The Role of Self-Awareness in Emotional Intelligence

You are sitting at your desk reviewing the latest sales figures, and they look pretty good. Alt-hough you are probably not aware of any strong feelings, you know you are feeling satisfied and calm. Your phone rings. You pick it up and hear the angry voice of a client, one of your biggest accounts, who is threatening to go with another supplier because a shipment you said you were sending did not arrive. Immediately, you become aware that you are no longer calm—your heart is pounding, you feel yourself starting to sweat, and your breathing is quicker—you know you are feeling anxious.

Self-awareness is a simple phrase for a com-plicated set of information. It refers to an awareness of ourselves on many different levels: our body and our physical reactions; our emotions, preferences, and intentions; our goals and values; and our knowledge about how we come across to others. The more self-awareness we have, the more easily we can adjust our responses to others, and the more mutually satisfying our interactions and transactions. Tuning in to our-selves and becoming more aware of what we are experiencing as we are experiencing it improves Emotional Intelligence.

All emotions are composed of bodily energy at the cellular level. Emotions are a form of data, and even emotions that do not give us “pleasure” provide us with important information. All emotions are therefore positive for the information they provide; as we learn to tune in to the mes-sages they send us, we become healthier.

Being aware of an emotion is not the same as expressing it. We can make a conscious choice about how to respond or whether to respond at all, but we can only make these choices if we are aware of the emotions we are experiencing. Awareness opens up new possibilities for behavior.

If we are not aware of what is happening within us, our responses might only be auto-matic—not guided by reason or by intuition. If, for example, we begin our day with a negative experience, it can leave us irritable and unpleasant, affecting our dealings with other people, and we might not even be aware of it. When someone finally calls our attention to the “blow up” or irritability, we are surprised into awareness. Once we figure out what we are experi-encing, we feed this data to the thinking brain and make a more conscious effort to change the negative outlook into a positive one.

Not being aware of our “self” can also get us into trouble when someone “pushes our buttons.” We blow up out of proportion to the situation because a limbic memory was triggered. Sometimes we revert back to responses learned in childhood—shrinking when a supervisor yells at us, perhaps, because of an old memory of verbal abuse. Being self-aware is the key to self-control and freedom of action; out of it can come empathy and genuine human connection.

We are often not aware of what we are feeling until the feelings become quite strong. The truth, however, is that we are always “feeling” something just as we are always thinking some-thing. If we want to grow in intelligence, we must pay more attention to the cognitive pro-cess, and if we want to become more emotion-ally intelligent, we need to pay attention and let ourselves truly feel. Tuning in to our physical self is where self-awareness must begin.

Serious emotional or physical trauma can cause an individual to “turn off” their awareness of what is happening to them—a way of coping that can become an emotional “handicap” car-ried into adulthood that stifles ability and lead-ership potential. The damage can be corrected with positive relationships in adulthood, a desire to change, and therapy. Adult brains have the capacity to relearn emotional patterns through persistence and patience.

What words do you use to describe your emotions? Many people are unable to give labels to their feelings beyond a few basic ones, such as anger, worry, sadness, or happiness. (The “negative” emotions are the ones we seem to remem-ber, no matter what!) Since self-awareness is an important part of Emotional Intelligence and being in touch with what we are feeling is criti-cal to being self-aware, we need a language or a framework to comfortably describe our emotions.

Emotional energy can expand, giving us a push, or it can contract, pulling us back. The fol-lowing model represents direction and intensity of energy for the most common emotions. Because there are many millions of neural pathways, many combinations, subtleties, and synonyms of the basic emotions listed on the model are possible.

In the preceding model, the left-hand point represents increased energy that can overflow the body and become other-directed; violence against persons or property is the extreme form of this. The closed point, however, signifies this is a closed pathway that leads to a diminishing of the self. The right-hand point represents the other extreme—reduced energy flow. Again, this is a closed pathway that closes off the self and in the extreme can lead to suicide. The emotional states of anxiety at the bottom of the model represent a push-pull toward action, or both an increase and decrease in energy—emotions that can distract us and keep us in a state of uncer-tainty. The further an individual moves from the center toward the left, the right, or the bottom point on the model the more he or she experi-ences a more extreme form of that family of emotions.

Only those emotions at the top, open end of the model are both expansive for the self and are experienced as positive. They can be self-directed or other-directed emotions. The left, right, and bottom directions are all necessary and normal, but we generally perceive the three points of the model as negative. Without awareness and appropriate handling of the emotion we are experiencing, our limbic brains can easily propel us far down one of the points. An extreme in any of these can be dangerous to ourselves or others. The points are dead-ends and are rarely fully reached by emotionally intelligent people with self-awareness. Our thinking brains can help point us back toward the center of the model and transform the energy back to the upward direction. But we need to spend some time peri-odically moving near the points to increase our awareness of what’s happening around us, gather strength, and make the changes neces-sary to get ourselves back on track.

The Energy Model, as it is shown, is a flat diagram with two dimensions on the page. However, the actions of emotion can really be considered as being three-dimensional. If you can envision the left and right points as bending around backward so they touch in back, this demonstrates how close the strong emotions of rage and depression can be—how people cross over from violence and agitation to suicide. Extreme cases like murder-suicide demonstrate this relationship and are a vivid example of emotionally unintelligent behavior.

