and creatively; manage stress and challenges; communicate well with others; and display trust, empathy, and confidence. But lose control of your emotions, and you’ll spin into confusion, isolation, and negativity. By recognizing and harnessing your emotions you can gain control over the way you react to challenges, improve your communication skills, and enjoy more fulfilling relationships. This is the power of developing emotional awareness.  

In This Article:

What is emotional awareness? Why emotional awareness matters Evaluating your emotional awareness Stress and emotional awareness Emotion is a double-edged sword Make friends with all your emotions Ride the Wild Horse: a meditation

What is emotional awareness?

Related toolkit videos

If you haven’t already seen the videos, or you’d like a refresher, watch:

Video 4: Developing Emotional Awareness

(2:50)Video 5: Harness Your Emotions(3:31)

Whether we’re aware of them or not, emotions are a constant presence in our lives, underlying and influencing everything we do.

Emotional awareness means knowing what you are feeling and why. It’s the ability to identify and express what you are feeling from moment to moment and to understand the connection between your feelings and your actions.

Emotional awareness also allows you to understand what others are feeling and to empathize with them.

Emotional awareness involves two basic abilities:

The ability to recognize your moment-to-moment emotional experience The ability to handle all of your emotions without becoming overwhelmed

Why emotional awareness matters

Have you ever felt like depression, anxiety, or anger was controlling you? Do you often act impulsively, doing or saying things you know you shouldn’t, only to regret it later? Do you feel disconnected from your feelings or emotionally numb? Do you have a hard time communicating with others and forming meaningful connections? Do you feel like your life is an emotional rollercoaster—all extremes and no balance? All of these challenges are related to a breakdown in emotional awareness.

Our emotions, not our thoughts, motivate us. Without an awareness of what you’re feeling, it’s impossible to fully understand your own behavior, appropriately manage your emotions and actions, and accurately “read” the wants and needs of others.

Emotional awareness helps you:

Recognize who you are: what you like, what you don’t like, and what you need Understand and empathize with others Communicate clearly and effectively Make wise decisions based on the things that are most important to you Get motivated and take action to meet goals Build strong, healthy, and rewarding relationships

How developing emotional awareness can bring your life into balance “My life is an emotional rollercoaster!”

Life doesn’t have to be about high highs and low lows. Becoming more in touch with your emotions can help moderate the extreme

How developing emotional awareness can bring your life into balance up and down swings.

“I often regret what I say or do.”

If you often wish you could press an “undo” button—or you simply have a short fuse—you can gain emotional awareness by learning to prolong patience during times of stress.

“I have no energy.” Got the blahs? When there is nothing physically wrong with you, and you still don’t have any ‘get up and go,’ you might be depressed. When you are more emotionally aware, you can tune into these feelings and make a change for the better.

“The people I’m interested in aren’t interested in me.”

Relationships are hard, but you can have an easier time meeting people and creating lasting bonds when you become more emotionally aware.

“I can’t seem to get ahead, even though I’m smart and work hard.”

Sometimes, getting ahead at your career requires more than book smarts and effort. Becoming more emotionally aware can help you communicate better and advance your position.

“They call me a robot.” There is such thing as too much control over emotions. If you’ve reined yourself in so much that you show no emotion whatsoever, you might benefit from becoming more balanced with your feelings.

Evaluating your emotional awareness

Although emotional awareness is the basis of emotional health, good communication, and solid relationships, many people remain relatively unacquainted with their core emotional experience. It is surprising how few people can easily answer the question: “What are you experiencing emotionally?”

What is your level of emotional awareness?

Can you tolerate strong feelings, including anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and joy? Do you feel your emotions in your body? If you are sad or mad, do you experience

physical sensations in places like your stomach and chest? Do you ever make decisions based on “gut feelings” or use your emotions to guide your

decisions? When your body signals that something is wrong (stomach tightening, hair standing on end) do you trust it?

Are you comfortable with all of your emotions? Do you allow yourself to feel anger, sadness, or fear without being judgmental or trying to suppress them?

Do you pay attention to your every-changing emotional experience? Do you notice a variety of emotions throughout the day or are you stuck in only one or two emotions?

Are you comfortable talking about your emotions? Do you communicate your feelings honestly?

Do you feel that, in general, others understand and empathize with your feelings? Are you comfortable with others knowing your emotions?

Are you sensitive to the emotions of others? Is it relatively easy for you to pick up on what other people are feeling and put yourself in their shoes?

If you didn’t answer “usually” or even “sometimes” to most of these questions, you’re not alone.  Most people are not emotionally aware, but you can be, even if you have avoided some of your feelings for a long time.

By learning to recognize, manage, and deal with your emotions, you’ll enjoy greater happiness and health, as well as better relationships.

