Emotional Intelligence: Self Awareness

The ArmaniTalks brand deals with communication skills.

One of the reasons I bring up emotional intelligence is because it is a major subject in the world of communication.

If you have poor emotional intelligence, then you will often have poor self-awareness.

If you have poor self-awareness, then let’s just say you are burning more bridges than creating.

Humans are emotional creatures.

We love to view ourselves as logical.

But unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

We are flawed creatures, who have an ego, feel anger & have times when we feel like losing it.

Nothing wrong with that. As long as we acknowledge it.

Self-awareness is a superpower in the world of communication skills.

The more you talk to others, the more you see everything stems from self-awareness.

In today’s blog post, I want to talk about the importance of self-awareness and how emotional intelligence will put you on the right path.

What is Self Awareness?

There are a lot of definitions of self-awareness.

My personal definition is:

Self-awareness is the conscious mindfulness of one’s subconscious mind.

Now, this may seem like a very cryptic statement, but it is not.

Look closer.

What really makes up our subconscious mind?

3 major components of the subconscious mind include:

• Emotions
• Past experiences
• Present-day habits

Those are the majority of the thoughts which make up your subconscious mind.

Often, we just carry out these tasks on autopilot.

When we feel angry, we react.

When we brush our teeth, we do it without thought.

We use past events as the groundwork for future events. 

These are just a few examples of how we carry out our lives without much thought.

We just react.

Not much conscious awareness which requires thinking.

A person who just reacts without thought has low self-awareness.

A person who can view themself from a 3rd party perspective has high self-awareness.

Why Emotional intelligence is Important for Self Awareness

We often have a wrong understanding of what emotional intelligence means.

This causes us to undermine the subject.

In order for you to understand what emotional intelligence means, you need to understand what emotions are.

Emotions are feelings with a perception.

So what are feelings?

Feelings are physical sensations in your body.

So in summary, we feel physical sensations in our body, then we assign a perception to it.

The perception holds the narrative.

Feelings + Perception = Emotion

Positive perceptions get defined as happy, excited, ambitious etc.

Negative perceptions get defined as anxious, sad, angry etc.

The reason emotional intelligence is huge for self-awareness is because it allows you to clarify the ambiguous.

It allows you to add nuance to what many overlook.

People who are emotionally UNINTLLIGENT let their perceptions dictate their reality.

People who are emotionally INTELLIGENT know their perceptions are up for interpretation.

Those with high emotional intelligence do not allow their feelings to cause them to make a permanent decision.

Rather, they feel their feelings.

Then dissect it with their logical mind, not their emotional one.

Then, they decide what the next step is going to be via rational & sound judgment.

That’s self-awareness.

When you break it down, maturation really comes down to raising your level of self-awareness.

Picture the most mature person you know.

They still feel hectic emotions like anyone else.

But they have the emotional intelligence to make their moves rationally instead of impulsively.

How Self Awareness & Emotional Intelligence ties into Communication Skills

Emotional intelligence allows you to understand your internal world.

Mastering your internal world is a prerequisite to conquering your external world.

If you are someone who gets angry and just starts screaming at others, then you will not be building too many connections.

The lack of self-awareness will cause you to damage relationships.

Building self-awareness is a painful process.

It forces you to tame your ego.

Taming your ego is no easy task.

We are not born self-aware creatures. It is something that is exercised in our existence.

Therefore, those who tame their ego had to do it through a lot of heartaches, headaches and objectivity.

If you want to form meaningful relationships with others, then you need to be able to master your emotional states.

Learn the art of feeling a physical sensation without attaching a label to it.

One of the best times to do that is when you are feeling HEATED.

Ever had a car cut you off in traffic?

That didn’t feel too good, did it?

But use that as an opportunity to sit with a lot of tough emotions.

A lot of emotions which will break people.

But just sit with them anyways.

The more you can sit with tough physical sensations, the more you develop our emotional resilience.

And the more you build the emotional resilience, the more you tame your ego.

A by-product of taming your ego is self-awareness.

Self-awareness allows you to realize that you are simply a character in this world.

Just because you are the main character of your world does not mean you’re the main character of someone else’s.

This core understanding allows you to make much smarter choices in the future.

Build Self Awareness thru Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence breaks down into multiple components.

You have emotional regulation, self-awareness, motivation, empathy and much more.

This is a subject to leverage if you want to build your street smarts.

Humans are emotional creatures at the end of the day.

Those who can manage their emotions will allow themselves to conquer challenges with more poise and build long-lasting connections.

Those who can’t control their emotions will allow someone else to control it for them.

Sad, but true.

Remember this, my friend.

Emotions come and go, but the consequences can come and stay.

Therefore, you always need to be mindful of your emotions.

Be self-aware even when you are the villain in the scenario.

It will not be easy.

But no one said building self-awareness was going to be an easy task.

Keep treating self-awareness like a muscle that you will continue to work on.

Soon enough, your emotional muscles will be so strong, that you will feel BULLETPROOF.

– ArmaniTalks