You Had Me At Self Awareness
SUMMARY
Do you often wonder why it is that you do the things that you do? Why you think the way that you do? Does it confuse you and leave you feeling powerless to be able to do something about it?
Well, stick with me in this episode, I want to help you to understand exactly what it is that you need to do so that you know why you behave the way that you do.
There are three competencies that we work with when we're developing our Self-Awareness.
The first is Emotional Self-Awareness, the ability to know what's going on internally, what those signs actually mean, those cues that come in the physical, being able to label them.
The second competency that we deal with in Self-Awareness is Accurate Self-Assessment. The key word there is 'accurate'. Perception is reality.
The third competency that we work with in Self-Awareness is Personal Power.
So, there you have Self-Awareness, the ability to know what's going on within you and have an understanding around self within that, to be able to know exactly which emotions you're going through in any given moment, to accurately assess your strengths and your limitations, and to have that inner power and certainty of who you are and who you're not and be okay with the current version of you, knowing that you have everything within you and around you to move forward, to grow in the areas that you need to grow. Social and Emotional Intelligence starts with the personal competencies, and that starts with Self-Awareness. I want to challenge you to work with me over the coming weeks and to become more aware of exactly where you are right now, in terms of your Emotional Intelligence.
To do that, make sure that you subscribe, you hit the button, you make sure that you get an alert of some sort. You join the conversation by filling in the form down below so that I can send you out a copy of each of the blogs as I go through it each week. Come on this journey with me, this journey of discovery, where together, we become more self-aware and we develop our Social and Emotional Intelligence. Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, when we unpack that first competency of Self-Awareness: Emotional Self-Awareness, where we get deeper into that competency and you come away from that empowered, knowing and answering that question, "Why is it that I'm thinking and doing stuff the way that I'm doing it?" I'll see you then.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you often wonder why it is that you do the things that you do? Why you think the way that you do? Does it confuse you and leave you feeling powerless to be able to do something about it? Well, stick with me in this episode, I want to help you to understand exactly what it is that you need to do so that you know why you behave the way that you do.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Social and Emotional Intelligence by helping you to understand that you had me at Self-Awareness. If you, like most people that I work with, often wonder, "Why do I do the things that I know are not good for me to do? Why do I not do the things that I know will actually help me move forward? Why do I think that way? Why did I behave that way?" We beat ourselves up and we do an autopsy on situations and events that we go through. We might have a conflict or a conversation with someone and come away from that totally doubting whether or not we did what it is that we should have done in that situation. We have great intentions, and we learn things, and then for some reason, we don't always put them into practice. And it's exactly the same with our Emotional Intelligence. Our Emotional Intelligence starts with a physiological feeling of an emotion in our body. And that then, from neurochemical to psychological, turns into a feeling by what we made that mean, by what our understanding was, or lack thereof, of that physical cue that then turns into thinking and behaviour. And that's where the problem can come in.
When we understand why things happen, when we get that question answered, "Why am I behaving this way?", or, "Why am I thinking this way?", that's the first step to being able to make the change we need to make, to be able to take the principles, the teachings of Emotional Intelligence, and actually use a strategy to ensure that our behaviour, our response to the emotion is empowering for us and for those around us. That's why it starts with awareness. Social and Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of our own emotions and then what might be going on in the emotions of others. And the key is in the moment. So, right here, right now, what's the emotion I'm going through and what am I going to do with that? That's the first key.
Then the second part is to use that information to manage your response to that emotion and therefore manage your relationships. However, if we are unaware of which emotion it is that we are going through, how are we supposed to regulate our response? Emotional Intelligence helps us to have a strategy for different emotions, different situations, different brain patterns that we've formed in our conditioning over the years. By being able to recognise specifically what that emotion is for us is the key to being able to then employ the correct strategy. So, what I want to do is unpack with you this first quadrant of Social and Emotional Intelligence, which is Self-Awareness. So, we have that four-quadrant model, as we've talked about. We have Self-Awareness and Self-Management, and that's the personal competencies. That's our Emotional Intelligence. Then we have Social Awareness and Relationship Management, and they are the social competencies of Social Intelligence.