When we can't manage stress, emotions may overwhelm us

You can’t manage emotions until you know how to manage stress. Emotions are unpredictable. We never know what will trigger an emotional response, and when stress strikes, we don’t always have the time or opportunity to get back into balance by going for a run, for example, or taking a relaxing bath. What you need are tools that allow you to manage stress quickly and in the moment.

Emotional awareness depends on your ability to rapidly relieve stress

Emotional awareness requires the ability to manage stress as it’s happening. The ability to quickly reduce stress allows you to safely face strong emotions, confident in the knowledge that you’ll be able to stay calm and in control—even when something upsetting happens. Once you know how to calm yourself down once you start to feel overwhelmed, you can begin to explore the emotions that seem uncomfortable or even frightening.

Emotion is a double-edged sword that is meant to help but can also hurt

If you're a person who doesn't know how to manage your emotions, or have lived with such a person, feelings can seem frightening and overwhelming. Fear and helplessness may cause you to freeze, act out, or shut down—inhibiting your ability to think rationally and causing you to say and do things you later regret.

Common ways of controlling or avoiding uncomfortable emotions

Many addictive and inappropriate behaviors are rooted in an inability to take emotionally stressful situations in your stride. Instead, you may try to control or avoid difficult emotions by:

Distracting yourself with obsessive thoughts, escapist fantasies, mindless entertainment, and addictive behaviors in order to avoid emotions you fear or dislike. Watching television for hours, playing computer games, and surfing the Internet are common ways we avoid dealing with our feelings.

Sticking with one emotional response that you feel comfortable with, no matter what the situation requires. For example, constantly joking around to cover up insecurities or getting angry all the time to avoid feeling frightened and sad.

Shutting down or shutting out intense emotions. If you feel overwhelmed by your emotions, you may cope by numbing yourself. You may feel completely disconnected from your emotions, like you no longer have feelings at all.

The upside of unpleasant emotions

Anger can be both deadly and restorative. Out-of-control anger can run amok endangering others and ourselves. But anger can also protect and preserve life. Anger is an emotion with a lot of energy that can be used to save life by mobilizing us and inspiring determination and creative action.

Sadness can lead to depression but also supports emotional healing. Sadness is a call to slow down, stop thinking and surrender to what we are experiencing emotionally. Sadness asks us to open up, trust and allow ourselves to be vulnerable in order to heal and recover from loss.

Fear that overwhelms us is debilitating but fear also triggers lifesaving reactions that protect us from harm. Fear is a deeply rooted emotion—often the cause of chronic anger or depression. Overwhelming fear can be a barrier that separates us from others, but fear also supports life by signaling danger and triggering life-preserving action.

Why avoiding unpleasant emotions isn’t the answer

We are all born with a capacity to freely experience the full range of human emotions—including joy, anger, sadness, and fear. Yet many people are disconnected from some or all of their feelings.

People who were traumatized in early life often disconnect from their emotions and the physical feelings they evoke. But when you try to avoid pain and discomfort, your emotions become distorted, displaced, and stifled. You lose touch with your emotions when you attempt to control or avoid them, rather than experience them.

The consequences of avoiding your emotions:

You don’t know yourself. This is one of the most important consequences. It includes understanding why you react to different situations, how much or how little things mean to you, and the difference between what you think you want and what you really need.

You lose the good, along with the bad. When you shut down negative feelings like anger, fear, or sadness, you also shut down your ability to experience positive feelings such as joy, love, and happiness.

It’s exhausting. You can distort and numb emotions, but you can’t eliminate them entirely. It takes a lot of energy to avoid having an authentic emotional experience and keep your feelings suppressed. The effort leaves you stressed and drained.

It damages your relationships. The more you distance yourself from your feelings, the more distant you become from others, as well as yourself. You lose the ability to build strong relationships and communicate effectively, both of which depend on being in touch with your emotions.

By avoiding emotions we dislike, we distance ourselves from pleasant emotions

When we disconnect from emotions we dislike – emotions that we find uncomfortable or overwhelming - we automatically shut down intensely positive emotions like joy, laughter, and playfulness that sustain us in difficult and challenging times. We can overcome loss and great challenges, but only if we retain our ability to experience joy. These pleasant, uplifting emotions remind us in the worst of times that life is worthwhile and can be wonderful as well as painful.

Make friends with all your emotions

If you’ve never learned how to manage stress, the idea of reconnecting to unpleasant emotions may be uncomfortable. But even traumatized people can heal by learning to safely navigate their emotional experiences. You can change the way you experience and respond to your emotions.

