3 Keys To Developing Emotional Awareness
Developing our emotional awareness means increasing our ability to recognize the patterns to which our emotions adjust. In other words, it is about identifying the factors that activate our emotions, how they do it and the consequences of this activation.
Human beings follow more or less stable lines of action throughout their lives. However, change is also a constant. Our emotions are always on the move. We are not passive beings in the face of external events: this is why we maintain a great internal dynamic. Developing emotional awareness is also a way to detect these changes.
The end goal is to stop being passive spectators to what is happening in our internal world. No emotion occurs or dissipates by chance. If we can identify what we are feeling and anticipate how it may affect us, we will surely engage in much more adaptive behaviors. So here are three keys to developing emotional awareness.
1. Examination of motivations
One of the exercises that most helps us develop emotional awareness is to examine our motivations frequently. Motivation is the force that drives us to act in a certain direction. Psychoanalysis, like other contemporary trends, has shown us that very often we ignore our real motivations.
We sometimes follow the deepest desires of our being. So we act accordingly and that gives us a certain balance. Other times, on the other hand, we don’t know why we choose one option or the other. Or we think one way and act another. Or we feel dissatisfied with what we are doing, not knowing exactly why.
Examining motivations allows us to explore precisely those forces that drive us to act. Could it be will or fear? A decision or a habit? Frustration, anger or some other emotion? Studying these motivations leads us to develop emotional awareness.
2. An understanding of the use of time, a key to developing emotional awareness
One of the most telling elements of our emotional world is the distribution of the time we perform. This is an abstract category that offers valuable clues for understanding our psychological reality. By analyzing how we manage our time, we will succeed in developing emotional awareness.
It is particularly important to observe whether certain elements are present in this time management. Elements like procrastination, the feeling of lack of time and a perception of slowness in its course. Each of these states tells us about concrete emotional situations.
Procrastination tells us about insecurity and lack of commitment; it can also sometimes signal to us an unconscious rejection of what we put off until later. The feeling of lack of time reveals obsessions and anxiety. The slowness of time suggests the presence of melancholy. Therefore, analyzing our perception and our management of time is an infinite source of information to know ourselves.
3. Regulate the emotional tone
One of the factors that helps us develop emotional awareness is identifying the most intense emotions that we frequently experience. In our way of being, some emotions are stronger than others. For example, some people spend their time getting angry. Others tend to laugh at everything. Or to feel downcast. The predominant emotion is what gives a particular emotional tone to each of us.
Quite often we “marry” exclusively with one of these emotional dimensions. We build an explosive, passive, fearful or chronically sympathetic personality and we keep it forever. Without realizing it, we forget how to feel any other way. We get used to these predominant emotions and end up making them the focus of our way of being.
To develop emotional awareness, it is advisable to learn to regulate the emotional tone. To set certain limits on these predominant emotions and to allow others to emerge. It is a way of exploring other facets of our being and allowing other sensations and emotions to flourish. It allows us to be more aware of all that is in us.
The development of emotional awareness gives us greater lucidity when it comes to acting. It gives our actions a more authentic meaning. It is, without a doubt, one of those tasks that lead to a fuller life and a healthier personality.
Our thoughts Let’s find out what emotional awareness is and learn to develop it to have more control over our reality.
