Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and Managing Your Emotions
Knowing yourself is not merely understanding what your favorite music or food is, it something much more meaningful and more profound. My understanding of knowing yourself stems from the idea of emotional self-control and self-introspection, understanding your core-beliefs and strengths and weaknesses, knowing your purpose in this world, and sticking to your gut feelings and being self-aware of your own emotions. This is emotional self-control essay where I am going to reveal this topic through the concept of knowing yourself.
Self-awareness of emotions is a critical component of knowing yourself and is about developing a deeper understanding of our skills, interests, values, limitations, and feelings. People with heightened levels of self-awareness know the impact of their behavior on others and elevate their levels of self-consciousness. I was introduced to the idea of self-consciousness when I felt trapped and felt like I have not found my purpose, so I decided to pursue a life-long adventure of increasingly being self-aware of my thoughts, emotions, and actions every day that motivates me to reach my highest potential. Personally, for me the pursuit of self-consciousness is an ongoing journey, where I discover and learn something new every day with every new experience. The elevated sense of self-awareness leads to self-consciousness. Marcy Levy Shankman, Scott J. Allen, and Paige Haber-Curran talk about the whole meaning of consciousness of self in their book, Emotionally intelligent leadership. The journey of getting to know myself has so far taught me to stay true to myself and control my emotions; thereby allowing me to prioritize what matters, not overstress and build self-confidence.
Authenticity is something I have always valued in myself and others. Since childhood, my parents always taught me to stick to the truth no matter what the consequence is and this is by far one of the most valuable lessons I received till date. Looking back at my life, I realized that there were several incidents where I would break a person's trust and credibility to feel emotionally satisfied with not dealing with conflict and confrontation. This emotional satisfaction, however, did not last long as my moral conscience started to kick in an bring in factors of guilt and fear of losing people into my mind. These experiences taught me that 'trustworthiness is something we must work hard to gain. Our integrity and character are among our most valuable, and fragile, possessions'. Learning the valuable importance of trust from my past experiences, I sought to reform myself by being in control and aware of my emotions whenever I felt unsatisfied emotionally when faced with conflict. Trust brings people together, and a lack of trust can break people apart. In efforts to push myself out of my comfort zone, I actively sought out leadership roles since high school as effective leadership creates a circle of trust, authority and, three of the qualities I highly lacked. Coming to college, I joined a competitive all-male A Capella club which allowed me to observe people in a collective setting and notice how different people crack under pressure, in other words, emotionally react. Looking to learn more every day, I was fascinated by the leadership qualities exhibited by our club's president. After observing from, and conversing with him on a regular basis, I noticed that his authenticity comes from sticking true to his core-values and encouraging others to do the same, his authority comes from his dedication and courage towards the team and his vulnerability of accepting that he's not right all the time. Learning from the president of my club, as a follower over a period of time taught me that 'striving for excellence is important, but focusing on perfection prevents opportunities for growth, hinders one's ability to connect with others, and can negatively affect a group's process'. Looking at life from a different lens helped me appreciate everything around me and helped me distinguish positive and negative people more clearly. Therefore, I started surrounding myself with more positive people which increased my levels of enthusiasm, optimism and think more clearly which has helped me be increasingly self-aware of my actions and emotions.
Controlling my emotions or developing emotional self-control has always been a herculean task for me for a long time, mainly because my mind has always been used to acting and reacting impulsively by cracking under pressure or when faced with confrontation. Trying to understand my emotions and maintain the balance of emotional self-control, I learned over the years that I have always taken a lot of stress from my incompetence to react appropriately during normal situations. I had to learn and understand that 'the ability to diagnose the kind of stress you are experiencing can help you manage your emotions more effectively'. Over the years, I noticed that the stress I have been undergoing comes from a similar type of people who disagree with you and aim to spread their negativity to disrupt your peace. When working side by side along with these kinds of people, I learned two fundamental lessons which have helped me move on while developing minimal stress; these are, to always ignore and move on, to keep a calm mind and speak for what's right versus how you feel like in the moment. These qualities helped me not only work around challenging people but also develop an immunity to face them whenever they show up at any point in time in my life. These life-changing qualities change the way we usually do something and causes a significant impact when it comes to our emotions. Usually, when I am feeling emotional, the last thing I want to do is be pacified, and so I try to deal with the situation pro-actively, I most likely want to rant about what is upsetting me.
If I understood my emotions more extensively, I would have been in a much better position to use this information to my advantage in almost every situation. Time and experience are best teachers in my life, and I realized that our emotions lead to the actions we take and ultimately create the life you are experiencing now. These helped me realize that '[I] cannot control the trigger and may not be able to control the emotional impulse, but [I] can regulate [my] thoughts, decisions, and behaviors that stem from these triggers and impulses'. Undoubtedly, staying conscious of the realizations over some time helps me through difficult situations, challenging people and unfavorable settings. By doing so, my self-confidence has improved drastically from before and is continuing to improve.
Confident people inspire confidence in others: their family, their friends, their bosses, their co-workers. I learned that gaining the confidence of others and building self-confidence are crucial elements to find success. Before entering college, I was very unconfident in myself and my abilities. However, after surrounding myself with some motivating and confident people, and learning and observing from them, I slowly started to imitate their actions and correcting myself, since then. I believe that confidence is the way you feel about yourself, and imitating the actions of confident people gave me some confidence I needed, but didn't make me feel thoroughly confident in myself. Confidence in myself made me do a lot of things, mainly pursue leadership roles, upon which I learned that people who are ‘emotionally intelligent leaders are resilient and remain confident when faced with setbacks and challenges’. I strongly believe that emotional intelligence is key to building a successful leader. Emotions are natural to any human being; a leader needs to be aware of his/her own emotions because there are a people dependent on his actions. When I was young, I had very little bravado and was very insecure, but one thing I noticed common amongst people with leadership skills is that the best of all leaders, a tiny fraction, can embrace their opposites, confidence balanced by humility, and most notably vulnerability alongside strength. As soon I realized from this observation, I knew I had to make a change for the betterment of myself. I started to 'believe you can accomplish what you want, you are competent, and you appreciate your skills and abilities'. Reflecting on my past in the most authentic way possible, I knew I had the leader in me; it was only a matter of time and experience to bring it out.
In conclusion, the adventure of becoming more acquainted with myself has so far given me the self-awareness to remain consistent with myself and control my feelings and emotions during rough times. Besides, this enabled me to prioritize on what makes a difference and what doesn't, thereby allowing me to be at peace with myself and build more self-esteem. Knowing yourself is an integral part of your life. Sometimes it seems like others know us better than we know ourselves. Therefore, understanding our thoughts, values, ideas, and personality is critical when you're planning for your future.
