16 Jan Emotional Intelligence: Increasing Your Self-Awareness
“You Deserve To Live An Extraordinary Life!”
In our last post, I introduced the idea of Emotional Quotient, a measure of emotional intelligence. This is a skill Navigators continually strive to enhance. Remember Karen, my client who became resentful when she did not get the attention she wanted from her husband? Her problem was that she knew how she was feeling—hurt and frustrated—but had no insight into the nature of her limited thinking. In other words, while she was critical, she was not using powerful critical thinking to increase her self-awareness, which would have bettered her chances of getting the result she wanted, i.e. attention from her husband and personal connection.
If she were more self-aware, Karen might have thought or questioned some of the following:
- What do I really want from my husband?
- How can I know if he really knows what I want?
- Does it make sense to simply tell him I feel a bit needy and would like some caring attention from him?
- Do I have any “rules” against telling others what I want and need?
- If I don’t expose my feelings or make requests for attention, how can I blame him if he doesn’t know how I am feeling?
- Is it possible that I am making negative assumptions and self-defeating expectations, leading to erroneous conclusions?
- Could this be a pattern I carry into other relationships, in which I expect others to read my mind and know what is in my heart?
Do you have any suggestions of your own? I would love to hear your feedback, please feel free to comment below and share your thoughts.
In the next post, we’ll look at an aspect of emotional intelligence that is a struggle for most of us: self-control.
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