If we do not pay attention to feelings and learn how to label and deal with them through better communication, they reveal themselves in the body: fatigue, lack of concentration, pain, and poor health. If we focus on emotions and allow ourselves to feel them, little by little, they will deepen in intensity and help us learn and con-nect with others. Suppressing emotions, both the positive and negative ones, seems to deny our brains access to important natural chemi-cals. The alternative, prescription and illicit drugs, are poor substitutes for the natural chemicals that are released through emotional experience and expression.

Look inward. We are bombarded with messages about the outside world, yet we often fail to com-municate with the world inside ourselves. Here are some ways to get to know who we are:

Keep a journal (see The Fundamentals of Emo tional Intelligence for details). Also try writing about a specific question: “What’s important to me?” After you spend a number of days writing on this topic, begin to ask yourself: “Is how I spend my time reflective of what’s important to me?”
Get in touch with your own work preferences as a clue to your passions. Instead of just taking on any project, work to become part of those activities you love. If you have lost touch with your-self to the extent that you don’t remember what you love anymore, write about what you really loved in the past.
Become aware of where in the body you are feeling an emotion: the neck, shoulders, jaw, throat, abdomen, chest. If you tune in to your physical responses, you can guide the energy and respond flexibly, rather than be in the grip of the emotion. To get the most out of our en-ergy, we want its intensity—but we should not let it control us (see The Role of Self-Confidence in Emotional Intelligence for more details).
Develop a habit of self-observation and self-curi-osity: Visualize yourself as if you are observing a third person. Think about your own thinking. Rather than allowing yourself to operate on autopilot, tune in to yourself and your emotional stream of consciousness, and thus identify your subtle moods.
Make yourself spend 15 to 20 minutes daily on self-reflection and awareness-building. Schedule this in your planner and don’t let other things interfere with it. Do something silent, pleasant, and relaxing, such as a quiet walk, and let your thoughts wander at will.
During your commute to work, think ahead about two situations that you will encounter during the day: one that will produce no strong emotion, and another that will result in some emotion. As you live the experience of each situation, pay attention to yourself: How are you reacting? What’s going on in your body and in your head? For at least two weeks, keep a small log at your desk and write down information about each of these areas as they relate to a specific situation:
- Situation
- Heart rate
- Breathing
- Perspiration
- Muscle tightness
- Feelings
When you sense tension or low energy, fix it immediately. Take a few bites of a healthy snack (junk food does not count!), get some fresh air, take a little walk for a change of scenery, stand up and stretch and shrug your shoulders a few times, or do a few twists. We need a creative pause of two to three minutes every 20 to 30 minutes to keep energy high.
Increasing self-awareness means that you will also become more aware of the “bad stuff,” things you don’t particularly like about yourself. Challenges and problems are normal, so accept the fact that you will never get to be wise enough and powerful enough to eliminate flaws. Being self-aware means that when you have a problem, you can turn it into a challenge—an oppor-tunity to grow. Here are some ideas:
- Define your problem very carefully. Ask your-self, What’s really going on here?
- Brainstorm new solutions, including silly ones (they often have useful elements).
- Weigh the pros and cons of your ideas. Try to balance your brain and your heart. What is your heart or your “gut” telling you? Is your alternative truly something you can commit to with your whole being? Facts and figures are not the only things that matter.
- Live with your preferred solution for a while, rather than jump in to take immediate action. Let your intuition take over, and incubate your plan for a few days. If you still feel committed with your heart as well as your head, then…
- Take action. Evaluate how it’s going as you implement your plan, and modify only as needed.

Ask for feedback. Interestingly, self-awareness comes not only from careful observation of ourselves but from those around us. In fact, sig-nificant others in our lives can provide valuable data to increase our self-awareness. Many organizations make use of this idea through some form of 360-degree feedback in which cus-tomers, peers, and subordinates, as well as supervisors, provide feedback on how you are doing.

If your organization does not use such a system of performance review (or if it is done badly), you can still obtain valuable information by soliciting feedback from people you know using the Leadership Assessment Checklist included in Assessing Emotional Intelligence. Such feedback will increase your awareness by reducing blind spots.

Look for feedback. Trusted friends and colleagues can help us see how we come across to other people.

Make arrangements to talk with someone who listens well and who can be completely honest with you—someone whom you can talk to reg-ularly about yourself. Get them to help you look at yourself objectively in several broad areas. Discuss whether or not you are focused on your purpose, and evaluate whether or not what you are doing is helping you fulfill the purpose as you have defined it. Having such an advisor will help improve your health and your career.
Ask your advisor to point out any destructive patterns he or she sees in you. For example, do you frequently use avoidance, sarcasm, cyni-cism, or demands when you meet challenges? If so, such behaviors will get in the way of your purpose, and awareness of these patterns is the first step toward controlling them. Start noticing, and keep a log of when the problem be-havior occurs.
You can also enhance self-awareness by teaming up with a trusted colleague on the job. Make a point of having lunch with that person on a reg-ular basis in order to exchange helpful information and observations on each other’s be-havior. Take turns being in the hot seat.
Ask about another person’s perception of you, and don’t be afraid or threatened by what they might say. Look at it as an opportunity to increase your self-knowledge and awareness. If you are too nervous about what they might say and lack the confidence to ask, The Role of Self-Confidence in Emotional Intelligence can help you.