The process of raising emotional awareness involves reconnecting with all of the core emotions, including anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and joy via a process of self-healing. As you start this process, keep the following facts in mind:

Emotions quickly come and go, if you let them

You may be worried that once you reconnect to the emotions you’ve been avoiding, you’ll be stuck with them forever, but that’s not so. When we don’t obsess about our emotions, even the most painful and difficult feelings subside and lose their power to control our attention. 

When our feelings are freed, the core emotions of anger, sadness, fear, and joy quickly come and go. Throughout the day, you’ll see, read, or hear something that momentarily triggers a strong feeling of some sort. But if you don’t focus on the feeling, it won’t last, and a different emotion will soon take its place.

Your body can clue you in to your emotions

Our emotions are closely aligned to physical sensations in our bodies. When you experience a strong emotion, you probably also feel it somewhere in your body. By paying attention to these physical sensations, you can understand your emotions better. For example, if your stomach tightens up every time you spend time with a particular person, you can conclude that you feel uncomfortable in their presence.

With the exception of a headache, physical feelings are usually experienced somewhere below the bridge of the nose. Examples include:

Sensations in your stomach Tension in your muscles

Subtle urges to move body parts Flashes of insight or “gut feelings”

You don’t have to choose between thinking and feeling

Emotional awareness functions like instinct. When it’s strongly developed, you’ll know what you are feeling without having to think about it—and you’ll be able to use these emotional signals to understand what is really going on in a situation and act accordingly. The goal is to find a balance between your intellect and your emotions. The fact is that emotional awareness will help you set healthy boundaries, communicate well with others, predict what others are going to do, and make better decisions.

Emotional awareness is a mindfulness skill you can learn

Emotional awareness is a skill—which means that with patience and practice, it can be learned at any time of life. You can develop emotional awareness by learning a mindfulness meditation that focuses on moment-to-moment physical and emotional sensations in your body. This meditation, “Ride the Wild Horse,” helps you to get in touch with difficult emotions and manage uncomfortable feelings. When you know how to do this, you can remain in control, rather than becoming overwhelmed—even in very challenging situations.

The Ride the Wild Horse audio mindfulness meditation should not be undertaken until you are confident of your ability to quickly manage stress in the moment. This is especially important if you are prone to panic attacks or have a history of unresolved traumatic experience.

Next Step...

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Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

Learning How to Be More Aware

Stand firm even when you are buffeted by events and emotions.

© iStockphoto/ChuckSchugPhotography

When you think of a "perfect leader," what comes to mind?

You might picture someone who never lets his temper get out of control, no matter what problems he's facing. You might think of someone who has the complete trust of her staff, always speaks kindly, listens to her team, is easy to talk to and always makes careful, informed decisions.

These are qualities of someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence.

In this article, we'll look at why emotional intelligence is so important for leaders – and how you, as a leader, can improve yours.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand and manage both your own emotions, and those of the people around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence usually know what they're feeling, what this means, and how their emotions can affect other people.

For leaders, having emotional intelligence is essential for success. After all, who is more likely to succeed – a leader who shouts at his team when he's under stress, or a leader who stay in control, and calmly assesses the situation?

According to Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who helped make the idea of EI popular, there are five main elements of emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness. 2. Self-regulation.3. Motivation.4. Empathy.5. Social skills.

The more that you, as a leader, manage each of these areas, the higher your emotional intelligence. So, let's look at each element in more detail and examine how you can grow as a leader.

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

1. Self-awareness

If you're self-aware, you always know how you feel. And you know how your emotions, and your actions, can affect the people around you. Being self-aware when you're in a leadership

position also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses. And it means having humility.

So, what can you do to improve your self-awareness?

Keep a journal – Journals help improve your self-awareness. If you spend just a few minutes each day writing down your thoughts, this can move you to a higher degree of self-awareness.

Slow down – When you experience anger or other strong emotions, slow down to examine why. Remember, no matter what the situation, you can always choose how you react to it. (Our article on Managing Your Emotions at Work will help you understand what your emotions are telling you.)

2. Self-regulation

Leaders who regulate themselves effectively rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. Self-regulation is all about staying in control.

This element of emotional intelligence, according to Goleman, also covers a leader's flexibility and commitment to personal accountability.

So, how can you improve your ability to self-regulate?

Know your values – Do you have a clear idea of where you absolutely will not compromise? Do you know what values are most important to you? Spend some time examining your "code of ethics." If you know what's most important to you, then you probably won't have to think twice when you face a moral or ethical decision – you'll make the right choice.

Hold yourself accountable – If you tend to blame others when something goes wrong, stop. Make a commitment to admit to your mistakes and face the consequences, whatever they are. You'll probably sleep better at night, and you'll quickly earn the respect of those around you.