A lot of times, I find that people or organisations will want me to come and work on the relationship issues because they're the things they are presenting. My challenge with that is that I can, but that's not going to serve you because unless we build that foundation around Self-Awareness and Self-Management, those Relationship Management skills are not going to have the impetus, the power that we need to be able to employ them and to stick with them. So, that's why we start with Self-Awareness.
There are three competencies that we work with when we're developing our Self-Awareness. The first is Emotional Self-Awareness, the ability to know what's going on internally, what those signs actually mean, those cues that come in the physical, being able to label them. To do that, we need to be able to do a number of things. The first thing is to build up a vocabulary around emotions, which is larger than one we have right now. There are over 2000 words in the English language alone to describe the emotion that you could be experiencing in your body. Right now, we use a hand full of about 6 to 10. We have our go-to: happy, sad, frustrated, angry, whatever it is for you. So, the first thing we want to do in getting that Emotional Self-Awareness is build up that vocabulary so that we can be more specific in naming the emotion. Once we've been able to name the emotion, we can then develop a strategy to regulate the response. So, the first area that we work in the first competency of Self-Awareness is Emotional Self-Awareness. So, what I'm going to do next week is we're going to unpack that a little bit more deeply and give you some strategies, some exercises you can do around that to help you to become more aware of what emotions you're going through true throughout the day.
The second area that we deal with in Self-Awareness is Accurate Self-Assessment. The key word there is 'accurate'. Perception is reality. Therefore, your perception is your reality and what other people think and see could be totally different. That's why we call it Accurate Self-Assessment. And what that means is I'm able to, you're able to, know exactly what your current reality is around the competencies of Emotional Intelligence. You know what your strengths are and the areas that you need to work on. To get this Accurate Self-Assessment, what I like to do is take people through a process of questioning, to work out why they feel they are low or high in that competency. What we can also do is get help from others and go, "Hey, I see this in me. What do you see?" A great tool in learning this competency is the Johari window, and it tells us things that we see about us that we hide from others, and things that other people see that we might see in the blind spots and those sorts of things. And in the coming weeks, I'll unpack that for you so that you can get more accurate in your assessment of where you are right now. If we have the right start point, it's going to alleviate frustration. If we think we are stronger in a competency than we actually are, or we underestimate where we are in that competency because we lack belief in our self or many other things, we're going to be starting at the wrong point. So, accurately assessing where you are is vital.
The third area, the third competency that we work with in Self-Awareness is Personal Power. This is my favorite competency to work with people. And in my experience, it actually underpins all the other 25 that I work on. Personal Power says that I know I have everything within me and around me to be able to succeed in life, to be able to become who I need to become so that I can have the results that I want to have. Personal Power is not about power over others. It's about knowing the power that's within. It's about being self-confident rather than doubting yourself all the time. It's about exercising self-care. It's about building up your identity and taking responsibility for who it is that you believe you are. Personal Power is, in my experience, the competency that is going to allow you to go beyond just getting this as information. It's the competency that allows you to move forward, to move that needle towards where it is that you want to go, because you know that you have everything within you.
So, there you have Self-Awareness, the ability to know what's going on within you and have an understanding around self within that, to be able to know exactly which emotions you're going through in any given moment, to accurately assess your strengths and your limitations, and to have that inner power and certainty of who you are and who you're not and be okay with the current version of you, knowing that you have everything within you and around you to move forward, to grow in the areas that you need to grow. Social and Emotional Intelligence starts with the personal competencies, and that starts with Self-Awareness. I want to challenge you to work with me over the coming weeks and to become more aware of exactly where you are right now, in terms of your Emotional Intelligence.
To do that, make sure that you subscribe, you hit the button, you make sure that you get an alert of some sort. You join the conversation by filling in the form down below so that I can send you out a copy of each of the blogs as I go through it each week. Come on this journey with me, this journey of discovery, where together, we become more self-aware and we develop our Social and Emotional Intelligence. Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, when we unpack that first competency of Self-Awareness: Emotional Self-Awareness, where we get deeper into that competency and you come away from that empowered, knowing and answering that question, "Why is it that I'm thinking and doing stuff the way that I'm doing it?" I'll see you then.
