Self-Awareness: What's Going On Inside of Me?

You know those moments when something or someone startles you and you gasp or jump back? Or when your eyes well up with tears and you feel your nose flaring? Or when your pulse starts racing and your face gets flushed? Or when you are so overcoming with joy that you scream and jump up and down?

Welcome to emotions!

All of us have emotional reactions. I’m sure I will have many emotional reactions this weekend as I watch the Titans game. We have them when a dear friend or family member moves away or when a car cuts you off in traffic or when you are passed over for a promotion. Emotional reactions happen in those moments and learning to be aware of what we are feeling is crucial.

The first movement of growing in Emotional Intelligence is developing competency in self-awareness. Self-awareness is the ability to understand and name your emotions and to be aware of how they impact your relationships, performance and overall quality of life. It requires that you learn to slow down and pay attention to what you're feeling, to be curious about what that feeling is connected to and to develop and use a language to name those feelings.

Frequently, I will ask someone I'm working with what to name what they are feeling about a specific situation and their response will be something like: "I'm tired" or "I'm so busy" or "I'm uncomfortable". While all of these answers may be a reality of what someone is experiencing, those answers do not describe a feeling. But let's be honest, naming what you are feeling can be hard work because there seems to be so many “feeling words”.

Several years ago, I came across a document called "The Ultimate List of Emotions" and it contained 458 different feeling words. Overwhelming! The National Academy of Sciences has narrowed the list down to 27 emotions—certainly better, but still a lot of choices. If we're going to learn how to name what we are feeling, we need to get to primary or core emotions. Depending on who you follow, most researchers and authors claim that there are between three and 11 core emotions.

"The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain".

I have landed on five core emotions that impact everything in our lives. Those emotions are anger, fear, gladness, sadness and shame. When I share this list, I'm often told that there is only one good emotion. But emotions should not be seen as good or bad, they just are. Emotions are an internal response to an external stimulus. We actually have feelings before we have thoughts. Daniel Goleman, one of the main voices in the field of EQ, writes, "The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain".

That’s why we must learn how to grow in self-awareness and be able to name what we are feeling. When we do, we begin to see our emotions are important data points that tell us what we want, what we need and how we move forward in a healthier manner.

Growing in self-awareness requires that we slow down enough to be curious about what’s going on inside. Here’s a practical exercise you can try this week: Set three alarms on your phone throughout the day each day. When the alarm goes off, take a minute and ask a simple question: Of the 5 primary emotions listed above, which one have I been feeling recently? Don’t judge yourself. Just notice it and pay attention to what emotion(s) appears frequently. Then ask yourself what you need in light of that emotion being present.

It’s a baby step in emotional intelligence. But it’s the first and foundational step that we all must take if we’re going to know what’s going on inside of us.