With this in mind, how do we balance our emotional self-awareness and our communication strategies in different contexts?
The most important way to recognise emotions is to be calm and in the moment. Remember – a calm brain is a thinking brain. Being in the moment means taking some deep breaths, then focus on one sense at a time and fully notice what you can hear (the traffic, birds, talking), see (trees, writing, books), feel (your clothes on your skin, the texture of the chair you are sitting on), smell (food, perfume, rain), and taste (coffee, toothpaste). Take a couple more deep breaths and feel your strength. Then you are ready to initiate a conversation with a smile, eye contact and a clear head so your thoughts will flow.
Maintaining the ‘balancing act’ of self-awareness, building relationships and communicating with others is a skill that we practice every day when we interact with others. Are you balancing well today?
Blind spot or not, managing ourselves stems from being self aware and includes emotional self control (so we don’t run screaming from the staff room), having a positive outlook (there must be someone here I can talk to), wanting to get things done (let’s stay and learn something), and being adaptable enough to change our approach to different situations (talking to a supervisor as opposed to talking to our friend).
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SELF AWARE?
When someone is humbly aware of their strengths and weaknesses and how their feelings may affect their interactions with other people - then they are self-aware. Experiencing and recognising emotions means that we can choose from the six emotions that humans are capable of: Happiness, Anger, Surprise, Sadness, Fear and Disgust. These emotions and combinations of these emotions are reflected in 21 different facial expressions to suit every occasion.