Practice being calm – The next time you're in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act. Do you relieve your stress by shouting at someone else? Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself. Also, try to write down all of the negative things you want to say, and then rip it up and throw it away. Expressing these emotions on paper (and not showing them to anyone!) is better than speaking them aloud to your team. What's more, this helps you challenge your reactions to make sure that they're fair!

3. Motivation

Self-motivated leaders consistently work toward their goals. And they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

How can you improve your motivation?

Re-examine why you're doing this – It's easy to forget what you really love about your career. So, take some time to remember why you wanted this job. If you're unhappy in your role and you're struggling to remember why you wanted it, try the Five Whys technique to find the root of the problem. Starting at the root often helps you look at your situation in a new way.

And make sure that your goal statements are fresh and energizing. For more on this, see our article on Goal Setting.

Know where you stand – Determine how motivated you are to lead. Our Leadership Motivation Assessment can help you see clearly how motivated you are in your leadership role. If you need to increase your motivation to lead, and it then directs you to resources that can help.

Be hopeful and find something good – Motivated leaders are usually optimistic, no matter what they face. Adopting this mindset might take practice, but it's well worth the effort. Every time you face a challenge, or even a failure, try to find at least one good thing about the situation. It might be something small, like a new contact, or something with long-term effects, like an important lesson learned. But there's almost always something positive – you just have to look for it.

4. Empathy

For leaders, having empathy is critical to managing a successful team or organization. Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.

If you want to earn the respect and loyalty of your team, then show them you care by being empathic.

How can you improve your empathy?

Put yourself in someone else's position – It's easy to support your own point of view. After all, it's yours! But take the time to look at situations from other people's perspectives. See our article on Perceptual Positions for a useful technique for doing this.

Pay attention to body language – Perhaps when you listen to someone, you cross your arms, move your feet back and forth, or bite your lip. This body language tells others how you really feel about a situation, and the message you're giving isn't positive! Learning to read body language can be a real asset when you're in a leadership role because you'll be better able to determine how someone truly feels. And this gives you the opportunity to respond appropriately.

Respond to feelings – You ask your assistant to work late – again. And although he agrees, you can hear the disappointment in his voice. So, respond by addressing his feelings. Tell him you appreciate how willing he is to work extra hours, and that you're just as frustrated about working late. If possible, figure out a way for future late nights to be less of an issue (for example, give him Monday mornings off).

5. Social skills

Leaders who do well in this element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They're just as open to hearing bad news as good news, and they're experts at getting their team to support them and be excited about a new mission or project.

Leaders who have good social skills are also good at managing change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. They're rarely satisfied with leaving things as they are, but they're also not willing to make everyone else do the work. They set the example with their own behavior.

So, how can you improve your leadership by building social skills?

Learn conflict resolution – Leaders must know how to resolve conflicts between their team members, customers, or vendors. Learning conflict resolution skills is vital if you want to succeed.

Improve your communication skills – How well do you communicate? Our communication quiz will help you answer this question, and it will give useful feedback on what you can do to improve.

Learn how to praise others – As a leader, you can inspire the loyalty of your team simply by giving praise when it's earned. Learning how to effectively praise others is a fine art, but well worth the effort.

Key Points

Thanks to the many challenges and opportunities that arise when working with others, leaders must have a solid understanding of how their emotions and actions affect the people around them. The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he or she will be.

Take the time to work on self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Working on this will help you excel in the future!

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For instance, these are what I’ve come to think of as Twelve Rules for Self-Management. Show me a business where everyone lives and works by self-managing, and I’ll bet it’s a business destined for greatness.

1. Live by your values, whatever they are. You confuse people when you don’t, because they can’t predict how you’ll behave.2. Speak up! No one can “hear” what you’re thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people can’t do.3. Honor your own good word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you.4. When you ask for more responsibility, expect to be held fully accountable. This is what seizing ownership of something is all about; it’s usually an all or nothing kind of thing, and so you’ve got to treat it that way.

5. Don’t expect people to trust you if you aren’t willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations.6. Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you.7. Have a good work ethic, for it seems to be getting rare today. Curious, for those “old-fashioned” values like dependability, timeliness, professionalism and diligence are prized more than ever before. Be action-oriented. Seek to make things work. Be willing to do what it takes.8. Be interesting. Read voraciously, and listen to learn, then teach and share everything you know. No one owes you their attention; you have to earn it and keep attracting it.9. Be nice. Be courteous, polite and respectful. Be considerate. Manners still count for an awful lot in life, and thank goodness they do.10. Be self-disciplined. That’s what adults are supposed to “grow up” to be.11. Don’t be a victim or a martyr. You always have a choice, so don’t shy from it: Choose and choose without regret. Look forward and be enthusiastic.12. Keep healthy and take care of yourself. Exercise your mind, body and spirit so you can be someone people count on, and so you can live expansively and with abundance.

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