What Is This Feeling Anyway?

SUMMARY

Are you in tune with your feelings in the moment, or do your emotions confuse you and you find it hard to navigate them? Stick with me in this episode and I'll show you how to get the Emotional Awareness that you need.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and this week, we're going to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence by answering that question, "Why am I feeling this way anyway?"

Let me take you now through five key principles that you need to understand so that you can develop this critical competency called Emotional Self-Awareness.

The first principle is to expand your emotional vocabulary.

The second key principle is to listen to your body.

The third principle is to make a connection.

The fourth principle is to recognise patterns.

The fifth principle is to go deeper for clarity.

So, we need to challenge each of those answers that we come up with and ask, "Well, am I actually feeling that?", or "Is there another word that I could use to describe that?"

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, when we continue this conversation around Emotional Intelligence and the first quadrant of Self-Awareness by taking a look at the second competency within this quadrant, Accurate Self-Assessment. Your perception is your reality, and sometimes it can be different to what other people are thinking or seeing in your behaviour. So, it's vital to be able to accurately assess your strengths and your limitations, and we'll talk about that next week. Make sure you take a moment to subscribe and to share this episode on your social media so that other people get the same advantage that you're getting right now. Remember, the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit is coming up on the 8th of September, and there is a link for you to register in the show notes if you haven't already. Have an amazing week, and I look forward to working with you again next week. I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you in tune with your feelings in the moment, or do your emotions confuse you and you find it hard to navigate them? Stick with me in this episode and I'll show you how to get the Emotional Awareness that you need.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and this week, we're going to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence by answering that question, "Why am I feeling this way anyway?"

Last week, we took a look at the first quadrant of Emotional and Social Intelligence; Self-Awareness. We looked at the fact that they were three competencies that we work on in this quadrant, Emotional Self-Awareness, Accurate Self-Assessment, and Personal Power. So, this week, what I'm going to do is go deeper and unpack with you that first competency, Emotional Self-Awareness.

Emotional Self-Awareness is the ability to recognise the emotion that you are feeling and the subsequent effect that it's having on you and your behaviour. It's the triggers, the thoughts that you're having. It's the memories that are coming up. It's the meaning that you're putting on things. And then it's the thoughts that come out of that, which determine the behaviour moving forward, whether it be a response in a healthy way or a reaction. Knowing which emotion you are feeling and why is the first step in being able to navigate your emotions in a healthy way. On one hand, emotional blindness leads to a roller coaster ride of fluctuating feelings and negative responses, and this can leave you feeling quite drained emotionally throughout the day. You can feel like you are running on empty, and you're not sure why. On the other hand, Emotional Self-Awareness gives you that clarity that you need so that you can navigate your emotions in a healthy way, and that leaves you energised and empowered. When you're in this state, you're able to produce measured responses to those emotions that you are feeling. So, let me take you now through five key principles that you need to understand so that you can develop this critical competency called Emotional Self-Awareness.

Number one is to expand your emotional vocabulary. There are over 2000 words in the English language alone to describe an emotion that you could be feeling in any given moment. Unfortunately, most of us use a go-to handful of emotions, ones that we recognise. And the challenge with that is it limits the ability to get that clarity and the specificity that we need so that we can employ the right strategies. So, the first thing we need to do is build up a new vocabulary of emotions of the words we use to describe how we are feeling so that we can be more accurate in our assessment.

The second key principle is to listen to your body. Emotions are physiological cues and clues that are given within our body that let us know what's going on internally. We then interpret that and decide through the process of thoughts and meanings and beliefs how we feel. So, it starts with being able to listen to the body, to tune in to what our body is telling us, whether that be a sensation, a pain, a feeling somewhere in the body. We can learn to interpret those things in the moment. And they are the cues that our body is giving us that this is what's going on for you right now, and they are priceless in our quest for Emotional Self-Awareness..

The third point is to make a connection. We need to be able to link that sensation that we are feeling to our thoughts, to our learned behaviours. We need to be able to recognise why it is that we're thinking and behaving the way that we are, and Emotional Self-Awareness will allow us to know what's going on in that moment. And therefore, we can, when this happens, we normally would do that, we can recognise the reason for that thought pattern, for that learned behaviour. We need to recognise the connection between things that have happened in the past experiences that have highly charged memories and how that could be coming up in what we're experiencing now. Even though the content is different, the context could be the same. So, being able to recognise the connection to the way we think, say, and do things helps us to get a more strong Emotional Self-Awareness.

Number four is to recognise patterns. We are a conditioned being. Our brain is wired in a certain way. And over the years, our experiences and how we've navigated those, particularly when they're emotionally charged will determine that when this happens, we would normally go this way. So, if we come in contact with certain people and that triggers certain emotions, if there are certain experiences like being in traffic that would normally bring up this behaviour, we need to be able to recognise those things, and they become invaluable data. As we are bringing this clarity together and becoming more emotionally self-aware, we can then use that data to strategise new ways of navigating those experiences. So, recognising our current patterns will help us to be able to build new ones.

Number five is to go deeper for clarity. When we are becoming more emotionally self-aware in that moment, we can sometimes stay at the surface level. What we want to do to get clarity is to go deeper. And I like to do this with my clients by getting them to ask the five 'why's'. So, I want to go down a deeper level. So, if we ask ourselves a question to get that clarity and we come up with that surface answer, then we'll go deeper and go, "Okay, why is that happening?" So, if it's a particular thought, why am I thinking that? And if we chunk down and continually ask those five questions, we will actually get to the root cause of that particular thought pattern, of that particular behaviour, of that particular learned experience that we are acting out on in that moment. So, there you have five key principles that you need to understand to be able to develop this muscle of Emotional Self-Awareness.

So, the goal here is to accurately assess and recognise the emotion in the moment. We can only build a strategy around navigating an emotion if we actually know which one it is. I do an exercise with my clients where I get them to pause at certain parts of each day and check in emotionally. It's not normal for you to stop and ask yourself the question, "How am I feeling right now?" So, we need to teach ourselves that strategy. So, every 24-hour period at different parts of the day, they check in purposefully and go, "What am I feeling right now?", and then getting super clear on that one-word emotion. This is another reason why we've got to build up the emotional vocabulary, because we're only using those handful of emotions. We're not going to get the level of specificity that we need to employ the best strategy.

So, we need to challenge each of those answers that we come up with and ask, "Well, am I actually feeling that?", or "Is there another word that I could use to describe that?" So, for example, we could start out thinking that we are angry, but we might just be frustrated or we could be feeling misunderstood or hurt. So, being able to recognise which particular emotion with clarity is vital if we're going to have a healthy strategy to navigate each emotion. Emotional Self-Awareness will help you to understand why you are feeling the way you are feeling, and it's the first step in emotional mastery. Remember, Emotional Intelligence is about being aware of the emotion in the moment so that you can then regulate the response. It's not about suppressing or ignoring or controlling or manipulating the emotion. It's about understanding which emotion it is, and then using that information to get a favorable response from yourself and for the people that are around you.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, when we continue this conversation around Emotional Intelligence and the first quadrant of Self-Awareness by taking a look at the second competency within this quadrant, Accurate Self-Assessment. Your perception is your reality, and sometimes it can be different to what other people are thinking or seeing in your behaviour. So, it's vital to be able to accurately assess your strengths and your limitations, and we'll talk about that next week. Make sure you take a moment to subscribe and to share this episode on your social media so that other people get the same advantage that you're getting right now. Remember, the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit is coming up on the 8th of September, and there is a link for you to register in the show notes if you haven't already. Have an amazing week, and I look forward to working with you again next week. I'll see you then..