Self-Awareness & Emotion Management (Part 1)

 The word "Emotion" can best describe any feeling we experience on account of situations, relationships or even mood.

Words like warmth, sensation, fervour and sentiment promote emotions as we read them – linking our feelings to the emotions these words evoke. During childhood, emotions are more uninhibited, not curbed by societal demands like cultural, religious or communal conditioning. By adulthood, it becomes critical for the individual to learn and manage emotions for personal and professional wellness, even survival.

 Why is it important to manage our emotions?

 When we comprehend the nature of emotions, we become aware of what affects our feelings. The more we understand these triggers, the more plausibly we learn how to respond to them rather than merely react.

Decision-making, life challenges, and managing complex relationships are some life experiences that are impacted by the emotions we feel and display. Identifying our emotions allows us to control our feelings rather than have them manage our judgement in interactions that tempt our emotions to overrule our logic. Life also brings changes over time, and coping with these changes, like dealing with adversities, demands that we handle emotions with mindful intention. Managing emotions includes cultivating the ability to develop flexibility, tolerance, and regulate emotions. Since impulsive, emotional reactions promote undesirable or disastrous consequences, strategies are critical for handling emotions.

 The initial way that can help us understand our emotions with sharper clarity is the development of self-awareness. Recognizing our emotional and physiological experiences enables us to identify what positive emotions promote harmony in our thoughts and, consequentially, our actions. Similarly, by becoming aware of the feelings detrimental to wellbeing, we are more focused on acknowledging them and simultaneously disengaging with them for our wellness. Our self-awareness also supports our regulation of emotions by discovering our inherent nature (our personality traits) and nature's impact on our communication and relationships.

Through self-discovery, we also become conscious of mindfulness in our behaviour and interactions. We also become more aware of how our responses to the world around us are reactive or unconscious. Simple yet mindful steps to help us become more aware of our emotions are through a purposeful and heightened focus on deliberate consciousness regarding life.

The first step is to be mindful of every emotion we feel. This awareness will help us answer why we think the way we do. Secondly, the awareness of which emotion makes you feel positive helps build meaningful social, personal and professional relationships. Thirdly, we must ask ourselves how we respond to environmental stimuli (such as entertainment) that promote emotions around us. Books, music, films, and painting are some of the most common forms of entertainment that encourage feelings and pleasantly initiate us into a short-term hypnotic state. Fourthly, we must ask ourselves how comfortable we are regarding our feelings. Are we reluctant, ashamed, guilty, scared, or uncomfortable to give names to our feelings? If we are, we need to consider the reason for this reluctance.

 The choice that lies in our hands regarding our emotions is exceptional and life-transforming. No matter how a situation might be, be it euphoric, challenging or exciting, our decision to communicate our feelings is our decision. It will also be a mindful decision that impacts our personal and professional development and progress.